Bourbon BBQ Baby Back Ribs

I passed a small, personal milestone this past week. I made ribs for the very first time! Over the last couple of years, as I creep closer to 30 years old and I am still single, I have become aware of a “list” of sorts, buried deep in my unconscious. It is the list of the things that I have been subconsciously waiting to buy or do or enjoy until I am married. What is strange is that I am not really aware that something is on “the list” until I have an internal dialogue like the one I had this week:

Me: “Sigh… I am totally craving ribs!”
Me: “You don’t know how to make ribs.”
Me: “Men know how to make ribs.
Me: “Then you’ll just have to wait until you have a boyfriend or husband and then he can spontaneously grill you some ribs when you get a craving.”

Awareness of the totally irrational nature of these thoughts suddenly dawns…

Me: “HECK! I don’t have to wait for a man! I know how to cook! I can make ribs all by myself!”

A couple years ago, I had a similar internal dialogue to the one above regarding using a grill/bbq and I am very proud to say that I can grill a pretty good steak all on my own! I have no idea what other kinds of irrational thoughts are hanging out on this list, but if more pop up and they pertain to food, then I will be very proud to share my new accomplishments here with all of you!

In the meantime, here is the rib recipe that I used and it was YUMMY! I no longer have access to a grill and needed something that could cook while I was at work. The slow cooker did beautiful things to the meat! By the time I pulled them out, the meat had literally fallen off the bones for several of them. It was super tender!

Bourbon BBQ Baby Back Ribs
(From Cooking Light website)

5 lbs baby back ribs (beef or pork) – I used about 3.5lbs because a girl just doesn’t need that much beef all by herself, even making multiple meals!
1 ½ tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 c. ketchup (I used ½ c. ketchup and ½ c. prepared bbq sauce because I ran out of ketchup)
1 c. loosely packed brown sugar
½ c. bourbon whiskey
¼ c. prepared horseradish (not the creamy kind, the minced/pulpy kind)
½ tsp hot sauce (like Tabasco)

- Place ribs, meaty side up in a roasting pan, sprinkle w/ salt and pepper & roast at 475 degrees for 30 minutes. The point of this is to make the outside of the ribs all brown and crunchy. I was doing this step before work and for some reason, despite the total absence of visible smoke, turning my oven this high set off the smoke alarms in my old-house kitchen, at 6am!! (Don’t you wish you were one of my housemates??!). So I ended up skipping this part and just going straight to the slow cooker after only about 10 minutes in the oven. They still turned out good and also looked very pretty – so I might skip the roasting step all together next time.
- Meanwhile, combine the ketchup/bbq sauce, sugar, bourbon & horseradish in a measuring cup and whisk until blended.
- Arrange ribs in a 6-qt slow cooker and pour sauce over each layer. (You will have to cut them up)
- Cook on LOW for 9 hours.
- Remove sauce from cooker, skim off the fat that rises to the top and simmer on the stove until it thickens and reduces by about ½. This took me roughly 20 minutes.
- Pour sauce over ribs and serve with lots of napkins!!

Lastly, I have a question for those of you who might have an opinion. I simmered the sauce until it thickened and poured some over the ribs, but still had quite a bit left. So I refrigerated the leftovers and put it back in the crock-pot today with some chicken. Was that okay? Do you any of you know of any health safety reasons why a sauce that has already been cooked and then refrigerated, shouldn’t go back into a slow cooker?

Shrimp & Rice Noodles with Garlic Chili Sauce

So I have to post fast this afternoon because I am at the library and need to get home in a few minutes to meet up with a friend!

But I wanted to share my dinner recipe from last Friday night. I had a friend over and tried a new recipe and it was wonderful! The recipe is basically a sauce recipe and then you can put it with anything you like. The original version came from Cooking Light and called for the sauce with shredded pork and fettuccine. I needed it to be gluten-free and had some shrimp on hand so I went with shrimp and rice noodles. I have leftover noodles and am going to whip up some more sauce and do stir-fried veggies with noodles and sauce for dinners this week. I was thinking next time I might add a little more water and make it into a soup with some veggies and chicken. See? Super versitile!

Garlic Chili Sauce

1/4 c. almond butter
2 1/2 T low-sodium soy sauce
2 T rice vinegar
1 T minced, fresh ginger
1 1/2 tsp garlic chili sauce (I used the bottled Sriracha sauce that I LOVE!)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 c thinly sliced green onions
1/3 c chopped, fresh mint (optional)

- Wisk together everything except the green onions and mint with an additional 2 T warm water.
- Pour over your noodles or veggies or meat or whatever and top with the onions and mint.
- I had everything on hand for this except the mint so I skipped that part.
- This sauce was super flavorful, but also quite spicy. I think it would still taste good if you left the chili sauce out or you could mix it up and then add a little chili sauce at a time until it has the desired heat.

Happy Sunday! I hope yours has been as lovely as mine :)

Home Sweet Home

So I promised some pictures of my place and here they are! I still have a few things to hang on the walls, but you can see the gist of it. I ended up painting in the living room, kitchen and my bedroom and I am thrilled with how it turned out. In addition to the rooms below, I have a second bedroom which will serve as dining room/guest room/craft room. However, for now it is my "box" room as I finish getting unpacked, so it wasn't really worth a picture. I considered taking a picture of the outside of the house, but since this is a public site, I decided not to. So far, my experience here has been wonderful! My neighbors have been incredibly quiet and mostly friendly and my commute to work is only about 7 minutes! I am also within walking distance of downtown, the library and a couple nice trails and parks. The Lord really has given me a sweet gift in this new home!

Welcome to my very cute, little apartment!

This is the hallway you see when you walk in the front door:



My tiny kitchen:



Cozy bedroom:



I'm still adjusting to this little bathroom. You'll notice the conspicuous absence of a shower...



Lastly, my living room:



For those of you who live in town, I am looking forward to having friends over soon! For those of you who don't, you'll just have to come visit me!

Happy Friday :)

Slimy Things...

I had a new food adventure today! I will give you some forewarning though... If you have a weak stomach and if descriptions of slimy things gross you out, you might want to skip this entry...

I think most of you already know this, but I work for a company that owns a line of seafood, called Coleson's Catch which is sold in military commissaries. About once a year we do an office order and we as employees get to order products for ourselves and friends and family. On this last order, there was some Squid/Calamari and Mussel Meat that was sent here to the office and it has been hanging out in the freezer for a couple months now. I know this is not true of everyone, but I think many people are probably like me and the word that comes to mind is "YUCK!" when they think of squid. And only a slightly less emphatic "yuck" when they think of Mussels.

Well... I like to experiment with food and I really enjoy cooking for other people, so a couple weeks ago, I got permission to buy a few ingredients and cook up some of this stuff for the office to try. It was sort of an experiment to see if I could make it taste good and today was the big day!

The part that had me nervous was cleaning the squid. The 1lb box comes as a solid, frozen block of about 30-40 small, whole squid. In order to make them edible, they must be thawed and separated and the head and inards must be pulled out, the skin removed, the spine pulled out and the remaining slimy goop on the inside of the body rinsed off. I had some concern that this would be all together too disgusting and I wouldn't be able to do it. But in the end, it really wasn't bad at all. I did NOT dissolve into a squeamish, squealing female puddle and I did NOT have to call in male reinforcements! I gutted those little squids all by myself. And for that, I am feeling rather proud of myself!

It took me about an hour to clean all 30 slimy, little squids and the rest of the prep was pretty easy. The Mussel Meat was no issue. I just thawed it out and tossed it right into the coconut curry broth. Nothing gross there. And, although I am surprised to say it, I actually really liked the Squid in the recipe below. It is possible that it only tasted good because the recipe paired it with bacon and fresh herbs and garlic. But I am now pretty much convinced that bacon can make ANYTHING taste good.

I am feeling fairly certain that no one who reads this blog will be running out to cook Calamari or Mussels anytime soon so I am actually not going to bother posting the recipes. Although if you would like them, please ask and I can send them right over. But for fun, here are a few pictures:

All Moved In!

Well, I am all moved in! Literally, all my boxes and "stuff" is IN the apartment, although it will not be all unpacked for a little while. Just getting me IN was no small feat!

Interesting side note... I just looked up the word "feat" in the dictionary to see if I was spelling it correctly. This is the Webster definition: "An achievement that requires great courage, skill or strength." This is actually a perfect description of my move! Although the great courage, skill & strength came more from a couple good friends and my dad, than from me. I spent most of Sunday in a state of fidgety, anxious hovering.

Saturday went great! It was designated as my "moving-boxes-and-painting-the-livingroom" day. Everything went smoother and quicker than I expected and I was thrilled with the way that the paint turned out. Sunday was my "move-the-furniture" day and it was much more difficult. Aside from the fact that it decided to rain/snow, my new apartment takes up the full 3rd floor of one of these old Victorian houses downtown. The stairway measures 28 inches across and had several tight turns! On paper and in theory, all of my furniture was supposed to fit. But when it came down to it, we had some issues.

Who were the heroes of the day? It was my dad (of course - he's always my hero!) and two friends, Tarah and Chris. These lovely ladies just happen to be black-belts in Tae Kwon Do. It would never have crossed my mind to recruit movers with skills in the martial arts, but they completely saved the day! First of all, the box spring for my bed wouldn't fit around a corner. They had tried every which way and we had come to the conclusion that I would have to go without it and trash the current one, since there was no where to store it. Normal people would come to such conclusions. But women with Tae Kwon Do skills apparently see options hidden to the rest of us common folk. Chris calmly asserted that she could break it in such a way that we could bend it around the corner. The box spring is made up of 2x4's!! What woman calmly announces that she can break a 2x4 and scoffs at me when I tell her not to hurt herself. Well, she totally did it! A few fancy kicks and she had broken my box spring in just the right places so that it bent beautifully around the corner and virtually sailed up the stairs into my bedroom. (I am exaggerating on that last part, of course. But it was just SO cool that it deserves a tiny bit of exaggeration!). And best yet, it still works quite well under my mattress. I haven't noticed a bit of difference.

Then later in the afternoon, I discovered that when my crew and I were painting the window sills on Saturday, we had accidentally painted the windows shut. I almost had a small meltdown here because I am already a bit nervous about roasting in the summer time on the 3rd floor of an old house without air conditioning. These ladies fixed this too! They just tapped around the edges of the window and then used brute strength to lift them up.

Totally incredible! I have a pictures of us with the box spring. It is to their credit that it won't look very broken in these pictures. She only broke the necessary part.







Anyway, that is that. I am feeling super cared for and watched over by the Lord! Other than a small hole in the wall from the leg of one of my couches (which my gracious land lord has already patched) and a nice bruise on my head where I zonked myself with a lamp, there was no damage or injuries and I am quite happily getting myself settled in my new nest.

Thanks to those of you who were praying for me this weekend. I have one more room to paint and a few things to hang on the walls and then I will post a little picture tour. The End.