They can’t all be winners. I don’t want to be one of those people that pretends that everything is perfect; birds and wildlife help me clean the house while I sing. Nope.

In my never ending quest to make P. squamosus tasty (I mean other than like watermelon rind) I’ve made it into falafel patties, teriyaki, and French fries. The winner, above and beyond was the French fries, fyi.

The teriyaki worked fairly well, so I decided to try and make a pulled pork style bbq dryad. Bbq overpowers EVERYTHING, right?

Sooooo. I started with these guys.

They were very young, tender and in prime condition.  I sliced them thin and then hand shredded them to mimic the texture of pulled pork.

Poked around my pantry and fridge… stole my daughter’s Dr. Pepper, and saw the two partial bottles of Mall’s BBQ sauce, which claims to be the oldest BBQ sauce in the nation. A St. Louis tradition like toasted raviolis (Google it) and Provell cheese on cracker thin pizza.

Feeling extra super pleased with how clever I was, I mixed them all together in a bowl, threw the shredded dryad in, stirred it up and let it hang out in the fridge an hour.

Once it had some marinade time, I transferred the whole shebang into a crock pot and turned it on.

I smugly left for work expecting to come home to a fantastic dinner.

Picture, if you will (rip in peace Prince) the smell of burning watermelon rinds and a dirty, burned BBQ sauce incinerated grill. That’s what I walked in to when I got home. I could smell it outside. The crock pot was on low, so it wasn’t a heat issue. I took the lid off and discovered that the sauce had separated, the water in the P. squamosus I suspect, and the rind like smell of the dryad was somehow exponentially multiplied.

The BBQ sauce was more a stratified puddle of nastiness to the earthworm like ribbons of mushrooms at the bottom of the crock pot. It looked bad, it smelled bad, and like a fool I tasted it. I had to brush my tongue and it didn’t really help. It was horrible. Beyond epic failure. I’m pretty sure livestock wouldn’t have eaten it.

Alas, I have no pictures of it. My family played hot potato on who got to put it in the trash. The smell… I feel like there should be some reference to burning hair in the description…

If you have a good recipe for P. squamosus, please share! This was NOT a good recipe. At all.