Sriracha BBQ Sauce

I hope everyone had a great long weekend!  Mine was the perfect blend of family, food and fun.   Friday I got my walking shoes on and walked down by the river.  Of course being the 4th of July weekend, the river was pretty busy.  Our house is across the street from the channel, so probably the equivalent of three blogs from the river, so we get the river view, without all the noise.  I ended up walking 4.4 miles!

I asked Tony what he felt like to BBQ – when he said “how about ribs” I was sold.  As luck would have it, my store had baby back ribs for $1.99 a pound.  You all know that I love BBQ and SPICY shit.  So I decided to make a Sriracha BBQ sauce for my ribs.

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Oh my word.  So good.  The brown sugar helps caramelize the sauce on the ribs when they cook.  My sure fire way to cook ribs?  In a dutch oven.  However many ribs you have, with 1 can of beer per two pounds of ribs.  Bake the ribs with the lid on the dutch oven and cook at 300 for 2.5 hours.  At this point, you can let them cook and keep in the fridge until you are ready to finish them off on the grill with the BBQ sauce.  A super quick way to have ribs on a weeknight.  I didn’t end up getting any pictures of our actual dinner.  Because we sat outside so long it was nearly 9 before we ate!  Um, turns out I am a bit of a pyro!  I may have embellished the fire works thanks to picmonkey.com!

And I enjoyed a new beer to me – I had it last week when we went to the Texas Road House – while Tony wanted to wipe his mouth out with a napkin after trying a sip, I loved it!

We can usually watch the fireworks from our deck, but for some reason, the town next to us decided not to have them until July 12.  Huh.

Saturday I met up with Hannah and her boyfriend at a fest near my office.  It had a craft fair, bingo and lot’s of food – yes please!   I thought I would get a corn dog, but what really intrigued me was the chocolate bacon funnel cake!

After I saw a giant jar of hot peppers, I ended up with an Italian beef.

Bingo was .50 cents a card and it was a split the pot with the Boys and Girls Club of America – the biggest pot we tried for was $34.  We ended up not winning anything, but it was fun!

As we walked around the rides, Hannah and I saw a ride that looked amazing – we both LOVE roller coasters, although it took a long time for Hannah to try one again after I traumatized her on a roller coaster when she was five.  When she got off that ride, she stomped her feet so hard and looked me straight in the eye and said “I am never, ever doing that again!”  I think she was close to 13 before she tried it again!

Here is what the ride looked like – this was the ride right before we got on.

It wasn’t until we were strapped in that I got nervous.  I remember seeing videos of rides gone way wrong on shows like 20/20, and I suddenly realized I could be flying across the parking lot at 60 miles per hour.  But everything was fine and it was so scary and thrilling at the same time – made me feel alive!

I took that photo above with my iPhone 4.  Let the apps do all the work for you!  I used camera+ (which is free), and then in edit mode, chose filter, special, hd.   I thought it turned out pretty cool!

Tony and I ended up having brats for dinner and I thought we might be able to find a movie to watch since new movies come out at the beginning of the month on cable.  As soon as we got to Nebraska I said “I’d like to see that” and was about to finish my sentence by saying “but you probably won’t like it” before Tony hit “buy” and the dice were rolled.

I loved it.  Tony, however, has now found the movie to watch if he’s given only hours to live, because he felt time stood still during this whole movie.

And yesterday was a mix of chores/relaxing/cooking.  It makes all the difference having that one extra day off!  This morning I have to be at work early, but I have my gym bag packed and hope that work doesn’t get in the way of me getting out at lunch.

My goal this week was to use up as much stuff as I could from our pantry/fridge/freezer since we’ll be at Mayo the week after next.  My goal was to spend $25 for the week for fresh dairy and produce.  I did pretty good!

What’s on our menu this week?  Mind you, breakfast and lunch is all me!

Breakfast:

• breakfast nachos x 2 (made with homemade blue corn tortilla chips!)
• blueberry scone with egg white omelet and ham x 2
• breakfast pizza made with Alton Brown’s overnight pizza dough

Lunches:

• broccoli sweet potato coconut milk soup with fruit x 2
• chicken tacos
• zucchini boats
• leftover Cincinnati chili mac with spaghetti squash

Dinners:

• Tony’s famous chicken fried rice
• fish stick tacos
• grilled chicken thighs/wings with homemade rice-a-roni
• Cincinnati chili mac
• Pizza burgers and fries (well, the pizza burger is for me using Red Gold tomatoes I was given!)

So not too bad considering I only spent $29 bucks on groceries this week!  Alright, time to get into the office – my boss has a brief due to day and those days are usually super chaotic – just happy the secretary who was on vacation last week is back!

Happy Monday – make it a great day!