Smokin J's PIts
Full Fledged Farker
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2014
- Location
- College Station
Ok I don’t know where to start with this. On the 23rd every year we do a shop cook out it’s the day before Christmas break and no work is going to get done anyhow. This year it was a little different for us as we have a practicing Muslim working for us, so in an effort of keeping it fair to everyone we had to widen our selection of meat, and for the first time we labeled things and even provided quite a few kosher selections. I want to state that I was raised to respect people for their life decisions regardless of what they are, and after being deployed over in the Iraq region twice, I have learned a lot about other people and their faith, and I may not agree with their beliefs but I respect it. I know that a lot of people instantly have a negative effect when they hear Muslim, but for me its kind of peace of mind, its something I am very familiar with. Anyhow as always I was volunteered to cook pulled pork, I also took it upon myself to smoke a few other things, one of which was a lamb shank that was Halal, that I intentionally got to be fair and even across the board, I even talked my boss into buying a Brinkmann water smoker so that there wasn’t any pork residue being cooked into the shank. All was fine, until I noticed that the wind blew over the labels that we had sitting out in front of the meats, and I noticed that my co-worker (Muslim) was eating un-sauced pulled pork. After debating for few minutes I decided I needed to tell him what he was doing, and as to be expected he had a look of shock on his face and immediately went and threw his plate in the trash. He disappeared for about 15 minutes, I assumed he was praying and asking for forgiveness. When he returned he made another plate, with no meat at all this time, finished eating and went back to his work area. By this point I was feeling really bad, at what had happened, and about 30 minutes later I went to talk to him to reassure him that it was not intentional, and he was aware of the accommodations that we did make on his behalf, and he thanked me several times for this while we were cooking everything. As I walked into the shop where he worked I was the one in shock, he was sitting at his work table piling pulled pork on a piece of bread, and crying, I physically mean there were tears rolling down his face. I asked him what he was doing, and these were his exact words (this pork is too damn good to not eat at least one more time in my life, Im just going to have to beg for forgiveness). Now I am in a dilemma because this could have just been the best compliment that I have ever received for my BBQ, even though I know it wasn’t my personal best, however the meal I helped prepare just made a 45 year old man go against the only religion he has ever known, possibly in the eyes of his religion doming him to committing a mortal sin that he may never be forgiven for, and this is weighing very hard on me know. I know that ultimately it was his decision, and he is the one that will have to live with that but deep down inside I still feel as if I corrupted him.
