Sometimes life makes you feel a little crazy, then it'll do something that makes you feel a lotta crazy. Take this week for example: Eric starts his new job, is all happy and excited until Charisse calls after getting home from work and finding the fish tank empty and the floor all wet. What a terrific way to end your second day at a new job; "Uhm, my fish tank is broken and my bed room is flooded, I've got to go". Nice. Charisse on the other hand has been battling slugs and other little critters in the garden all week. Now that she's got her garden all up and going and stuff is growing every time she goes out there, there are little holes in everything! After coming this far, the thought of loosing everything to the little buggers has got Charisse in full battle mode! Every evening there's a new battle cry coming from behind the computer: "Citrus, I'll get them with citrus!" or something like that. We honestly can't print most of her battle cries, this is a family blog after all but her determination is something fierce, Eric will vouch for that. We're super excited about the garden, though for now we're still harvesting at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods (and Safeway on occasion). Speaking of harvesting at Safeway, the last time we were there we came back with some rough cut short ribs, and decided to give the oven a good 6 hour workout. Seriously. This one braised for 5 hours the night before, then cooked for another hour before serving. When they say "falls off the bone" this is what they are talking about (who "they" are is a whole new topic). Not to mention this is on the healthier side of meat dishes, the braising draws out quite a bit of the fatty content which congeals on top and gets thrown out, which is pretty fun in and of itself. We've done braised short ribs before, but never like this, with a terrific tomato sauce. The trick to taking this from awesome to "omgwhatisthisitsamazingwliohwghagh" is letting it sit over night. All the flavors intermingle and intermix and the whole pot becomes a big pot of YUM.
