My poor neglected cooking blog

My poor cooking blog has been neglected of late. I have has some camera issues which have meant when I have cooked something new and interesting the photos haven't worked.

One thing I find when I'm busy is that I tend to fall back on tried and true recipes rather than getting creative and making something new...it doesn't make for such an interesting read.

For example tonight we're having Chinese Style Ribs which I have already blogged about before. Simply because when I saw the right cut of on sale meat at the supermarket I knew it would be a quick (well not so much quick as not labour-intensive) and tasty dinner!

We still like to eat well when we're time poor and that's when planning comes it. I was putting something in my extra freezer today and I realised I had the makings of quite a few freezer meals and that it would be a really good idea to have a freezer cooking day.

The questions is when? It won't be this week...but maybe next. I am thinking food even if not much is happening.

So what have we been doing/eating? I've been focussing on making things that have a duel purpose or get us through two meals

I've taken to poaching some chicken breasts on a Sunday night and making half into chicken salad and half into chicken pasta salad. That's great for lunches. And the pasta salad is the same with pasta, corn and tomatoes...

Last week I made meatloaf so my husband and daughter would get meatloaf sandwiches for two lunches.

I turned last week's roast chicken into soup today which I had for lunch and will again on Thursday.

Chinese-style Ribs http://mysydneykitchen.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/chinese-style-pork-ribs.html

Oh yes and we did make this cake for my daughter's birthday last week. She had an archery party!



Slow-cooker bbq ribs

I'm not sure how to label this recipe. Basically this is  a recipe pork ribs that you pre-cook in the slow-cooker and then finish off on the BBQ or in the oven. You can skip that step but we like that nice char-grilled taste.

This is a great meal to share with friends. Pork spare ribs used to be a frugal option but now they're a bit trendy so they've gone from $7-8 a kg to a standard $14kg. (I guess they are the pork equivalent of the lamb shank). I tend to watch the sales and buy them then for about $10kg. While they taste great you do need quite a few because there's lots of bones.

As part of a BBQ when entertaining you can add other things that are cheaper to bulk it out (burgers, sausages etc). The way I look at it is ribs at somewhere like Hogs Breath or The Hard Rock Cafe are around $30 a person and we all ate for about $20 plus sides so that's still a good deal.

Slow-cooker BBQ ribs

Ribs (I had about 500g pp)
1 bottle generic BBQ sauce
1 cup brown sugar

1. Put frozen ribs and bottle of sauce and 1/2 cup brown in slow-cooker. I did 3.5 hours on high but 8 hours on slow works too.

2. Remove ribs and pour sauce into saucepan/skillet, add 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Whisk to combine and reduce by half.

3. Then put ribs on the BBQ and cook basting with sauce till browned.

4. Serve with sides. we like corn, baked potatoes and beans with ours. Other times we have cornbread and coleslaw.

Enjoy!