gonewest

I am not in the mood for BBQ very often, but I do get an occasional craving for it and BBQ is just about the only thing that I miss about the Memphis area. Unfortunately, there are only two options that I know of so far here in Seattle: Outback and Steel Pig BBQ. Both are good but Outback is expensive and neither are anything like the Memphis style that I remember.

So Saturday morning I was trying to decide what I was going to do about my BBQ craving and decided to make my own. After all, how hard could it be?

Well, it turns out that a decent batch of oven baked spare ribs is just about the easiest thing to cook. I took a quick look at a few recipes on the web (no taking notes though since I hate following someone else’s directions :-)) then made a quick store run to pick up a slab of ribs and some random BBQ sauce. I cut the slab in half (better portion size for me) and placed it on aluminum foil, scored the back of the ribs with a knife (I am guessing that this lets the sauce get through the tough fat on the bone side better), slathered some sauce and paprika on both sides and sealed the foil with the slab bone side up.

I made a batch on Saturday and another today according to different oven regimes and discovered that they produced distinctly different but tasty results.

Method 1: Bake ribs at 325 degrees for 1-1/2 hours. Take foil pack out, flip ribs and add a little more sauce, then bake at 350 for another 20-30 minutes. Ribs will be easy to slice into portions and easy to eat (no fighting to get meat off the bone).

Method 2: Bake ribs at 250 degrees for 3 hours. Take foil pack out, carefully flip ribs (they will be delicate), then bake at 350 for another 20-30 minutes. The meat will literally fall off the bones when you pick them up, so this is the better recipe if you prefer to take a knife and fork to your BBQ or if you want to make a sandwich out of it.

Both batches were at least as good as what I have found at local restaurants, but they are still nothing like the Memphis style that I miss. I expect that I need to throw out the store bought sauce and work up something of my own to get a more satisfying result. I would love to work with some rubs and try to get a decent dry rib recipe together, but I don’t know if you can make dry ribs in the oven (I am guessing that that requires a smoker).

Oh well, at least I have a new project to work on. Is it too early to think up recipe names?

My trusty Canon Powershot S400 is getting a little long in the tooth (and I think the CF card is starting to go flaky) so I’ve been thinking about buying another camera lately. I think I have found what I should buy next, but I am hesitant to make a substantial money commitment without some more information.

When it comes to cameras, there is a fundamental choice that must be made. No, I am not talking about film vs. digital — this is the 21st century after all — I am talking about a convenient pocket camera or a bulky SLR.

I had a Kodak 110 pocket (I use the term loosely here) camera when I was a kid and it worked well enough; but when I entered college and began to think of myself as a budding photographer, I bought a 35mm Pentax SLR and a few lenses to go with it. With patience and a little practice, that Pentax could take some wonderful photos. I found that after the novelty wore off, however, I rarely had the camera with me (aside from vacations) since it was so bulky. Because of this, those “Kodak moments” that I had purchased the camera to capture were more memorable for how often they were missed.

A number of years later, I bought one of the original Canon Elph pocket 35mm cameras and fell in love with the ability to have a good quality camera with me without lugging along a camera bag; this was a truly pocketable camera (unlike my old Kodak 110), but still produced prints as finely detailed as any 35mm could. Pocket cameras — even good ones — have their limitations of course, but that Elph was good enough for 90% of the pictures that I was likely to take and I was more likely to take them since it was more often with me. Several years ago, when resolutions had finally gotten high enough to satisfy me, I replaced that old Elph with the 4 mega pixel Powershot that I am still using today.

While I have been very happy with the Powershot, it does have a couple of short comings that I hope to correct with the next purchase.

The 4mp resolution is good enough for most occasions and I can enlarge crisp shots up to 8×11″, but that seems to be just about the limit for this resolution. This is not a problem most of the time, but I do have this silly idea that I would like to put a few of my best pictures up on the wall in sizes approaching those of your average painting (something in the 2×3′ range) and there is simply no way that a 4mp image can handle that kind of print size or anything close to it.

In the last few years I have rediscovered an interest in photography as aesthetic rather than just a visual memory and my current camera can take some pretty damn good pictures but I have found that, with few exceptions, I can only get the really good shots on clear, bright days. Like most cameras with tiny sensors and “consumer grade” zoom optics, it is difficult to get it to shine when the sun isn’t.

So, now that it is about time that I make another camera purchase, I am back to asking myself that age old question: do I buy a camera for convenience or for performance?

Right now I am leaning pretty heavily toward the performance side so I will probably buy a digital SLR, but I will keep the Powershot around as a second camera for those times when convenience is more important than quality.

It seems that digital SLR prices have finally begun to move into the affordable range, but they still have a tendency to get real expensive real fast. My quandary is how to get a great SLR for those “perfect shots” without blowing the budget. I ran across a link to this recommendation (courtesy of Pharyngula) that almost has me sold on the Nikon D50, but I am still tempted by the Canon Rebel XT (sure wish I could afford the 5D …) which is a little higher resolution and has a little better name recognition (for me at least).

Is the extra 2mp resolution worth the extra $100 or so that the Canon SLR runs or will I be trading light gathering ability for resolution unnecessarily? Will that extra resolution even get me significantly closer to the large print sizes that I want as an option? How do the affordable Canon and Nikon lenses compare? Should I limit my choice to these two brands or are there other well respected names in the digital SLR field that I should be considering?

I’m hoping to find web sites or other sources of information that will answer these questions before I commit to my next camera — but once I get that urge to spend, who knows how long I will be able to hold it off?

What possible reason could California republicans have for trying to pad their registered voter roles with people who are not likely to actually vote republican?

duarf noitcele :rewsna

It got up to 88 degrees here today. Not quite hot enough to be uncomfortable in the apartment but getting close. Best Buy is still out of portable a/c units — I’m starting to think that I will need to mail order one.

FUH2

Ran across a link to this clip at Kung Fu Monkey. It’s amazing what a good editor can do to a scene.