Canyon Life

Halloweiner Dog.

I love to cook. I have for years now. I've worked in restaurants, catered, and have always been involved in some sort of food service since I was 18. It's a big part of my life. I think most people in my little world know that if they come to my house for any reason, they will be fed well. Let me be clear, I love cooking. BUT, I don't love baking. Don't ask me to bake cookies. Or cakes. Or any kind of pastry. I can swing a few dessert recipes, but not many. And I finally figured out why. Chemistry. Baking requires a certain amount of chemistry. You have to measure exactly, follow a recipe without improvising much. Because if you mess up the balance of baking soda, baking powder and lemon, you get a disgusting chemical reaction that tastes AWFUL. Guess what? I stink at following directions. (I think it's my rebellious nature) I like to add, subtract, pinch, guesstimate, all that jazz. That's why I love cooking, you can do that. You can be creative without fear of upsetting that balance of chemistry. Someday I hope to correct this handicap, but I'm in no hurry. I will stick with the art of cooking. 

During the summer, right near Labor Day weekend, I get nostalgic for my hometown of Reno, Nevada. I have lived in lots of places, but I consider Reno my hometown. First off, my dad and brother still live there, and also I spent my high school and early adult years in that area. I got married there, had my second son there, and lots of other milestones. It's the place I remember best with fondness. 

Reno has a small town mentality, it's located in a basin, surrounded by mountains, and everyone knows everyone. I love that, I miss it. During the summers they have a great line up of events. Farmers markets, concerts, art shows, Hot August Nights, Street Vibrations, and cook-offs. My FAVORITE cook-off, John Ascuaga's Nugget Best in the West Rib Cook-off. Oh my word. I die. Ribs. For. Days. A full week of people coming from all over, even Australia, making ribs. The smell is amazing. We managed to get up there in 2012, and it was still awesome. More crowded, but still fantastic. You can buy samplers of all the vendors participating, or full and half racks. I love the samplers, trying out every idea of what they consider the best rib in the west. Dry rubs, sauces, meat falling off the bone, pork, beef, slow cooking, smoking, so many different ways of making ribs. I think over the years we tried most every kind available.

ANYWHO, when Labor Day comes around, my mind turns to barbeque. If I can't be in Reno, we do our own rib cooking. I have found that the ribs I make are better than most I've found in restaurants, and of course it's cheaper to make at home. It's ridiculous how much we pay when we dine out. Same with steak, I will put my filet mignon recipes up against most any steakhouse in the area. My husband will back me up on this, he's pretty snobby when it comes to steak or ribs. Over the years we've come up with some favorite ways to prepare both. We'll talk about steak another day.

When it comes to ribs, I try to stick to pork, and I prefer the baby back cut. I've tried the St. Louis style, they tend to be cheaper and there's a lot more meat on them, but there's also a lot of weird bone and cartilage. I don't like dealing with that. Just a personal preference. The first thing I do is remove the thin membrane from under the rack, you can look up how to do that on YouTube. The membrane is not fun to eat through and the texture is gross to me. Also, the flavors you add to your ribs can permeate the meat better if you remove it. Then I cut the ribs into portions, three or four bones per section. At this point I have also set my oven to 250 degrees. I prepare a big roasting pan, with a rack placed on the bottom, and pour my favorite liquid of the moment into the bottom. Sometimes I use apple juice, sometimes pineapple juice, or even cherry coke. Coke is one of my favorite things to use. Oddly. I only use about a half inch of liquid in the pan. Just enough to cover the bottom really.  Then I start preparing my dry rub!

Dry rub is my favorite thing about ribs. It adds so much flavor to the meat, you might not even want sauce. I like to use brown sugar as a base for my rub. I usually have two or more racks of ribs to cook, so I start with one cup of brown sugar to build my rub on. Here's the full recipe, but keep in mind that you can tweak it to add and subtract the spices you love:

1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
3 Tablespoons Garlic Powder
3 Tablespoons Onion Powder
3 Tablespoons Chili Powder
3 Tablespoons Dry Mustard
3 Tablespoons Lawry's Seasoning Salt
3 Tablespoons Black Ground Pepper
2 Tablespoons Paprika
1 Tablespoon Ginger
1 Tablespoon Cayenne Pepper
Mix well.

 Next up, I drizzle a little olive oil all over the ribs and massage it in. Not a whole lot, just enough to thinly coat. Then we take our dry rub and sprinkle it on the ribs. I like to make sure they are covered completely, as much as the ribs will soak up, front and back. Then I stand the ribs up on the rack, laying them against each other. Tent with foil. I put them in the oven for about 4 or 5 hours, until the meat pulls away from the ends of the bones. It will look like its shrinking. Sometimes I even cook them 6 hours. Then I take the ribs out and let them rest for about 20 minutes while I heat up the grill to about medium high. The grill I really only use for the caramelizing of the sauce, and a few grill marks. Sometimes I use a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, sometimes I doctor up a bottle, sometimes I make my own. I've created a sauce using pineapple juice that has become my favorite, I'll share that another day.

Once you are ready to put the ribs on the grill, bring your ribs, barbeque sauce, and a barbeque brush out to the grill. Put the ribs on the grill bone side down and baste the tops with a few brushes of sauce. Flip, brush the other side with sauce, and put the lid down for about five minutes. Flip and repeat until sauce is coated to your liking. Serve on a platter with extra sauce on the side. Like I said, you don't have to sauce them at all, they will still be delicious, but I like sauce. Also, secretly, I like my ribs slightly burned. Just slightly! I don't know why. I'm just gross like that.

Here's a picture of the last batch of barbeque ribs I made. I also made grilled chicken and beef ribs using the same rub. It goes on most any meat. For sides I made sweet cornbread with blueberries, (Have you ever tried that??? I decided it might be good, I was right.) and a roasted corn salad with cherry tomato's, diced avocado, purple onion and cilantro, seasoned with salt, pepper, lots of curry powder and a splash of red wine vinegar. SO good. Looks like I had some hot links on this plate as well. Meat overload. We had friends over the night i made this, we called it "Plate O'Meats".

September, 2013

In September we finally got to go on a little family vacation. My summers are usually my busiest time, I work a lot of kids programs at church, so we don't usually have much time to go away. We planned this trip months ago, and had a bunch of families go with us. Even my brother and his daughter came down from Sacramento for a few days. It was a fantastic time. We headed up north to Shaver Lake, which is about six hours away, seven for us because we towed the trailer. It was beyond beautiful. There's a pristine lake, giant redwood trees, and a cute little mountain town. Camping is my husbands idea of fun, he loves this stuff. Being outdoors, campfires, hiking, fishing, kayaks. Brett's in heaven. I am not the biggest fan of being dirty, but since we got a trailer, it's now fast becoming a favorite thing for me, too. Yes, I know, a trailer is totally cheating, it's not REAL camping. I just don't care. Sleeping in a tent is not my idea of fun, and it's definitely not a relaxing time for me.

On the way up to Shaver, we stopped at this little place called Bravo Farms. I was so excited, they had a petting zoo of goats, chickens and turkeys, a shooting galley, gourmet cheese made on location, local wines, lots of yummy treats and delicious food. It was a great pit stop. We were able to stretch our legs a bit and pick up some yummy items for camp. I highly recommend checking in here if you are ever in the area.

We had so many kids on this trip. And they had a BLAST. Bikes everywhere, all of them learned to kayak, swimming, hiking, scavenger hunts, movies at night on a projector, fishing, gold panning, and so much more. We seriously had the best group of people. Great time of fellowship.

On one of our excursions we went to see the giant and ancient sequoias. There's a little area a few miles away from camp that boasts of two thousand year old trees near a place called Dinkey Creek. They were huge. We climbed all over this area for quite awhile, just in awe of God's creation. There was one fallen tree that had peoples names and dates carved in it, thousands of names. The oldest one I found was from the 1940's. So cool.

I am hoping that we can do this trip again next year. Maybe with an even bigger group. Well worth the drive. I think everyone who went will remember this trip fondly.

September, 2013

We have been living in this canyon for a few years now. I was pretty sure that there wasn't much left that could surprise or scare me. We have snakes, rats, mice, bobcats, tarantulas, bunnies, squirrels, owls, vultures, and numerous other wildlife. Half of that list has at one time or another wound up in my house, thanks to my cats. I won't go into detail about how I find the critters and what state they are in. My cats are killers. I just wish they'd keep their prey outside. Anyway, a few weeks ago my husband comes home talking about this headless angel he has been seeing around the corner. It's just before the turn off to our street. If you blink, you miss it. I missed it a a lot, the statue blends very well into the surrounding trees. I finally pulled over and took the above picture. I have to admit, this thing is a tiny bit creepy. I don't think I'd want to go see it at night. So strange. There are no houses in this little area, it is a fenced off property, but there's no one around. How long has it been there? What is it? I posted it on Facebook, and my ex-brother in law saw it and told me that it's a replica of the Nike of Samothrace statue from the Louvre. Soooo.... Why is it in my canyon? 

I've researched a bit, and I haven't found anything as to why it's just sitting there. My kids think it's awesome. Mostly because it reminds them of weeping angels from the Doctor Who TV series. They love all things BBC. My husband thought it would be hilarious to get a picture with the older boys running away from the headless angel on the way home from church one morning. Very funny. Good thing it's not a weeping angel. They'd be toast.

October, 2013

The first summer I went to the Middle East, a year and a half ago, I only learned a few words of Arabic. Mostly words you could yell. We worked with kids most of the time, and speaking softly to Jordanian children is not very productive. They don't respond to quiet talk. So I learned to say (yell) "Stop!" and "Let's go!". I'm not sure how to spell them Arabic, but one is pronounced like "hallas", and the other is "yella". When I went back to Jordan this last June, I picked up on quite a few more words. Even a few sentences. My favorite phrase was "mish lazzim". I'm sure I'm not spelling that right, but it doesn't seem to matter to people as long as they can see what you mean. It means, "not necessary".  I love that. Melani, the sweet woman who housed us in Jordan, used to say that to me all the time. I guess I needed to relax and let things go in certain situations. She would say, "Beth, it's fine, it's mish lazzim!" And I would always tell her, "Nooooooo, it IS lazzim!" Because I'm stubborn. Of course, Mel was always right, and I would usually back off of whatever it was I wasn't getting my way in.

So I was thinking, this blog, it's becoming mish lazzim to me. It seems like I don't have enough time to do a post that stretches beyond the updating of a few pictures. And I only do it because my dad and mom come look at it sometimes, and my husband reads it when he's bored at work. I see that I get other visitors, and that's nice, but there's really not much here that's of interest. I'd like to change that. I'm going to make the effort to do something productive here. I have a little idea of what I'd like to do, but we'll see how it goes. 

I'll leave you with this awesome picture right here, I took it a few weeks ago. My eleven year old son is obsessed with all things Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings. He's loves all things fantasy, stories that talk of the struggles between good and evil. He's my reader. We live in a canyon, full of trees and hills and rocks, and while I was out watering the other day, inspiration struck. I dropped the hose and ran off in search of my kid. It didn't take more than a few minutes to convince Matt that he should dress up like Frodo and act like the Nazgul were chasing him. He LOVES this picture. It was so fun, he's such a good sport. These are the things we do in the canyon. These are the kind of things I'd love to share on my blog.

September, 2013