Beer in the Headlights

I vote for the latter

I love ribs. Pork ribs. More specifically I love spare ribs. They have more meat and more flavor than their over-priced anatomical neighbors, the baby backs.

Spare ribs, like other cuts of meat that contain joints, bone and connective tissue are, on the norm, the most flavorful. They are certainly the most succulent. Collagen is the primary reason for that characteristic.

In order to get the most out of a hunk of animal containing significant amounts of collagen, a low temperature and often moist (or wet) cooking technique is required. With that in mind I'm going to share how I cook ribs for maximum flavor and texture.

When working with spare ribs I like to cut them St. Louis style. You can see how to do it here. (Save the long strips of meat without cartilage and bone for making a nice pork chili verde.) After trimming the ribs apply the rub of your choice. I prefer to use my own recipe that is lower in salt and sugar than most store-bought brands. Sometimes I'll apply a hefty amount of liquid smoke prior to the dry rub. Allowing the ribs to absorb the rub for a few hours before cooking is preferable.

Preheat your oven to 250. Place the ribs on a baking sheet and cover tightly with foil. Place the ribs in the oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. If cooking multiple racks of ribs use more than one baking sheet to keep the ribs at a single layer; two racks per sheet works well. At 250 the ribs will come up to temperature slowly and braise in their own juices. Be careful when removing the ribs from the oven and removing the foil, there will be lots of liquid in the baking sheet. You know they're ready when the meat pulls back from the edge of the bones leaving about 1/4" to 1/2" of the bones exposed.

When opening the foil the ribs will appear a little unappetizing. That's OK. The oven was just the first of two steps in cooking them.

Prior to removing the ribs from the oven preheat a grill to medium heat. Add soaked wood chips of your choice for added smoke flavor. Cook the ribs on the grill for about 4-5 minutes per side, basting with a sauce if you choose, and then serve. I do recommend allowing for the rub to "crust" a little before using a mopping sauce, this improves the appearance and texture of the final product.

You can transfer the liquid from the baking sheet to a fat strainer and reduce it in a sauce pan for making a basting or mopping sauce when finishing the ribs on the grill. Taste the sauce first, sometimes a little vinegar and/or light brown sugar along with some leftover dry rub enhance the flavor.

I prefer my ribs served dry with some sauce on the side in which to dip them. Masking the flavor of properly seasoned and cooked pork with excess amounts of overbearing sauce is just plain wrong.

Some folks swear by smoking their ribs for hours. That can dry them out. Others cook them on direct medium to high heat. That can lead to toughness. This technique of cooking ribs is terrific for a cookout with friends or family as it allows for plenty of other prep time and socializing while the ribs are in the oven. It's not legit for BBQ competitions and there are some who will howl in disapproval with what I've detailed.

Big deal.

At least I don't boil the ribs like some folks do; that sucks a lot of the flavor out of the meat. The end result of cooking ribs the way I've detailed will win you some praise as they will be tender, juicy and flavorful. That's what folks expect from ribs.

Al Gore doesn't care about black people.

As the United Nations food summit draws to a close in Rome, David Loyn reports on the conflicting agendas of the USA and African countries.

Basically Africa wants more free food from the US.

We here in the US are producing less food because moron legislators engaged in a vote buying scheme by mandating ethanol use. Robert Mugabe transformed Zimbabwe from a thriving agricultural producer to a pauper of a nation. These factors, among others, are causing food shortages and price increases.

It's not just Africa suffering from America's agricultural negligence. Mexico's got some tortilla turmoil. And of course the good old US of A is to blame:

Last year, tens of thousands of people marched in protest at similar price rises for tortillas. People were angry and there were scuffles.

Many blamed American corn farmers for diverting their crops away to produce bio-fuels.

What I've learned from both articles is that the United States is bad. Corrupt and impoverished Third World nations depend on American farmers and tax payers to feed their people. With rising energy prices and more crop land diverted to bio fuels it costs more to feed the people that depend on the hard work and affluence of Americans.

Somehow, some way this is all George Bush's fault.

Those wacky dietary fascists are at it again. Today (May 18) is the Veggie Pride Parade in NYC.

Why aren't these morons content with gnawing on flora and leaving us alone?

Well, because their way is better. According to them meat consumption represents violence and meat production is a major cause of the imaginary problem of global warming.

I want to see a bunch of illegal aliens out there picketing the vegan parade. Meat processing is one of the main industries that hire illegal aliens. Someone ought to goad the illegals into action.

It could be akin to the "you're a sexist if you vote for Obama" versus "you're a racist if you vote for Hillary" thing that's going on with the Donks right now. The political and social left in this country attracts a wife range of disparate fringe groups with false promises.

So if we all went vegan, what would the illegal aliens toiling away in Midwestern meat packing plants do? Would they be assigned to working in the government mandated ethanol plants?

I would also like to understand how many of these vegan fools think it's wrong to kill livestock or poultry for human consumption while it's perfectly legitimate in their eyes to kill human life in the womb. Something tells me their diet lacks in essential organic compounds required for moral clarity.

Introducing MeatWater

Shame it ain't real. I could go for a nice warm bottle of Stroganoff.

Not only is Gordon Ramsay a hot tempered and verbally abusive SOB, but he also wants to dictate what you can eat and when you can eat it.

Celebrity British chef Gordon Ramsay said restaurants should be fined if they serve out-of-season fruit and vegetables.

"I don't want to see asparagus in the middle of December. I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home-grown," he said after raising his concerns with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"Fruit and veg should be seasonal. Chefs should be fined if they don't have ingredients in season on their menu," he told the BBC on Friday.

Ramsay, whose London restaurants include Petrus and The Savoy Grill, said Britain had become a nation of lazy eaters who followed trends and fads rather than substance.

"There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only," he added.

The sad thing... The British government will likely fall for this bit of dietary totalitarianism.

Just wait until the ecotards here in the US catch wind of this idea. It's just another angle from which they can attack the free market and have more sway over the lives of others.

I'm fed up with the whole "local food" thing. I live in Georgia. Think I like my citrus? Darn straight I do. If idiots like Ramsay have their way I'll only get to eat citrus fruit in citrus growing regions, and only when it's in season.

One more aspect of this asinine idea? Think of what it will do the the farmers of developing countries where most "out of season" produce is grown. It will put them out of business.

Just another example of how elitist liberals just hurt the little guys.

Poverty is a mental disorder

Some of the fattest people in America are among the poorest.

And with food prices rising, the problem is likely to get worse.

Tianna Gaines, who describes herself as impoverished and obese, knows this. At 5-foot-3 and 242 pounds, she lives on public assistance in Frankford and eats junk food because it's cheap and more readily available in her neighborhood than carrots and apples.

The opening line says it all but is put forth from the absolutely wrong paradigm. Poverty most often stems from abject laziness. Not coincidentally so does obesity.

The root cause isn't necessarily that junk food costs less than carrots and apples. The problem is that daytime television - the staple of the American ignoramus - is sponsored primarily by junk food and trial attorney advertisements.

The reason the local stores carry the junk food in lieu of produce and other staples is that the former sells better than the latter. These losers want junk food.

While it's true that most middle class folks can't afford to shop the hallowed aisles of Whole (Paycheck) Foods, healthy eating isn't a luxury afforded to the well to do. Take a look at the acceptable foods under the WIC program. Cheetos, Pizza Rolls, Doritos and Kool Aid aren't on the this. Milk, meats, grains and dairy products are on the list.

Obesity, like poverty, is the result of the sum total of decisions that affect those conditions. If some welfare brood mare that decides that exercise consists of moving between the couch, the fridge, the bathroom and her bed do shag some random loser that will inseminate then abandon her then there really isn't any hope for that individual or her offspring.

Yes, Al Gore can be blamed for the high prices of food.

Will Media Remember Gore's 1994 Tie-breaking Vote Mandating Ethanol?

In a move that enraged midwestern senators, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Bennett Johnston tried Wednesday to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from mandating the use of ethanol in reformulated gasoline. The Senate narrowly killed the measure, voting to table it by a margin of 51 to 50. With the vote tied, Vice President Al Gore had to come in and cast the deciding vote.

Bah. It'll be good for all of us, right? Lower fuel costs, cleaner air and money in the pockets of Midwestern farmers - what could go wrong?

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

30% isn't chump change. That's a lot of acreage converted from food production to fuel production. And since the price of corn has gone up some farmers have switched crops from wheat to corn. That's caused the price of wheat to rise.

“It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol,” Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. “It’s not going to be a very good diet but that’s roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year.”

Corn is also used for livestock feed. If the price of livestock production increases, so does the price of the final product; shrink-wrapped meat in your grocer's displays.

One thing that has never ceased to astound me is the left's complete misunderstanding and/or disregard for basic micro- and macro-economic principles. When the supply of a commodity becomes scarcer, then the price of that commodity rises. Simple. It's fact, law and undeniable.

A leftist's usual response to such a rise in prices for basic necessities is to suggest or implement price controls. Price controls cause further scarcity by artificially depressing the price of a commodity. Shortages ensue.

Remember the notorious bread lines in the former Soviet Union? Those are a prime example of state-planned and mandated management of an economy.

In order to appease the eco-morons and their statist cohorts the world's poor are now facing very tough times. The prices of corn, wheat and rice have all skyrocketed due to a government mandated scam and vote buying scheme.

Thanks, Al. Now just take your Oscar and your Nobel Prize and leave us all alone.

But the wings and breasts are kinda small

Tyrannosaurus rex just got a firm grip on the animal kingdom's family tree, right next to chickens and ostriches.

New analyses of soft tissue from a T.rex leg bone re-confirm that birds are dinosaurs' closest living relatives.

I wonder if Fred Flintstone would have done a beer can T. rex on his grill.