Labor Day

I know blogs are not just for trivial things like cooking and taking pics of what you cooked and believe you me much more important matters like current events the political land scape weigh on my mind as much as anything, but this seems to provide a way to kinda get away from all that for me. So here's what went on at the house Labor Day and the day before...

I've never had Bang Bang Shrimp at the restaurant but this was the 3rd or fourth time we've had em at home and this sauce is really good. All you need is some mayo (Kraft - there is a reason it says on the bottle REAL MAYONNAISE), some Sweet Chili Sauce, and Hot Chili Oil mixed together putting the Hot Chili oil to taste. Oh man, there is just something about that creamy, sweet, and hot all at the same time on a deep fried shrimp. You can also Google for Copycat Bang Bang Shrimp. The salad was avocado, red onion, tomato, oil and vinegar.



It was Rib Tips yesterday and I hit the floor early and made the decision to do the cook at the office rather than try to wrestle any of the larger cookers in and out of the truck by myself. I happened to think about some rib racks that I use to use some and found that with one of those I could get the entire load into the Traeger and boy was that a relief - you just don't know how much easier it is using one of these Pellet cookers. After getting the ribs on I headed back to the house (less than 5 min drive) to put the baked beans together. Everybody really loves the Baked Bean Quintet recipe so that's what I cook but this time it was just a quartet (1 can ea, Navy, Garbozo, Kidney, and Black Beans) as we didn't need so much with the small crowd. I always like some meat of some kind in the beans and it's usually pulled pork, but I had a real small pack of burnt ends and I do believe this was the best I've ever made and that's what everyone was saying. Sue made a chocolate cake and it happened to be setting there when I pulled the beans out of the oven. Looking at the cake and the beans both reminds me of a fella I worked with years ago from Onieta, Tn and what he said about eating a piece of Chocolate cake along with your beans to sweeten the music - I don't know what he could have meant by that but considering where he was from, it could have been anything.


Since I was doing the cook at the office / store I didn't do the finish in Lard as I had planned and just stuck with adding a little broth to each of 3 half pans and jacked the heat up to 325 (cooked em at 250 for about 3 hours first) and that higher temp really helped get the meat to the falling off the bone stage. After removing from the cooker I pulled the meat from the bones and removed those little cartilages, placed back under a real hot broiler a couple times and you had to love this Pulled Rib Meat. All it had for flavoring was the flavor from the Mojo marinade and Salt and that Cinnamon tasting rub Johnny Trigg uses a lot.




Finally if your wondering what that cat is doing in those pics on the kitchen counter, this baby we got to keep all day has taken a liking to that thing and we had to take it away from her for fear she was going to drop it on the tile floor.