Cookbook Giveaway: “Best Ribs Ever”
I’m thinking it’s time for another cookbook giveaway. How about y’all?
Since Father’s Day is on the horizon, I thought it might be appropriate to give away a nice grilling book called “Best Ribs Ever” by Steven Raichlen. Not because I think women don’t barbecue, but because Father’s Day always falls during some of the best grilling weather we see in Virginia (Note: I’m crossing my fingers and toes as I write this, lest Mother Nature have another of her mood swings).
This barbecue bible promises more than 300 pages of recipes, not just for meats but also for accompaniments such as baked beans, slaws and sauces. A few recipes that caught my hungry eye: Brazilian coconut rotisserie ribs, smoked beer barbecue sauce, Argentinian short ribs with chimichurri, and pineapple marinated smoked beef ribs. YUM!
If you’d like to be in the running to win this book, tell me what food you associate most closely with your father, and why. For some reason what comes to mind for me is my dad’s fantastic roasted potatoes with rosemary and sage, which he starts in a skillet on the stove top and finishes in the oven. It always made the house smell heavenly.
The deadline for this giveaway is noon on Monday. I will announce a winner by about 5 p.m. on Monday. Let’s collect some nice Dad stories!
June 8, 2012 - 5:27 AM
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Dad passed away in 95 from Waldenstrom’s. However, the food I most associate with him is his spaghetti and meatballs. Yummy!
You were speaking of potatoes and it brought to mind a receipe I threw together a couple of weeks ago.
I peeled & cut up several white potatoes, put them in a bowl and gently stirred in some olive oil, parmesean cheese, and Italian seasoning. I then baked them in a pyrex dish at 375 degrees till they were browned. My hubby and I loved them.
Neither of the above has anything to do with ribs, but the potatoes would definitely taste good with some.
Every time I eat ice cream it reminds me of my Dad. He used to take us every weekend as a kid. I loved being able to return the treat, and take him out for ice cream when he was unable to drive any longer.
My father is best remembered for the family Christmas Eve steamed oysters and shrimp meal. Or maybe fried bream and crappies (he could catch fish when no one else could, or more than anyone else).
I look forwaerd to trying all 100 recipes.
My father, a native of Louisiana, made the best Southern-style, chicken-fried steak with peppery milk gravy! He also was adept at the grill, turning out many a memorable summertime meal, especially his ribeye steaks, charred beautifully on the outside and done perfectly medium-well. He never bought commercial barbecue sauce, but always made his own.
I guess it will have to be fried eggs. When I was little we often had breakfast for dinner and that usually meant fried eggs. As a kid, I hated fried eggs with runny yolks. My dad used to tell me when he was little he and his brother were opposite when it came to fried eggs. He liked the yolks, while his brother liked the whites. His brother would give him his yolks. Now that I am older, I love fried eggs over medium. Go figure!
Thank you for the potato idea, Flo. I love how versatile potatoes are for roasting. A little olive oil, salt and whatever seasonings you desire and they usually turn out great!
Miss my dad terribly but I always smile when I think of his huge, wonderful breakfasts at the beach! And once breakfast was done, there he was still in the kitchen making a pitcher of whiskey sours, and a pitcher of bloody marys for everyone to enjoy later in the day. Of course I couldn’t partake until I was “old enough”!!
I think the food I associate most with Dad is meatloaf. When my parents divorced I lived with my dad. I’d come home and ask what was for dinner and sometimes it’d be meatloaf. I’d go oh, ok. And we’d have a slice of meatloaf and whatever sides he fixed. However the next day we were both THRILLED to have meatloaf sandwiches! (which, to this day, is the only reason either of us really makes meatloaf!)
Fried potatoes. Dad was from the backwoods of West Virginia, and he had to have fried potatoes with every meal. Every meal, without exception. It didn’t matter what the meal was, as long as he has his fried potatoes. You could serve him monkey brains on a stick, and as long as he had his fried potatoes, he’d eat it.
For me its Fudge. Sometimes Daddy would sneak into the kitchen and we would hear the pots clanging around. We knew he’d pulled out the fudge pot and his Taylor candy thermometer. A while later we’d be eating warm, gooey fudge. So delicious!
I didn’t grow up with a dad but my uncle was a substitute! I always loved his smoked turkey that he would do in the green egg smoker! He also did a miso marinated smoked salmon in the green egg as well.
As for something to go with BBQ, my hubby did new potato hobags. He had rosemary, pearl onions, LOTS of whole cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil, wrapped up in foil and roasted them on the grill on low for 30 minutes. Yum!!
My mother hates the smell of sauerkraut. She wouldn’t cook it because she didn’t want her kitchen to smell like that. So, whenever my dad would grill out, there would always be at least a couple Bratwurst and a foil package of kraut on the grill. To this day, I associate the smell of sauerkraut and dark mustard with my dad.
P.S. he also loves ribs.
This is great! I am enjoying these stories so much. Keep ‘em coming!
My dad usually did the cooking for Sunday dinner, so I have a few. But the one his name gets mentioned most often is with Macaroni & cheese, my son will tell me if it’s as good as granddaddy’s, sometimes it doesn’t quite make it.
My dad made great peanut butter fudge,I got to scape out the remainders from the pot with a spoon.
PANCAKES! My dad would get up extra early on Saturday mornings before heading off to work to make us kids some of his fan-tab-u-lous MONSTER pancakes. After mixing a big batch he’d pour as much as he could in one of those old fashioned electric skillets so that the perfectly round pancake would just touch the outer edges of the skillet. Then he’d pull out his magic wand (the spatula) and in one try flip it over in a perfect move that wouldn’t even break up the monster pancake. Our eyes would always get bigger than hens eggs each time he’d flip the ‘cake.’
My Dad tells me now that he didn’t have a lot of money when we were growing up, but my brother and I never knew it. He was so creative and kept things fun. As a child of the 80′s, my Dad made us “pac-man” cookies! He would make plain sugar cookies and then cut the mouth out before baking. We LOVED them growing up and I will never call a sugar cookie anything but pac-man cookies! My Dad rocks!!
There are two foods I most associate with my dad who died 4 years ago. Venison jerky because he made some every year during deer hunting season. If he wasn’t lucky enough to get a deer himself, friends who did, would share the meat with him. He made lots of delicious jerky to share with family and friends.
Cherry pie or Pepperidge Farms cherry turnovers are the other food. He loved them both.
My dad would always make breakfast in our house. They were all simple but memorable. We lived in Costa Rica and we did not have maple syrup, so my dad would make maple syrup with sugar and maple flavoring. It was always great. The things that he would then do with that is what stands out in my mind. Breakfast could be pancakes, or waffles, sometimes even corn meal mush fried and drizzled with syrup. In the evenings for desert he would slice up bananas and drizzle the syrup over them. I can’t have maple syrup, real or imitation, without thinking about my dad.
My poor dad is useless in the kitchen and with a grill – he could greatly benefit from this cookbook – as I would use it to cook for him on Fathers Day! I grew up cooking with my mother and grandmothers and have retained a deep love for the kitchen, something that never fails to amaze him.
My mother worked over an hour away, so if we wanted to eat before 7PM, my dad did ALL the weeknight cooking. So while he was also big on weekend and holiday breakfasts, he was famous for a quick and delicious meat & potatoes meal, with green veggies on the side. So I think of dad when I make chopped steak & gravy with mashed potatoes and peas, or fried pork chops with sweet potatoes and green beans, or burgers on the grill (charred to within an inch of their life), french fries, and broccoli with cheese sauce.
This is exactly how I cook during the week now. Mom would take over on the weekends and was an excellent cook, but dad really taught me how to time things right so we could all sit down to the table as soon as mom got home.
Now we have gotten dad all kinds of kitchen gadgets:a rotisserie, a juicer, the little pie maker in Williams-Sonoma. Since my mother passed away I think he bakes in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep. There are always cookies in the jar, or a half-eaten cake that he has experimented with!
I am looking forward to visiting my dad next weekend over Father’s Day. I guess I need to get working on a gift idea!!
When I was a child, my dad wasn’t the greatest in the kitchen – he would make a slit in hot dogs and put in some cheese then bake in the oven. My brothers and I loved them, though!
He was a corpsman during the Korean conflict, and ended up with Hepatitis C from his duties. Disabled due to a liver transplant, he would take favorite meals and try to “perfect” them at home. He rarely used a recipe; instead, he experimented with ingredients, quantities, and combinations until he was satisfied with each result.
He did amazing stir fry, meticulously cutting the ingredients into evenly sized pieces and making sauces from scratch. Then there was tempura vegetables, shrimp, or chicken. He moved on to crab cakes starting with fresh crab he carefully steamed and picked, and bread crumbs he made himself. He experimented with different ingredients to recreate different regional styles.
There was delicious hand-picked peaches, (I didn’t realize how much fun tree-climbing could be as an adult!) blueberries, black raspberries, strawberries . . . all made into lovely jams , ice cream topping, or carefully preserved for winter eating. He canned green beans and tomatoes, froze fresh corn on the cob, sugar snap peas. Before he died, he was in the process of starting his own mini-orchard with heritage apple trees, peach trees, and cherry trees on his little 5-acre spread outside of New Castle.
Dad left the medical field after Korea, becoming a 1st class machinist and tool and die maker. After retirement, he put his analytic skills and attention to fine detail to work creating in the kitchen.
If you were up “home” on weekend mornings, he would make a mean bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on toast. We miss him terribly and I’m very proud to be his daughter. I even married a man who makes his family a mean bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on toast every Sunday morning.
Fish! My dad is the best fish fryer in the world. When we were growing up he often fried fish on Fridays or Sundays. He’s in his 80′s now and although he still cooks there are many things he can’t due to breathing problems. My sister has taken over fish frying duties and hers are almost as good as Dads.
Definitely a huge steak, preferably on the grill. That was his favorite food.
Memories of my Dad often involve different meals because cooking was always a part of celebrations and the everyday in our home. One tasty recipe was his homemade sausage bread – homemade pizza dough stuffed with Italian sausage, cheese, herbs, and other amazing goodness. Watching him pour his love into simple meals that fed our bellies and souls was a wonderful experience.
Only two things come to mind when thinking of my Dad in the Kitchen. Spanish Rice when I was a kid and Whiskey Sours when I was older. If Mom was not going to be home for dinner, a rarity, the Rice was his go-to. Later during the holidays while opening of the gifts, tradition had Dad making his “Special OJ” for the adults.
I was raised to Idaho, and my dad, around this time of year was always fishing. IF he caught anything, he was a big fan of catch and release. UNLESS he went to Alaska. When he was he came home from Alaska, he’d bring home big things of halibut and salmon to put into the freezer. There was nothing better than smoked salmon fresh from the grill when the first wind of Summer came on us.
We had a huge garden in the back yard, so there was never a shortage of veggies to go on the grill with the fish. It was always a feast…
I miss those days
When asparagus used to have a season our family would have them several times a week to take advantage of there brief bounty. My father would diligently saute a handful of asparagus in butter. When finished he ‘d put them in a plate and crack 2 eggs into the pan preparing them over easy. My father would tend to these eggs with great care and when done place them on top of the asparagus with the remaining melted butter and some grated Pecorino Romano and freshly ground black peeper. He would sit and eat his preparation as if it were the rarest of delicacies, savoring each morsel. Now, whenever I see a “recipe” for this I think of him standing over the stove completing his asparagus artistry.
The only things my step-dad cooked were bacon and scrambled eggs and popcorn. I remember that he would come home from working the graveyard shift and start breakfast for me and my siblings. While the bacon cooked, he would comb and plait my very long hair so I would be ready for school. On Saturday nights, he would use an old deep well cooker pot and pop the best popcorn I ever tasted. Because I liked it scorched, he would always slightly burn a little of it, just for me.
I don’t want to embarrass my Dad because he is such a special guy, but the food/meal I most associate with my Dad is his rotating Thurs night meal that he cooked while my Mom was at the hairdresser. Then it was great, now…probably not so healthy. His menu that night was cooked hot dogs, golden hominy, and the best-fried potatoes – ever. In fact, he finally taught me how to fry those delicious potatoes. He also prepared fried onion rings once or twice – rare, but so good I never forgot them. He still enjoys cooking with my Mom at his side. They’ve been married over 61 yrs – lots of cooking in that kitchen with lots of love. Thanks.
Pizza! Dad was stricken with polio in the early ’50s and was in a wheelchair. That didn’t stop him from making the best pizza ever. He made the dough from scratch with yeast, cooked the sauce from scratch, used tons of toppings and cheese. Of course during the pizza making he enjoyed a boilermaker (beer and a shot) or three, which just made them even better. Flour would be everywhere including him but man, those pies were the best. We lived down the street from Yvonne Ferris; she gave him some tips on pies and he would tell people that he learned to make pizza from his Lebanese grandmother. She got a kick from that. I sure do miss my dad and those pizzas.
My Dad didn’t do much cooking; but when he did you could count on hamburger patties in gravy and fried potatoes and onions. It is still his favorite meal today.
My dad could grill burgers, and other than that his specialty was heating up Campbell’s Chunky Soup. Not a cooking kind of guy, he asked me repeatedly if cooking instructions for frozen pizza and the like meant putting the oven settings on “bake” or “broil”. The food that always reminds me of him is those peanut butter and cheese Lance crackers…we called them “Nabs”. Dad knew the whole Lance story about how they got started in business. He ate them (still does!) every day, they were like their own food group. When there was a peanut butter recall a few years ago, he CALLED the Lance people and they told him they had their own processor and it wasn’t one that was affected. I was so thrilled to score a Lance jar on eBay for his birthday one year and he keeps his Nabs in it now.
My Dad is now 93, suffering from dementia, living in an assisted care facility so his cooking days are over. Back in the day Dad was the premiere sourdough baker and a mean rib bbq master. Unfortunately, the secret portions of his rib cooking are part of what we lost to dementia…
Course if I had the cookbook I could make some and take it over to him…he would appreciate it and love the opportunity to say that they were almost as good as his…grin…
The food that I most associate with my dad is homemade sausage gravy. When I was a kid, I went to stay with him on weekends and every Sunday morning he would make homemade buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy. He makes the absolute best biscuits and gravy, hands down! Now, when my daughter visits, he makes sure to cook sausage gravy and homemade biscuits for her, no matter what time of day it is!