My Rib Recipe

Had not done this in awhile. Then, cooked in for Mom & Dad on Sunday, and took Dad for his surgery on Monday. Ended up talking about this recipe with some people (Hi Dawn) we meet at the hospital, and I decided to post it. This is the perfect way to do ribs!

Bone Dust
½ cup paprika
¼ cup chilli powder
3 tbsp salt
2 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp curry powder
2 tbsp hot dry mustard
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp cayenne pepper

Give a good mix. I had an old quart sealer which stays nice and airtight, so I have stored for a month or more, because this makes a lot of rub. But, keep in dry and in a dark place, and it stores well

What is Brazing

The way I do it, to braze something, you need a pan you can put your fluid in, then a cooking rack to go in the pan, and meat goes on top of the rack, above the fluid. I looked around, and could not find exactly the pan I wanted. I ended up with two really large cookie sheets which were the deepest cookie sheets I could find, and cookie cooling racks which were big enough to “fill” the cookie sheet and act as cooking racks.

So:

• This works best if you start first thing in the morning, get the oven part done, let the meat cool right down, and then finish on the BBQ latter in the day. Read on.
• Get your ribs out, and rub them down, both sides with bone dust
• Slice up an onion, and toss it in the brazing pan.
• Take out a head of garlic, cut off both ends, strip away the easy to strip-away stuff, and then crush, and toss that in as well. I always just use the flat of my big knife to crush, and usually hack at it a bit as well just so the flavour gets out good.
• Add tequila, orange juice, and pineapple juice.  With my pan, 1 cup tequila, 1 cup OJ, and 1 cup pineapple works perfect. Make sure lots of juice, but not so full the pan is a PIA to move around, and not enough to come over the rack. Which, by the way, is the reason I wish I could, find a better pan than a cookie sheet. A big cookie sheet works great as far as size goes for two racks of ribs, but it could be deeper.
• Stick the cooking rack into the pan, and place the ribs on the rack, with the meat side down.
• Slice up lemon and orange, and cover the ribs with them.
• Cover up the whole thing with aluminium foil, so that the moister stays in.
• Now, my oven cooks cold, so I set the oven to 275° F, but if your oven is accurate, try 250° F. Try 275° the first time, and if the ribs could be a little more chewy, then drop the temp the next time.
• Cook for 4 hours, until meat is very tender, and starting to come off the bone, but everything is still holding together. Once they cool, they get back a bit of ability to hold together
• Set aside, and let cool, right down to room temp is best if you have time
• Cut into the size to want for BBQ – 2-3 ribs per section works good.
• Get the BBQ up to about 350° - 400°F, slap the ribs on, about 3 minutes then flip, cover the upside with Dianna’s Chicken and Rib sauce, turn the BBQ down a bit, cook about 2-3 minutes, flip them, sauce the other side, give them another 2-3 minutes, flip them, 2-3 minutes more, and voilà

Credits

• Got started based on a recipe I got from Dave McConnell
• He got the bone dust from Ted Reader’s book “Hot, Sticky, and on Fire”, which also has a great coleslaw recipe in it.

Variations

• Try Guinness instead of tequila & fruit juice, then just lemon so not so sweet - Yummy.
• Bourbon and fruit juice also works
• I bet slices of fresh pineapple would be yummy.
• I have tried a couple of different home made BBQ sauces to finish with, but have not got anything I can recommend - post a good one if you have a good one!
• Rum? Hmm………..  

Klean-Prep Was Invented by a Devil Out of Hell

The good news is that that the colonoscopy itself was a piece of cake. The bad news is that Klean-Prep was invented by the devil out of hell.

A couple of weeks ago, I did my yearly physical and heard those words that all men over 50 will eventually hear - time to have a colonoscopy. Well, I thought I knew what there was to know about a colonoscopy - after all, 2 or 3 years ago - I saw Billy Connolly describe his colonoscopy at Masey Hall here in Toronto. I damn near died laughing during his routine on this nasty little procedure. When I just viewed the clip again on YouTube, I was literally crying, I was laughing so hard. Well, I thought, anything that funny can't be too bad.

So, modify my diet for a few days leading up to the big day, then fast all day the day before. Get home after work, rip open and mix the first 1 litre out of 4 of Klean-Prep. No problem I think, drink 4 liters of this shit between 6PM and 11PM. I chug back the first 250 ml glass, and think Christ, nasty stuff. A few minutes latter, I start to drink the second glass and the gag reflex kicks in. I think it took me at least 15 minutes to force it down. After that, it got even tougher. I have never had to drink anything like that. It just made me gag. About half way through the second litre, I puked up about 250ml, and then had to clean up the mess in the kitchen, and start drink this crap again. Can you imagine? Just nasty! By midnight, I had got down 3 1/2 litres, I was shivering and woozy, and really at my wits end. At that point, I really no longer gave a damn. I tossed the last half litre out, and headed to bed.

If you already watched the Billy Connolly video, then there is no need for me to describe the bowel activity which had been going on since about 7PM. If you want to know - listen to Billy describe it - he tells it better than I ever can! Suffice it say, all night I was in bed for 15 minutes and then off to the can again. By around 5 AM, I was at the oily discharge state Billy describes so well, and fricking exhausted.

The good news in the rest of the story is straightforward. Arrive at the clinic in the morning, lay down on the bed with my pants down to my knees, joke with the doctor about Lou Rawls Colonoscopy Exam, then the anaesthesiologist stuck me with the magic needle, and the next semi-coherent thought I have is as someone walks me to the recovery room from the little room where I guess my anal cherry had been successfully popped! Note how Klean-prep changes your perception? After Klean-Prep, laying on a table with your pants around your knees while three people, one of them female, work a meter and a half of tube up your ass is just not a big deal even after the happy needle wears off.

A half hour latter, we take the elevator down to the ground floor, and walk outside into a sea of police barricades and cameras. Christ, I think, it was big news to me, but I did not expect my colonoscopy to make the news. Turns out, it did not - the building where the clinic is, is also the one that many of you in Canada will have heard of because of the fact that Toronto Cops Had to Capture Doe a Deer the other morning.

By mid-afternoon, I felt fairly recovered. Like I said, the colonoscpy itself is not too bad. But I will never again willingly drink that horrible Klean-Prep shit.

Klean-Prep was invented by a devil out of hell.

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It's Not About the Bike, It's About the Journey

I waited a long time to buy my first motorbike. I turned 13 in 1969 and remember it well – not so much for Woodstock – but for the Lunar missions, and the fact that my family moved from Edmonton to Scarborough. Throughout high school in the early 1970s, I watched the Honda revolution occur – the invasion of the CB-750. Although I never owned one, I have friends who still ride them.

High-school, college, job, get married, and have a daughter named Kate in 1984 – still no bike. My daughter Kate – the best thing that ever happened to me. We cottaged, snowmobiled, went on road trips, canoe trips – we just had a great time. And we still do. I could spend a long time talking about Kate, but this is about bikes.

Along came 1995. I wanted a bike, I was in a marriage crisis, and I thought that if my first wife and I both got motorbikes, it might help us build some bridges. My brother Scott called me with a line on a beat up old Honda Nighthawk 450 – so I bought it.

Off we went for a couple of years – she on her Harley Sportster, and me on the old Nighthawk. We had a few good rides together. But you know something? There is no magic “re-united by the love of biking” story here. We continued to drift apart. There is a long story about the complex nature of relationships between man and women, but even assuming I could tell it, I wont - this is about bikes.

Towards the end of the summer of 1999, I bought a 1996 Yamaha FJ1200ABS. What a great ride. That same fall, a young friend of mine was badly-badly hurt in a bike accident. Jordan, at least a part of Jordan, is still with us today, and I wish him and his parents the best. This is a story about bikes – and Jordan's accident is a sad part of the story.

Latter that fall, I decided to take the FJ to see my buddy Gord in Boston. Since my sister Cheryl lives in Jacksonville, Florida – I thought I would stop in to see her on the way to Boston. This was a great idea – it was my first long ride, and I truly fell in love with the experience of riding a motorbike. I was inexperienced about planning a long ride - for whatever reason, it seemed to me that I could take off for a 4500 km ride, and not take chain lube with me. When I got back to Toronto, the chain and sprockets were shot, and needed to be replaced. A much cheaper lesson about the cost of a mistake on the bike than the one Jordan learned. A much cheaper lesson than my buddy Gord learned about the effect of years of alcohol abuse – rest in peace Gord – hey – lets talk about bikes.

Yup – 1999 was a heck of a bike year. It was the evening, of Nov 17^th, northbound on Bathurst, just after sunset – a lady in the solid stream of southbound traffic decided to turn left in front of me. My only option was full on the brakes, stand up on the pegs, watch the front end of the bike disintegrate into her front bumper, hit the hood, the windshield, black out for a 1/10^th of a second, and come to on the southbound side of Bathurst thinking, “Damn, know I'm gonna get run over”. But, everyone stopped, along came the ambulance, the police, the fire department, off to the hospital, and you know what? I walked out the hospital that same evening, glad to be alive.

Fast forward – spring 2000 – separated from my first wife, living on my own and loving it. Nearly getting killed really makes it clear that you never know when it is going to be over, and decisions get easier. As the weather warmed, I knew I needed another bike. By May, I was the proud owner of a brand spanking new 2000 Honda VFR – the bike I still own and ride as often as I can. The rest of 2000 was great – tons of little rides all over Ontario, including a day on the track at Shannonville. I managed to get good enough that I actual found out I was still a real beginner with a lot of skill development to come.

Summer 2001 was my best bike season to date -I road to Vancouver where my honey Kim meet me for a few days of R&R, then she headed home, and I headed south down the coast into California, before zigg-zagging back across the content to Toronto. To this day, when I have 1000 KPH brain at bedtime, I can still “count sheep” by remembering a bunch of different sections of that trip in particular detail – mountains, rivers, corners, hills, prairies, oceans – the geography of a content. That is what I want to talk about – the bike journey. That is what it is about.

Since then, I have put a ton of kilometres on that bike – short rides, long rides, just running around town. I have fast friends that I occasionally ride with, who wait for me at the corners where we change roads. I have other friends I ride with, where I am one of the fast guys in the group – it is all relative. Mind you, none of us is fast in Ontario anymore – not worth the risk. Wow – a place where the punishment for speeding is likely a little more severe than what you might be able to get away with for a gun - Brrr. A few days on the track, and lots of days on the backroads, man do I love that bike.

But hark, what is this I see at www.feelv4.com? Honda has a new 7^th generation VFR – in time for a spring 2010 roll out. Hmmm, could my 10 year love affair with a 5^th generation model be nearing its end? The bike journey will tell.

Alex, “Sandy” Cameron

Etobicoke, November, 2009