The 4th was a day of extremes here, high heat, high humidity and high excitement. We went to our local parade and saw some of our friends in the parade and sat with other friends on the roadside waving and chatting. The weather looked iffy so we scrapped our plans for the beach and headed home for a quiet celebration. We cooked out ribs, basically my husband gets the coals ready while I coat the ribs (either short spare ribs or babybacks) all over with a patented super secret rib rub that my Father in Law created. For your purposes (since I'd be cashiered out of the family for telling) I'd use Alton Brown's rib rub recipe, it is excellent. The ribs get put on and cook for 15 minutes before being turned and basted with mojo crillado. Then he comes back inside out of the INCREDIBLY MOIST HEAT until his watch timer goes off and then he's back out turning and basting and this goes on for about 3 -4 hours. Needless to say the secret to great barbecue is LOW and SLOW, meaning low heat and takes a looong time. The meat will be so tender you won't believe you didn't boil them first (a common recipe component for ribs). These ribs will be juicy, flavorful, and tender, but only if you cook them low and slow.
Our side dishes were corn off the cob, green salad, ice cold watermelon, Bakerella's Cake Balls. Our dessert was supposed to be this amazing bundt cake from "Cooking with Sugar" but as I was turning the cake out of the pan and onto the cake plate it broke into many, many red, white and blue pieces. I literally cried and then googled "what can I do with broken cake". It all turned out. It always does, and if I hadn't been so needlessly upset with myself I would have remembered there are a MILLION things you can do with broken cake, not the least of which is just slap some ice cream on top and call it a sundae! Then you could make trifle (layers of cake, pudding, fruit and all topped with shipped cream). You can just saw off the broken top with a serrated bread knife and frost the remaining cake. If it isn't broken too badly you can "paste" the cake back together with extra frosting and then frost the outside. You can cut the broken cake with cookie cutters and frost them individually to make "baby cakes", I mean there is a whole world out there and it is useless (and let's face it a little petulant) to cry over spilt cake.
But I was under a lot of stress you see, because the day before I had found out that we are indeed MOVING HOUSE this month. This will be our 5th move in about 6 years and I am a little bit stressed out. We don't intend to be moving this much, but unfortunately my husband's job keeps placing him at other branches where it is juuuuuuust too far to drive, so then we move again. I'm glad they like him so much (I really am!) but this moving is stressful, expensive and worst of all dusty! My allergies have kicked into high gear!
Our new house is super cute though and has a much better kitchen than this one. I promise to keep cooking, but I have to tell you posting may be sort of light for a month. I may just post what I made for dinner and not explain much, but I promise to check in when I can. Wish me luck y'all!
Tonight's dinner: Pressure cooker beef stew, you can find the recipe on the blog; I make it all the time.
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