11 posts tagged “food”
Easiest fall-off-the-bone pork baby-back rib prep ever.
Place 2-6 rib racks on foil-lined baking sheet with at least a small lip.
Pour a cup of BBQ sauce on the ribs.
Optional: pour additional 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce on ribs.
Cover ribs with another sheet of foil and seal edges with the lower sheet.
Bake on middle rack of 250 degree (F) oven for 2 hours 30 minutes.
Optional: after removing ribs from oven place meat-side up on charcoal grill (small amount of low-heat embers), baste with additional BBQ sauce, then close lid for 5 minutes.
No pics of this one yet, as ribs were reduced to bones within minutes.
To make the rub, combine Fryin' Magic powder (or Shake'n'Bake), sugar, black pepper, garlic powder, Italian spices, and a pinch of cayenne in a bowl.
Light charcoal in grill and when covered in white ash, move coals to front half of grill.
Dredge chicken breasts in the mix on both sides, rubbing additional powder gently on.
Place chicken breasts on back half of charcoal grill for indirect heat (and warming rack if you have two levels), close lid, and partially close all dampers to moderate temp and trap smoke.
After 10 minutes-ish, rotate grill positions and flip the chicken breast, applying sauce of choice with a brush.
I used 1/2 Asian Garlic Chili sauce with 1/2 Texas Pete Buffalo Wing sauce.
After 5 minutes, flip chicken breasts and place them directly over the hot coals with the lid off/open, brushing again with sauce.
After one minute, flip chicken breast and rotate grill positions still over the coals with lid off/open.
After one minute, remove from grill and let rest for three minutes before eating.
Birthday consumption.
Papa Murphy's take-n-bake stuffed pizza (creamy garlic chicken and bacon.)
Booker's small-batch bourbon.
126.4 proof, 6.7 years
Straight from the barrel, uncut, unfiltered.
Recipe from Booker Noe, grandson of Jim Beam.
Nose of raisins and cinnamon (and fire).
Ahhhhhhh.
...with cookies that is.
My 21 month and almost 4 year old daughters had a blast creating in the kitchen.
We began with vanilla wafer cookies, which we decorated with half cream cheese frosting, and half strawberry frosting, then marshmallow pieces atop.
These we nuked in the microwave for a few seconds until they got slightly gooey and then dashed sprinkles on top while still warm to adhere to the goo.
Decadent.
The wife and I got a sitter for the young'uns and headed into downtown for the Sushi Meetup event.
This month it was at a Mexican place.
It's a niche Meetup group that doesn't like to be pigeon-holed; go figure.
We ended up at the end of one of the tables with a group of diners we hadn't mingled with yet at the other Meetups.
One of them was a therapist by trade.
He was sharing an anecdote about his session with his own therapist.
Topics surrounding inter-mingling of the sexes.
There was sharing of ideas, discussion of perspectives, and analysis from personal recollections.
He looks over at me after a while, takes a pull of margarita, and surmises, "Let me guess, you were a bad-boy back in the day?"
Expert opinions.
I lean back, take a pull from my own Azul margarita and propose,
"Recovering is for alcoholics; let's just call it reformed."
And then the waitress was back and I was asking if they knew how to make sopaipillas
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopaipilla ) even though they weren't on the menu.
Thanksgiving this year was a country smoked ham.
Soaked that bad pig in water for two days, changing it out every 6 hours or so, before oven roasting.
Fantastic flavor but we could have done better with presentation had we obtained a mandolin slicer to shave it extra thin.
The sides were yummy and the biggest hit was the day after, sour-cream-chicken-enchiladas.
Friends flew in from out of town and stayed for a week.
Plans were made for next years event. We're consolidating around a consensus for somewhere on the "redneck-Riviera", possibly a beach-house rental in Alabama. Tentatively referred to as the Alabama-Slamma' Thanksgiving bash. The concept of Thanksgiving for friends and Christmas for family is beginning to catch on in the circle and our numbers grow each year.
A friend recently found a high school graduation video. It was made at the all-city sanctioned after-party.
He sent a copy to me with instructions not to watch it... at least not sober.
Also not to watch it alone... or with anyone else present.
Much earlier versions of us are both in it.
Recognizable and yet not.
There are many others remembered and forgotten.
Opening myself up to a good mocking, I allowed the wife to watch it with me.
Egad, the fashion made that easy!
I don't know what was worse, the kids trying to be couture or the kids who were trying to look like they didn't care.
What I remember of the after-high-school-graduation party is fragmented. Having the video for cues helped a bit.
It was one of those affairs sponsored by local businesses at the county fairground, to let the seniors blow off steam in a controlled environment... and sober.
It was May. Than means hot on the Sonora Desert, even at 10 PM.
The parking lot was soft dirt/sand.
The volume of just-graduated drivers and their guests stirred it up to a constant haze.
It stuck to the sweat on my arms, forehead, and neck.
I wasn't nervous. It was just still that hot.
The nerves had all faded years before.
I was free of the school district now.
Also free of my classmates.
Now we could all strike out on our own.
I didn't need them, but I needed to be here, at this one last ritual passing.
I liked my chances of making it outside the structured educational environment.
I thought most of my friends had a good shot at it as well.
Some small bit of sick pleasure was derived from the foreknowledge that some of the always more-popular cliques would have almost no shot at all... and they didn't even know it yet.
They had already peaked in life.
To them this night was their crowning achievement.
To me, graduation meant that I could finally begin.
I remember going through the gate with my little "I'm a senior" ticket stub.
I remember trays of snack food set out for us.
There were relieved smiles everywhere.
Jokes and jokers. Dancers and dancing. Volleys of volleyball. Dealers, chips, and cards.
There was sitting on bleachers and taking it all in.
Closure and moving beyond it all.
Throats grew hoarse, from the chalky sand drifting in the air, and from screaming until two in the morning.
Then we filed out, started our cars, and departed en masse from the last time that we would all be together.
The dust folded in like a hazy curtain falling.
On an odd day I still feel that chalky dust on my neck.
But you can't wipe the past off, it just grinds in like fine desert sand.
I deem it vital that a parent should educate their child in conceptualizing the vastness of opportunity that abounds.
For instance, just now at lunch, I asked my almost three year old what she wanted to eat.
She replied peanut butter toast. i.e. an open face PBJ, sans the J.
I queried whether she was certain in her choice, as she had earlier informed me over breakfast that she wanted a waffle for lunch, chocolate chip to be exact.
She whined in that I'm-almost-three-years-old way, "Noooooo Daddy, peeeeenut butter tooooost."
To which I clarified, what if we put the peanut butter, ON the chocolate chip waffle?
Her eyes squinted into the distance as she pondered this unexpected combination.
"Peeeeenut butter chocky chip waffffffffle!!!!!!!"
Peels of laughter and gaggles of giggle.
Her eyes wide and sparkling at the wonder of two things, very good in themselves being combined to an even greater whole.
I expect that over the course of the remainder of the day, she will continue to experiment with combining things that I would never think to put together, and this will all be much to our mutual amusement.
Open up your mouth now
The spoon has your food
It will fill up your tummy
and this will brighten your mood
There's no call to thumb-suck
And even less call to brood
You can grin, laugh, or giggle
All hints at your good attitude
Take your goo-hands away child
the napkin's short interlude
The patterned stains on your bib girl
rival Pollack's work with the tube
Just pay some attention
To ignore is plain rude
For I'm holding the spoon babe
And this green stuff is your food.
What up?
The past few days have proceeded without me.
Or rather, I've been carried along in a knapsack over their shoulder.
I'm enjoying every jostle in my dark little cranny, or is it a nook?
Food.
We've made outstanding feasts this year.
Drink. Yes, we've (are) drunk.
Inhaled, deeply, this thing that we all work towards that we want to achieve.
All I want to do is not lose what I have right now.
Details will be forthcoming once life has slowed down to be reviewed instead of lived.
It's good. It's really, really good.
