First Ribs of the Summer

Picked up some Farmer John Spare Ribs from Smart n Final and figured I would post the results here. I was mid way through making a new batch of dry rub or what my wife refers to as the "annual cleaning of the spice cabinet" when upon completion-she actually found the bag of last years dry rub. And with that a new tradition was born; the merging of last years rub into this years rub. Much like using the strain of yeast over and over again for bread-my rub will be continually be changing, evolving, and mixing the old and new into a mesh of collangual flavoring. And yes, I will admit that I just made up the word "collangual" so no need to bust out the thesaurus.

Here is a picture of the ribs rubbed and ready to go. There was an exterior strip of meat that I removed and decided to use some Chef Paul Pork seasoning on. You will notice the Chef Pauls is much redder in appearance then my rub-probably due to more paprika and no brown sugar. I will say the Farmer John ribs were the meatiest I have ever used and 2 large racks came to about 12 bucks.



Once prepped I tried my best to do a low and slow at about 200 degrees with indirect heat. I put the ribs on the bottom rack and used the top rack for the rib tips with the Chef Paul.



After that I wrapped in foil and finished the ribs over at my cousins. Have to apologize for the pic quality as I didnt have my normal camera and had to use my phone camera.

All in all a great way to start the season. People loved the ribs, the ribs tips were fantastic, and a good time was had by all.

Fun with Weather Pt2

My OC readers are probably well familiar with the surf spot known as the Wedge but for my international readers let me give a bit of a back story.

The wedge was a normal stretch of beach at one point until someone decided it would be a fine place to dig an enormous harbor. Newport Harbor was born and separating the mouth of the harbor and the regular beach was accomplished by laying out 1/4 mile or so of large boulders referred to as a jetty.

The wedge is known because as waves form and hit the end of the jetty as the wall of water rebounds it creates a much larger wave then what Mother Nature created. Even when other spots are typically 2-3 feet high as far as wave height is concerned the Wedge can be generally counted on to be twice as high. The caveat being the waves at the Wedge break much closer to the shore so while the wave size is impressive it is certainly a surf at your own risk type environment.

Anyhow, a big swell moved into the area and while some areas had 4-6 foot waves this afternoon at the Wedge had some waves I would think close to 15 ft or so. Keep in mind I am no surfer and certainly no expert on measuring wave height. But hopefully the pics and videos speak for themselves. Much like Fun with Weather pt1 these were taken with my camera phone and I apologize for not bringing a real camera.

Enjoy!

On this picture below if you blow it up you can see a bit of a blur on the wave-that was actually the lone surfer out in the ocean. Gives you a pretty good idea about the size of the wave.








Believe it or not these were not the biggest waves I have ever seen at the wedge. If memory serves roughly 10 or so years ago there was another storm that brought in bigger much more powerful waves. The waves crashing the shore were powerful to the point where you could feel the break of the waves under your feet and the crash of the wave sounded like a clap of thunder. Todays wave were not of the ilk, but under these conditions its always a treat to visit the Wedge. Props to my friends at McClain Concepts, an awesome orange county marketing company for helping out!