o hai.
still here. still trying to maintain a modicum of "normalcy" in whatever these times are. i'm fully vaccinated and still wearing masks whenever i leave the house. went back to the office a couple of weeks ago for the first time in more than a year and it was weird. the good news is that i don't necessarily have to go back to the office anytime soon. the not so good news is that work remains busy and stressful and our team is short-staffed. i'm grateful to have the flexibility to work from home and log on a few minutes early or late depending on what i have going on. also grateful that our team had a comp day on friday so we could have an extra-long holiday weekend. i know i needed it. i decided to use thursday and friday evenings for meal prep so i could attempt to relax the rest of the weekend, and also because the weather was cool enough for me to have the oven on and not feel as if i was going to melt.
baked bbq baby back ribs with bourbon bbq sauce: jewel had ribs on sale (surprising, i know, given the holiday weekend) and i had all of the sauce components on hand. ok, technically i only had light brown sugar instead of dark brown sugar, but i was willing to go with it. also i added garlic powder when i seasoned the ribs with salt and pepper. the flavor is great, but the ribs were a bit tough. i'd make them again and adjust the cook time - maybe 2 hours at first instead of the full 2.5 hours, or maybe 30-45 minutes unwrapped instead of the 1.5 hours called for in the recipe. i used eagle rare as the bourbon, because why not use something that i actually like to drink?
sausage and quinoa stuffed portobellos: i went to green city market wednesday morning, and one of the vendors was so thrilled about my buying something from them that they threw in some portobellos as a thank you. i figured i might as well try a new to me recipe with this unexpected gift. i had three portobellos to work with, so i put the rest of the "stuffing" in a cast iron pan and baked it alongside the stuffed mushrooms. i used dried parsley instead of fresh, and i also added some minced garlic because, well, garlic. asiago was out of stock during my shopping trip, so i used an "italian blend" of cheese instead. of course i wound up buying asiago when i went to the farmers market yesterday because that's how life works sometimes.
maple bacon brussels sprouts: halved brussels sprouts were on sale this week, so deciding on this one was easy. i used "regular" bacon since i didn't have thick-cut bacon, and added some roasted granulated garlic to the salt and pepper. didn't measure the seasonings or the olive oil, but it came out just fine.
hope y'all are doing as well as can be.
