I've only made baby back ribs twice in my life, but each time people have told me that they are the "best ribs they've ever had". Possibly it's polite flattery, likely it's more to do with the fact that both times I've served them late at night, when only the hard-core partiers are still around, and everyone is up for a snack of any kind. Either way...

Here's the process I use. Note that the preparation takes a long time. You can't just whip these up on a whim. You've gotta plan a little here.

Ingredients:
One rack of baby back ribs (you can usually find them vacuum sealed in the supermarket)
Bottle of BBQ sauce^*
Grill
Oven
Foil

1. Day one, peel and chop. Remove the membrane from the back side of the ribs. This is a thin, tough sheet of something that the pig found necessary to grow, but that we don't want to eat. Some rib places will leave it on, I don't like it. So, get a good hold on one end and peel it off; it should come off in one piece. Cut the ribs into four pieces (roughly, 5 ribs each section).

2. Marinade. Put the ribs in a glass or ceramic dish (or even plastic bags). Cover with BBQ sauce, but be sure to save some BBQ sauce for later. If you can't cover the ribs, don't worry - just come by and mix them up a couple of times to ensure that all the meat gets some sauce time. Refrigerate overnight (8 hours or so). If time is a concern, you might be able to skip this step, or cut it down to just a few hours.

3. Day two, low and slow. After they've marinated. Wrap each section of ribs in foil, fairly tightly - with a little of the BBQ sauce from the marinade in each. I wrap them two or three times each - don't want them leaking all over the oven. Put them on a foil-lined cookie sheet (because they'll leak no matter what), and into a 225 degree oven for three hours. Low and slow is the key to that fall-off-the-bone texture. Remove from oven and refrigerate until needed.

4. When you're ready to eat them, heat a grill to medium-high. Take each section of ribs out of its foil, clean off any blobs of fat that might be sticking to it (most of the fat will have cooked out of the meat and congealed in the foil). Put a little BBQ sauce on the ribs and grill for a few minutes each side - just enough to give them some color, some grill marks, and to heat through.

5. Serve to hungry drunkards.

That's it.

* - I prefer Bone Suckin Sauce.

Here's Mrs. Cleek singing last night at her very own Birthday Karaoke Party - which took place in a spare bedroom of our's. Twelve people, plus the karaoke guy, limitless booze, a selection of wigs and feather boas, and 8,000 songs to choose from. A good time was had by all, especially Mrs. Cleek, who enjoys karaoke more than just about anything.

And it burnses, burnses, burnses!
The Ring of Pow-er
The Ring of Power

I made ribs. Recipe to follow...

Animal Planet is currently showing a 3 hour show called "Puppy Bowl". Apparently, it's three hours of puppies playing with various toys, in a pen that looks like a football field - no rules or scoring or anything like that - just puppies acting like puppies. Once in a while, a person dressed like a referee comes in to blow his whistle and clean up a "puppy foul".

You can even buy it on DVD.

My wife's aunt passed away, so we went to Alabama for her funeral. The funeral was, well, a funeral: sad. But, in the midst of mourning, something strange happened.

My mother-in-law (sister to the deceased) has something like twelve aunts and uncles, and therefore dozens of cousins. During the "viewing" part of the service, we were introduced to an endless stream of grayhaired women, each of them a daughter of some Aunt SoAndSo that my wife barely remembers, if she ever knew at all.

At one point, a woman came over to introduce herself to my wife. We're in the second row of seats, and she sits in the first row and turns around to face us. She said she was my wife's grandmother's (MWG) former housekeeper. She says she's sorry she hasn't been able to see more of MWG these days, but [yadayadayada... whatever]. Then she tells us that she's had some sad times in her life, too; she had a son die at nine, and a daughter who was born at 6 months, who died, how it took her four years to be able to look at pictures of her son and not break down, etc.. This is too much information, in my opinion, to be sharing with people you've never met. I start to tune out. My wife keeps nodding politiely, and the woman continues. When I pick up the conversation again, she's telling my wife how she started reading about the ancient Egyptians and how they treated their dead, notably the "decadent tombs" they created for their dearly departed - mummification, lavish displays, etc.. She repeats the phrase "decadent tombs" two or three times. She says it's a shame people (ie., the government) won't let people keep the bodies of their loved ones around, if they choose. Uh oh, thinks me. The Egyptians knew how to preserve a body, and there are people around these days who can duplicate what the Egyptians did, she informs my wife. I check to make sure my wife's jaw isn't on the floor - it isn't and I'm impressed. Then she drops the big one; she says if she could, she would reserve a room of her house as a place to remember her dead children. She would keep their coffins in the room, and visit them whenever she wanted. I presume the children would be mummified. Just to make sure I'm still where I think I am, I look over the woman's shoulder and note that yes, there is, in fact, an open casket ten feet away, and grieving family all around - I'm at a funeral, and this woman, a former part-time housekeeper of the mother of the deceased is a little bummed that she can't set up a decadent tomb for her dead children, in her house. Surreal. Shortly after that, another cousin comes by to introduce herself and tell my wife how she remembers her as a baby, etc., during the interruption, the crazy woman gets up and goes off to find a new person to freak-out. A few minutes later, I hear her telling someone else about how her psychiatrist is adjusting her medication. Ah...

On the way home from the Raleigh airport yesterday afternoon, we passed a bald eagle flying low and slow over Lake Crabtree. We'd heard there were bald eagles in the area, and that there was a nest in that area, but until yesterday, we didn't believe it.

Via MSNBC:

"...when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."

Bill O'Reilly High ?

The MPT SmogBuster Fuel Disc (aka, a 1-inch plastic sticker): " improves milage and reduces pollution by sending "holographic frequencies into the gas tank and changes the molecular structure of the gasoline."

While I enjoy Mr Sun, and I'm glad to have discovered it (via Defective Yeti), I enjoy this particular post with much unease.

We got a Time Warner HD DVR a few weeks ago - a Scientific Atlanta 8000, to be exact. If it worked, it'd be the best thing to happen to TV.

But recently, it seems like there's a 50/50 chance that touching any of the DVR buttons will generate a hard drive error that will require a full reboot - turn it off, unplug it, wait a minute, plug it back in, wait through the full boot process, etc.. We haven't lost any shows yet (as other people have reported), but it's pretty fucking sad when a cable box requires more attention and rebooting than a PC. For $80/month, you think they could supply me with a box that had at least seen a QA department ? Yeah, me too.

I'm not alone.

Via Yahoo! News:

This undated image released by Anheuser-Busch Cos., shows its a new 'brew' to go head-to-head with classic mixed drinks _ traditional suds spiked with caffeine, fruit flavoring, herbal guarana and ginseng.

What a combination : Improved memory! Greater physical stamina! Boundless energy! Inability to walk a straight line!