The words of C. B. Stubblefield adorn every bottle of Stubb’s barbecue products: “First of all, you have to have the taste and the time.”

Well, I didn’t have the time today, so I had to buy a bottle of someone else’s sauce.

Today was my extended family’s July and August birthday party and was the first chance for most of them to meet our new baby. Always on the lookout for a barbecue excuse, I offered to make ribs at my dad’s house where the party was being held. He and I have the exact same smoker configuration. For some reason, even though I only bought my kit after he did (and made some really awesome ribs) he thinks I have some magic power that he doesn’t, so he told me that he would pick up the charcoal and he would watch me do everything.

Anyway, since the party was on a Saturday, I wouldn’t have time to make my ribs the day before since I would be at work. Food was to be served at 1:00 P.M., so my options were limited. I decided to try my hand at Memphis dry ribs since this style only requires 1-2 hours to cook.

Friday night, I made some brief preparations. I put together a half-batch of my old standby, Mike Mills’ Magic Dust. While not strictly Memphis style, it is somewhat similar to the spicy version of this Memphis rub which I will try in the future. Notice that the Memphis Dust does not include ANY cayenne or chili powder by default!

What makes dry ribs dry is the lack of a sauce basted at the end of the smoke. You still can use a mop. I would recommend it for any barbecue, honestly. I improvised since I couldn’t find the recipe I used last time: 1 cup olive oil, ½ cup apple cider vinegar, ½ cup Worcestershire sauce, a can of Miller Lite, and a few spoons of Phat Mike’s mysterious rub that appears to be equal portions paprika and espresso grinds.

This got packed up with a my actual mop and a few foil pans. I asked my dad to get a few oak logs handy.

This morning, I stopped at McKinnon’s, hoping to get some full slabs of the baby back ribs on sale starting Friday. They had three half slabs and when I asked at the counter they were otherwise out! Instead, I picked up two slabs of spare ribs. They were cut super thick: ten pounds each! I also picked up a bottle of Charlie Beigg’s Maine Apple barbecue sauce, and some ice for the trip. Upon arriving at my parents’, my dad presented me with yet another rack of ribs (baby backs!). To start the fire, he usually uses small pieces of pine wood that have been covered in wax. This is basically a homemade version of those fire log contraptions you get from the grocery store. It worked well enough. The cooker got up to temp pretty quickly. My dad went to run some errands, and told me to wait on the baby back ribs so he could watch the whole process.

Turns out that half a batch of Magic Dust is exactly enough for two slabs of untrimmed spare ribs (the meat flaps on the backs were mostly fat and the knife was getting slippery) and one side of baby backs. After scraping and oiling the cooking grates, I loaded the spares into the cooker, and waited for my father’s return.

Once he got back, I spiced the baby backs, and I placed that rack on the warming rack.

Now, the other thing about dry ribs is that they are smoked really hot for barbecue. I was shooting for a temperature of 350°F, so I actually started the fire in the main cooking chamber, not in the firebox. Guess what? Some of the spare ribs got a little burnt! Oh well.

After about two hours and much pestering by the family, I took the ribs to be sliced. I actually trimmed off the brisket bone and all the cartilage-y bits but served them anyway, warning people about the difference. Nobody seemed to mind. There were leftovers, but honestly, three racks of ribs for 15 people who were also eating dynamites is a little overkill. One comment made by my brother makes me want to explore some of the standard Char-Griller modifications to reduce the right-side hotspot, but that will be a long time from now, I’m sure.

Every time I try to write this entry, something else happens.

Last Sunday, while my mother-in-law was visiting, we had let the cats outside to run around. Usually this is not much of a problem; at worst they would bring us back injured mice or birds and let them loose in the house. But this day, my wife noticed that Les, our boy cat, was ferociously cleaning one spot on his belly. When she approached him, he ran away, which is very uncharacteristic. Eventually she got a look at him and saw a huge gash, and came running to get me. I attempted to pick him up which provoked a violent response, but my wife was able to coax him into his carrier with the promise of catnip. I called our usual vet, who was expectedly closed. I didn’t listen to the full instructions and ended up calling the local 24/7 emergency vet hospital. They told me to bring Les in, where they cleaned out the wound, gave him antibiotics, gave us three days’ of pain medication, and put him in an e-collar.

Unfortunately, the antibiotics did not prevent the stitches from getting infected. Two days later, my wife noticed swelling and redness in the shaved area and thus she brought him to the Feline Hospital in Salem. They reopened the stitches and kept him for 4 days. This past Saturday, we watched the vet bandage the huge, gaping, bloody hole in our cat, then brought him home. He was fine most of the night afterwards, except at one point, when he got spooked by his bandage and flipped out.

This flipping out occurred again the next morning. Les actually managed to pull out a gauze pad from under another layer of gauze AND a layer of Vetrap while jumping and flipping and slamming his head into the footboard of our bed. We called the vet again, this time listening to the entire message and beeping her. When she called us back, she told us to bring him in for rebandaging.

This morning, after I left for work, he once again managed to tear out the pad. He’s at the hospital now, and he’s staying until they suture him back up tomorrow.

Assorted small updates, since it’s been a while:

- Picked up some stuff at the Salem Record Exchange: Mr. G, Nitzer Ebb, King Crimson, Stewart Copeland, CTR, David Sylvian and Holger Czukay, SAW, Baby Ford, and DAF. Going through all the records strewn about my office. If I know what it sounds like, it goes back in the boxes, otherwise it gets played. Not all of my records are surviving this process. I will be selling some records on Craigslist soon, and for cheep.

- If you’re a WZBC person reading this, I am still looking for people to do Test Pattern this summer. Contact me for more information. You can just leave a comment below if you like.

- Tomorrow is another grand cooking day. I have a 5 pound pork loin that will turn into pork chops and the magnificent apple-sausage stuffed pork loin, possibly on the grill if it doesn’t rain. I am also making baked beans from scratch using the recipe from Peace, Love, and BBQ (minus the bacon). Although I would like the rain so I don’t have to water the lawn (I won’t bore you) I would love to finally get the chance to do some BBQ this summer for the first time since October!

- Baby is coming any day now. We’ve had a number of false alarms, but no actual baby yet, or there would have been an announcement.

- The next capoeira batizado is the weekend of September 24th.

Yesterday was my birthday. I ended up sleeping poorly Tuesday night and had a long day planned Wednesday. After work was to be the capoeira open house followed by dinner out with my wife and then on to see Dietrich Schonemann and Miro Pajic at the Phoenix Landing in Cambridge.

Apparently it is a Brazilian tradition that on your birthday you have fight everybody. So, after we trained a number of difficult movements for the first time (aù macaco, aù compasso, and queda de rins) Coreba taught us all how to sing Happy Birthday in Portuguese, then we started the roda. I don’t think quite everyone played with me, because we had some arrivals for the following class who weren’t warmed up, and a few brand new people. I played better than I have in a long time, and I think this is due to the new physical therapy regime I’ve been following. I don’t have the pain I was experiencing after class and I have a lot more stamina as a result. Unfortunately I smacked poor Chinesinha in the nose with my foot!

Dinner was at the East Coast Grill. I would like to say that everything was delicious, but unfortunately I decided to try their “Extremely Hot Crispy Hell Bone.” This is a dry-rubbed smoked pork spare rib treated with some brutal ungodly compound. It completely scoured my taste buds and sinuses. I think my brisket sandwich was tasty, but I actually could not taste the baked beans served with it, nor the watermelon! All they had was texture.

The Phoenix was kind of empty, possibly because the Crystal Method was playing last night. (ick) Schoenemann was good. We didn’t stay for much of Miro’s set because we were too tired and old! It took us an hour to get home because all roads out of Boston close at midnight, apparently, and the clerk at the convenience store decided to take a half hour to harangue the girl in front of us to not accidentally touch his hand while taking her change or something.

Other things that happened on my birthday:

• Maine legalizes gay marriage: hurray!
• 3DRealms, developer of the running joke Duke Nukem Forever, goes under: meh

This weekend I finally re-seasoned* the grates on my grill, and so to celebrate, I made the following meal Sunday afternoon.

First off, I thawed a tri-tip roast I had obtained for cheep at Trader Joe’s some months ago. The tri-tip is a cut of beef from the bottom sirloin. In the US, it’s most popular in California, but it is known in other countries by other names (triangle steak, punta de Solomo, colita de cuadril, etc.)

Later that day, after starting the charcoal, I created more Magic Dust. This comes from a recipe out of Peace, Love, and Barbecue. Unfortunately, I had run out of cayenne without knowing it, so I used crushed red pepper instead.

Next, I coated six potatoes with olive oil and magic dust, and mounted them on my fancy new rib and potato rack. Once the fire was ready, I put these into the grill first as they would take longer than the meat.

As for the fire, I added a log of oak in. This had been sitting in my basement all winter, so I had to hose off all the dust. This became a slight problem later on.

Once the potatoes were cooking, I sprinkled more Magic Dust all over the meat. Transferring the meat to the grill was a little tricky since the roast is actually pretty thin compared to big chunk of a roast. I managed to not drop anything, thankfully.

I had also purchased a bunch of asparagus. These I trimmed and placed in a foil hobo pack with some onion slices, salt, pepper, and butter, which then went on the top rack of the grill.

After about 45 minutes of cooking, the meat was still 25 degrees away from completion, but the fire had nearly gone out. I opened up the vents in hopes that the log would catch, but it only smoldered while the coals burned to ash. The roast actually started losing degrees while I started more charcoal. In an effort to regain lost time, I placed the meat right over the freshly-relit fire, resulting in one side getting charred a bit. Nobody seemed to mind this on the finished product, though.

Last but not least was a warmed-up can of Bush’s Grillin’ Beans. I have no great ability to bake beans yet, and my father-in-law’s recipe is a secret! Also, I don’t think we have any beans and I forgot to buy more. Oops.

* Over the winter I put them in the oven on a self-cleaning cycle to remove all the crud that built up over the past two years.

On the weekend of April 24th-26th, I will be volunteering at the Megapolis Audio Festival, in and around Harvard Square and the Elks Lodge in Central Square in Cambridge. This event features live performances, audio art installations, and workshops on such topics as circuit-bending, making your own contact mic. Weekend passes are $45 ($30 for students) with some workshops requiring RSVPs and/or materials fees. There are also tours of a mysterious nature (!) and an all-night audio slumber party (!!!)

On Friday May 8th, Contra Mestre Marquinho Coreba of Capoeira Gerais, my capoeira instructor will be performing a demonstration along with Instructor Morcego, Coehlo, and Fantama of Capoeira Luanda as part of a late addition to the program of the Voidstar Productions 2009 Multimedia Circus. (click for flyer).

My amber ale is delicious!

My dad gave me most of a cut-up cherry tree and a pile of red oak! IT’S SMOKING SEASON as soon as I re-season the grates on my smoker.

I will post the final Octave One interview soon. I have been in total information chaos since that weekend and the CD with the final version has been in my desk at work for quite some time.

Southern Tier was nice enough to put all the ingredients for their Imperial Pumking Ale right on the side of the bottle. I will give this a shot for next fall. Let's call it batch 8.

In the meantime, after the saison kit I have is done, my next projects will be FREE BEER (if I can find guarana berries). I looked into the Flying Dog Open Source Beer, but unfortunately it's a lager, and I'm not set up for cold-fermenting or lagering. (YET! See previous entry)

This morning we are heading to brunch with Pete and Shannon, who have just moved to Salem from Rhode Island. On the menu is a goat cheese and tomato frittata, peanut butter waffles, and bacon. (He works at Strega) After we come home, I am going to make a freaking sweet pork roast on the grill. The recipe is based on one from How to Cook Meat as per usual: Apricot-Sausage Stuffed Pork Loin. I will be making the following substitutions: apricots are replaced by apples (because we have apples and apple preserves), I am using a rack of pork instead of boneless pork loin (because I don't have any pork loin, but I have a rack of pork!), and I may tone down the garlic.