BBQ Pork Ribs

This is not the ribs you pick up and eat with your hands.  This is the pork meat you put on a roll for a sandwich or eat beside a baked potato.  It's great for feeding a crowd because its generally a cheap meat to buy.  Everyone in our house LOVES this!  So good!

Ingredients needed:

• boneless pork ribs
• pork rub
• BBQ sauce

1. Put package(s) of boneless pork ribs in crock pot or roaster in the oven early in the am.  Cook on low in crock pot for 8 or so hours or 300 degrees in a roasting pan for 6-8 hours.  No need to add water or seasonings. 
2. When the meat is so tender it falls apart, remove it from the pan and trim off all fat.  Shred meat and spread it out on a jelly roll pan. 
3. Sprinkle pork rub over the shredded meat. 
4. Spread the BBQ (we like Sweet Baby Rays) sauce over the meat and using a fork, turn the meat over so the BBQ sauce and pork rub is incorporated throughout the meat.  Redistribute the meat so it is evenly spread across the pan.
5. Put an additional "squirt" of BBQ sauce across the top.
6. Place in the oven on the top rack with the oven set to broil for 4 mins or until BBQ sauce begins to carmelize and "blacken". 

Enjoy!

My Secret to Being Thin: PBH

GUARANTEED TO FILL YOU UP, AT LEAST UNTIL DINNER:

1. Take two (2) adjacent slices of Grandma Sycamore's white bread from the middle of a new loaf.  (The biggest pieces are in the middle and you avoid unwanted crusts or butt-ends with the middle pieces.)
2. Using a paper towel for a crumb-mat, stack the bread on-end, exactly as they were in the package and "open" them like a book - placing your thumbs between the slices from the top, keeping the bottom edges close together.  This alignment gives the best possible slice-perimeter consistency resulting in less dripping honey.
3. With a Cutco spatula-knife spread a thin and even layer of softened (not melted) real butter on the exposed side of the bread slices.  Make sure to cover all the surface, crust to crust.
4. Using the same spatula-knife, spread copious amounts of peanut butter on the left slice.  Yes, your left.  Make sure the peanut butter is also covered, spreading it evenly from crust to crust.  Ideally, you should have a consistent 1/4" of peanut butter without peaks and valleys.
5. With your spatula knife, cut a banana in half.  Peal both halves.  Before proceeding to the next step, eat one half of the banana.  While you are chewing, throw the peels away.
6. Using your spatula-knife, cut the remaining half of the banana into four ribbon strips, also approximately 1/4" thick.
7. Lay the banana strips as evenly as possible on top of the bed of peanut butter in either direction.  If the banana hangs over the edge, trim it with your spatula knife to fit the slice of bread.  Fill in gaps (if any significant area of the peanut butter bed is exposed) with cut off ends.  If your banana ribbons are insufficient to cover the peanut butter bed, you suck.  Repeat steps 5-7, beginning with an accurate bisection of the banana.
8. On the right-hand piece of bread write your initials in honey.  Don't try to use block letters, it's too hard and your letters won't look right, anyway - especially if you got the banana wrong on your first attempt.  Use cursive, and your best honey-dispenser penmanship.  For this step, leave a 1/2" margin of buttered bread.  Do not risk honey seepage but trying to get cute.
9. Using your spatula-knife, work the honey toward the edge (but not exactly to the edge) of the crust, leaving room for the honey to be compressed when the bread is pressed together.
10. With care, press the bread together.  Do NOT try to close the pieces like a book.  Rather, place the honey side precisely on top of the other slice: honey to banana.  Press lightly, but with enough strength to finish getting honey to the edges.
11. With your dominant hand, route your index finger completely around the "seam" of the sandwich, cleaning up any oozed material, just like finishing a caulking job.  You have done a good job if there is enough to lick off your finger. 
12. The litmus test: if your sandwich produces no ooze, you lose.  Be more aggressive next time, you pansy.  If your ooze is more glob, you're a slob - you're going to be wearing that sandwich for the rest of the day.

Pumpkin Chili

This is a great meal during the cold fall months!

Ingredients

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 2 (15 ounce) cans kidney beans, drained
• 1 (46 fluid ounce) can tomato juice
• 1 (28 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes with juice
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/4 cup white sugar

Directions

1.     In a large pot over medium heat, cook beef until brown; drain. Stir in onion and bell pepper and cook 5 minutes. Stir in beans, tomato juice, diced tomatoes and pumpkin puree. Season with pumpkin pie spice, chili powder and sugar. Simmer 1 hour.

Side note: I can't sit at the stove for that long so I cooked everthing ahead and combined in my crockpot on low for about 6 hours and it worked really well. 

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

This is the best pumpkin bread I have ever had!

Recipe by Our Best Bites

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour (spooned into measuring cup and leveled)
1 cup whole wheat flour, (again, don’t scoop!) or all purpose flour if you like
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cup white sugar
6 ounce container vanilla yogurt
3 eggs, slightly beaten
15 ounce can pumpkin puree
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips (plus a few extra for the top of loaves)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray 2 9×5 (or similar sized) loaf pans with nonstick spray and set aside.

Combine flours (after you put your flour in the bowl, just grab a teaspoon or two of it and toss with chocolate chips), cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Whisk gently to combine and set aside.

In a separate mixing bowl combine brown sugar and white sugar and whisk to combine, breaking up any clumps of brown sugar.  Add yogurt, eggs, pumpkin, oil, and vanilla extract and whisk until smooth.

Slowly add dry ingredients to wet and mix together, being careful to not over mix.  When combined, gently stir in chocolate chips.   Divide batter between loaf pans and sprinkle a few extra chocolate chips on top.  Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out with a few crumbs attached.  All ovens are different, I would set your timer for about 45 minutes and keep an eye on it after that.  Don’t overbake!

Let cool for 10 minutes and then run a sharp knife around edge of pan and remove loaves from pan.