Sesame ginger ribs

Combine 1/2 cup Epicure Sesame Ginger Grilling Sauce with 1/2 cup water. Add 1 tsp Lousiana Hot'nSpicy dip mix and just a shake of salt.
Brown a pound or so of ribs with about 4 cloves of garlic.
Place in a glass baking dish and pour the sauce over it. Cover with aluminum foil.
Bake at 325F for an hour, turn the heat down to 275 for another hour and a half. Baste a couple of times. Remove the foil for the last half hour.

Served with rice cooked with 1/2 tsp of Louisiana Hot'n'spicy, and stir fried veggies. MMM!

Pulled Pork with Root Beer Sauce

I know that this sounds really weird but I've tested it during multiple meals with many people and it always gets rave reviews. I have to confess that I don't usually tell anyone that it's got root beer as the main ingredient until after the good reviews start coming in. It'll feed a fair number of people and there is usually leftovers the next day. The official recipe yield is 12.

1 T olive oil (whatever, I use as much as I need)
3 lb boneless pork loin roast
2 t salt
1/2 t pepper (I use significantly more than this)
1/2 c chopped onion
3 c root beer (NOT diet, ever, it just doesn't work)
12 oz bottle of chili sauce (or 455 ml for those of us living in civilized countries)
1/2 t salt
12 sandwich buns

Brown roast in olive oil. Place in crockpot with salt, pepper, onion and 1 c of root beer. Cover and cook on low for about 7 hours (roughly).

30 minutes before serving (but can be done more in advance), bring remaining root beer, all of the chili sauce and the last little bit of salt to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat and simmer until it's glassy and reduced to about 2 1/2-3 cups of sauce.

Remove the pork from the slow cooker and shred with two forks. Put all the little bits of pork into the sauce and stir until it's all juicy and coated. Serve about 1/2 cup of pork on each bun (or as much as you can cram on there).

That's it, that's all.

Okay, so last night there was this ham ...

A gigantic, gorgeous ham served with boiled potatoes and green beans with what looked like mushrooms and almonds in them (I didn't see them being made so I can't be sure). We put the ham in the over at 300 (I think) and pretty much left it there all day. A little longer than we should have actually or meant to, we got to setting at John's house and didn't make it back in time. Anyway, this is not the real subject of the post because that's a pretty straightforward meal.

Tonight we had macaroni and cheese like I've never had before. From what I could gather, this is how it went:

6 cups cooked macaroni
1 chopped onion
1/2 each green and red pepper, cut into short strips
1/2 cup each green beans and peas (I think you could probably use frozen)
1 1/2-2 c shredded cheddar
1 big honking pile of ham cut into big chunks with lots of little flakey bits that have bits of heel on them

Cook the macaroni, if you haven't already. Saute the onion and add some garlic if you want (she might have, I didn't see it), add the peppers and cook till onions are translucent. Add the other vegetables and then stir all of it together into a big dutch oven. Throw the lid on and put it in the over until you figure it's done.

It was actually really good. I think if I was going to try to do it at home, I would probably do a bechemel sauce and add the cheese to that before I stirred it all together. The ham... was divine.

Oh yeah, subtract 2 hours from my post time for Willow River time, I'm actually trying not to adjust too much.