Rib Coma...

I am honestly surprised that I am sitting up and able to write this post.  For the past six hours we have prepared and consumed slow roasted ribs with a homemade sauce.  It was epic.  This all stemmed from a simple question, what shall we eat tonight?  Since today is Labor Day our dinning hall was closed all day.  Normally during the weekend they operate on short hours and you are likely to miss a meal if you lose track of time.  Jason, Jay and I were in Sam's Club two days ago because Jason needed to do some shopping and I looked over to Jay and I asked, what shall we eat on Monday?  The night before we had a cookout with a fair amount of frozen hamburgers and hot dogs left over, but the people in the campus apartments took all of the extra food to their place so they wouldn't have to go shopping.  This of course left us with few options.  Jay and I looked around and I was thinking something simple like a pasta dish or something, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the rack of ribs sitting in the meat department.  I tossed out the idea and immediately our minds began to churn and knew that this was going to be a great idea.

We picked up the ribs and a gallon jug of some Texas Smokey BBQ sauce.  This would serve as the base from which we could augment to our own taste.  The ribs were packaged in such a way that we had thought that we bought two racks but little did we know that it would come back later to bite us in the butt.  I woke up this morning, having slept in for a bit, excited to get the process going and what was going to be the end product...juicy, awesome ribs!!!  Around 1:30 we cranked the oven to 375 degrees and began to prep the ribs.  Once we opened the package we realized that we didn't have two racks of ribs but three.  This was a little more than we had originally planned for but we were lucky that we bought a gallon of sauce.  After trimming some fat we rubbed in some slat, black pepper, garlic salt, and some chili powder.  This would serve as the seasoning for the pork ribs.  We threw them in the oven for about twenty five minutes to sear the outside and lock in the rub.  For the sauce we used what we bought as the base and Jason began to doctor it.  He threw in all sorts of spices and even some Chinese chili sauce.  It counteracted the vinegar taste of the base sauce and also added a kick of flavor.  We then turned down the oven and applied our first coat of sauce.  After thirty minutes at 275 degrees we pulled the ribs out and the aroma filled the room and the entire fourth floor.

The ribs after the first coat of sauce

People walking by would poke their heads in because they were intrigued by the smell wafting from the common room.  We poured more sauce on each set of ribs, which we had cut in half and had six small trays of ribs, and threw them back into the oven for another thirty minutes.  We did this every thirty minutes until the ribs had been in the oven for four an a half hours.  During the course of the four plus hours we also made pasta salad and prepped the corn we had bought at Trader Joe's to throw in the oven after the ribs were done and resting.  

We had invited several people from the floor and anyone else who was interested, so six of us sat down to dig into the feast.  It took us almost six plus hours to prep and cook but only fifteen minutes to eat.  It was absolutely epic.  Everyone was making yummy noises and their satisfaction could be seen all over their faces.  I believe that we were very successful in bringing people together in fellowship and to break bread together.  If you look at the gospels you will find many stories where Jesus had gathered people together to break bread together.  Of course the last supper is the classic example but there are other stories littered throughout the gospels.  Jesus understood the importance of coming together in community and to share a meal and I think that we can say that we too have followed in his footsteps.  this may be the first of many small community homemade dinners where we can forget about the stresses of our lives and enjoy some good food.  I wonder what we will cook next?