Blues and BBQ

I managed to keep a fairly healthy diet for the first three weeks of my research trip. Not tempeh and quinoa salad healthy, but reasonably healthy for traveling on a budget, shopping at big chain super markets, and having only a refrigerator and microwave to keep and prepare meals. This past week I got lazy. I didn't feel like getting up in the morning to make another whole roast turkey breast sandwich for lunch. I definitely didn't feel like washing any more salad in my sink for dinner at night. So I went to KFC, picked up a 12-piece dinner, and survived on that for about three days.

After having the Truckdriver's Special breakfast -- french toast, eggs, hash browns, and sausage -- at Bill Evans Family Restaurant Saturday morning, enough was enough. I needed healthy fare. Again, I'm not talking about a vegetarian diet, even though it gets harder for me to justify eating meat the more time I spend in communities, like Springfield, where hunting is popular. I don't see much substantive difference between hunting and eating as two justifications for killing an animal. So it's doesn't make much sense to me that I disapprove of one and still engage in the other. On the other hand, I don't fuss too much over the need for moral consistency.

Boy do I ever digress. My point is that after some local sight-seeing Saturday afternoon, I drove to downtown Springfield to find the specialty market and get myself some good eats. Only instead I found this....

...Hot on the heels of the State Fair, Springfield's annual, jam-packed Blues and BBQ Festival! Baby back ribs and pulled pork (sandwiches) everywhere. BBQ specialists came from as far as Texas and Wyoming to sell their stuff. My healthier diet is postponed for a few days, until I finish the full-rack of ribs I've got broken up into sections in my mini-fridge. I did, however, avoid all fried foods and purchase a couple of side dishes that could at least pretend to be vegetables (baked beans and cole slaw).