Here Piggy, Piggy

The car thermometer said 28 degrees this morning when we got in after work and there was SNOW on the car. Hello, isn't it still October? I love fall-it is my favorite time of year. Somehow it came for 5 days and now it is winter! On the flip side-the frost (and snow!) killed all the junk outside that contributes to my allergies.

Four years ago, Drama Queen went away for the first time with a friend for a week at a cabin up north. Doncha love when we in the northern Midwest say 'up north'-like we are headed to Canada. Oh, wait, sometimes we do. I digress. She spent a week fishing and swimming and having fires and catching fireflies. The friend's mother made BBQ ribs one night for dinner and apparently they were the best thing since sliced bread. I got the recipe from the mom, but after I lost my job I realized it was on my computer at work that I no longer had access to! What to do, what to do? Made it up as I went along. Smelled spices in my cupboard that I thought would be good and went from there. They were pretty good, although I think I cooked them too long.

Oven BBQ Ribs

1 rack of pork ribs, cut in half to fit in roasting pan

2 tsp Southwest Seasoning *

2 tsp Pork Chop Seasoning **

2 tsp Chipotle pepper spice

1 cup BBQ sauce, your favorite

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Rinse ribs and thoroughly pat dry. Mix spices in small bowl and then pat the dry rub into the ribs, pressing hard to work it in. Place ribs in roasting pan and cover with foil. Roast for about an hour and a half. Peel back foil and brush the BBQ sauce on top of the ribs. Cover back up with the foil and cook another 30 minutes or so. I baked mine about 3 hours since I had to go get Drama Queen from bus stop and had to do a few things for her when I got home so didn't get them out when I planned-two hours should be good for this amount-it was about 3-1/2 pounds of ribs.

I love Penzey's spices, which I have mentioned often. All the seasonings I used were from there. Here is what is in the two:

*Southwest: Ancho pepper, onion, garlic, black pepper, oregano, cayenne pepper, cumin, chipotle and cilantro

**Pork Chop: garlic, white pepper, onion, ginger, hickory smoke flavoring

In case you don't have these spice blends, you could make something close to it with the spices in your cupboard.

On the menu tonight: Chicken Italiano. My take on Chicken Parmesan. It was so cute this morning. Some days after work I can talk Dude into running to the grocery store after work, but only if I have a list and we can be out in 15 to 20 minutes top. He Hates the grocery store. He would rather pull his rather blond eyelashes out one by one. But today when we were picking up the ingredients for tonight he spied some dishes on the clearance rack. They had run one of those deals where every week they showcased one of the dishes from the set and gave you a special price. They were depicting Italian men as chefs and waiters and wine bottles and grapes, etc. He said "These would a nice change from your regular dishes for taking photos for the blog. They are still spendy-we should look in another couple weeks and see if the price comes down". And all the teasing he gives me when I photograph food!