Food & Dining

These get the term “hybrid’ because of the two methods used to cook the ribs. We slow cook them in the crock pot for several hours and transfer them to the grill for the final basting. Cooked this way, the meat almost literally falls off the bones.

We cut the rack of ribs in half so they can fit in the crock pot. Then they go in a plastic zip bag to marinade overnight. The marinade consists of fruit juices (apple, pineapple, orange) and a home grown BBQ sauce. The orange juice, by the way, came from oranges harvested yesterday from our backyard dwarf navel orange tree.

Damsel’s killer BBQ sauce is a key to this delectable entrée. It is vinegar based with brown sugar, savories (onion,garlic) tomato sauce (I used catchup), mesquite (or hickory) smoke flavoring and your favorite chili powder (cayenne, ancho).

We served the ribs with maple flavored baked beans and broccoli slaw marinated in Damsel’s tangy dressing. The image shows the final grilling stage of cooking. You can click on the image to enlarge it to drooling dimensions.

Damsel and I did some last-minute grocery shopping today to throw together a weekend meal. We typically don’t go to the supermarket on the weekend, but today is an exception due to having been in Arizona on shopping day.

Image: On the grill today – click to enlarge.

Damsel spotted a couple of little bacon-wrapped tenderloin steaks in the butcher case, so we grabbed them and some other stuff and headed back to prepare our meal. I cranked up the grill and roasted the ears of corn for a half hour before shucking them and putting them on the grill basted with butter and fresh ground black pepper. We also put some broccoli on the griddle with olive oil and pepper. The tenderloins cooked to perfection over the last burner

It was an awesome meal, if we do say so ourselves! In addition to the faire above, we had a southwestern-style salad with home grown tomatoes and a sliced cucumber thrown in – equally as awesome. We were stuffed and still have enough steak left over for a salad during the week.

Please do not drool on your keyboard.

Today’s dinner menu was one of my favorite meals. We had Chicken Fried Steak with mashed cauliflower/potato medley, savory home grown green beans and bacon and Damsel’s killer white gravy.

The steaks are actually made from Fillet Mignon (beef tenderloin) pounded flat. The steaks are coated with flour and seasonings and pan fried to golden brown. The same pan is used to prepare the gravy. Damsel uses the pan drippings and adds a little extra virgin olive oil and flour. after simmering the flour, some milk is added to combine with the other ingredients.

The mashed potato medley actually is half cauliflower, half red potatoes with a few cloves of garlic thrown into the pot. During the mashing, butter, shredded Romano cheese and a little milk are added to the mix.

Our green beans were home-grown Kentucky Wonder beans cut into one inch pieces and boiled until tender. The beans are removed from the pan and drained and a couple of bacon strips chopped into bits are browned in the pan. Savories (chopped onion and minced garlic) are added in and carmelized. When that’s done, the beans are added back into the pan, a little granulated sweetener and a splash of red wine vinegar is added to deglaze the pan. It’s my job to prepare the green beans.

It was an awesome meal. I was tempted to clean my plate, but I saved some of the steak for a lunch this coming week. I enjoyed Fathers Day dinner a lot.