Happy New Year to all!

Welcome to 2006, all five readers.
Surely, everyone had great feasts for New Years Eve. Or maybe not. Christmas was a little bit of a food let down since no great meal was planned. Sure, we had our candy and other sweet treats, but it was just my wife and I and the pups on Christmas Day and we just warmed up a Trader Joe’s lasagna.

So, I happened across pork spareribs on sale at Vons and picked them up (sold in a box.) Now, from reading my couple of months worth of blogging you certainly have not read much in the way of home cooked meal talk here. Oh, sure, we cook. But it is mainly simple, nourishing (i.e. South Beach friendly) meals. So I made ribs for New Years Eve dinner. Ah, but we stopped at Trader Joe’s earlier that day for treats and snacks to have that night. Well, we ate some of those and were barely hungry for ribs.

Back to home cooking: I’ve never made ribs. Did it simple, as the packaging suggested, 275 for a couple of hours, baste with BBQ sauce and pump up the heat. All of this nicely warmed the house on a cold San Diego day. Plus, they turned out good. Pretty, pretty good.



The BBQ sauce I bought was Sweet Baby Ray’s, seems to be a somewhat popular award winning sauce. A popular chef in the little midwestern town I grew up in developed it with his brother. And now it is sold everywhere. (Honestly, it’s an "evil" high fructose corn syrup sauce so I don’t know how good it can be. Surely most can make their own like Michael Chiarello but naturally I like to keep it simple.) Next time I will finish them off on the outside grill to get some smoke.

So after sharing 2 big slabs of ribs we were too full for any kind of late night feast so we save it all for our champagne brunch the next morning. Dips, sausages, cheeses, crackers, shrimp and chocolate treats galore.

Anyone have their own feast to share?

Cheap (okay, cheaper) eats.
In addition to Restaurant Week (which has had a nice discussion on the California Chowhound board - with, uh,with a couple of postings by me) there is also a $20.06 3-course meal deal at 4 of the Cohn restaurants thru Jan. 14th. (Thanks to the Gourmet Club blog for pointing out that one!)

As I posted on Chowhound, I booked Pamplemousse Grille, Mille Fleurs and Island Prime a couple of weeks back. But I could go for Nine-Ten or A.R. Valentien or Oceanaire or a quite a few others for that matter. Going to limit it to 3 restaurants though which is something of a splurge. The crap seems to have been flung at Island Prime since it has opened so who knows there. (The menu sounds like a winner though: might go something like this, start off with Fennel Dusted Scallop Risotto, move on to Lobster Bisque with a main course of Ahi Tuna with Lobster Mashed Potatoes or a Roasted Rack of Colorado Lamb.) The other two, should represent a nice bargain, yet a potentially limiting menu.