[conspire] 8+ lbs. raw pork spare ribs

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bruce Coston (jane_ikari at yahoo.com):

> 8+ lbs. raw pork spare ribs :bought it, bringing it,
> any suggestions on what to do before cabal, as i will
> need to do any marinading when i move it from freezer
> to fridge tomorrow morning.

Well, you know, that's sort of where the main possibilties for
creativity lie, isn't it?

I recently had pretty good luck with a marinade I saw suggested
somewhere on the Net:  ground mustard seed (not much!  1-2 tsp is
plenty), honey, crushed garlic, and canola oil.  (Yes, I know.  No need
to repeat that feeble joke about canola yet again.  ;-> )

I guess the secret is to know how daring is enough but not too much.
The lazy man's way is to just use a jar of somebody's barbecue sauce.
If in doubt, you can't go too far wrong with that.

As it happens, I've gotten one of those 6 lb pork roasts y'all have seen
before at CABAL meetings, and am probably going to use that
tried-and-true marinade seen frequently in the past:  Sour fruit soup
concentrate (from the New Wing Yuan Market in Sunnyvale), grated ginger,
crushed garlic, cooking sherry, soy sauce.  Poke the roast a bunch of
times with a serving fork, to make it more permeable, pour the marinade
into a big plastic bag, drop the roast into it, tie the bag over it so
that the marinade contacts it on all sides, let soak in the refrigerator
1+ day, pour roast + marinade back out onto a roasting pan for
slow-cooking in a 300 degree-or-so oven.

Pork doesn't fit everyone's diets, of course (various reasons), but has
the advantage that marinade penetrates a bit better than with beef or
(the stuff you yourself can't eat:) poultry.  Of those, poultry is by
far worst:  I couldn't get my marinade to flavour _that_ meat hardly at
all.

For any vegetarians reading this, hey, I'm sorry, but at least we make
available a well-cleaned oven, stove, and pots/pans for your
no-animal-products convenience.

Anyhow, 8 lb, huh?  That's a lot of meat.


In a desparate last-minute attempt to make this post on-topic for a
Linux user group mailing list:

> may try some stuff at ross's tinight re dvd problems under mepis and
> kanotix but my burner works for now. and see below re m/b.

I'm downloading a fresh image of SimplyMEPIS 3.3.1-1, just in case
there's any doubt about integrity.

Stuff I don't have current plans to download prior to this Saturday's
meeting, unless someone speaks up and says "I want to install that and
would really appreciate your burning it for me":

o  Beta 3 of the fully-redistributable SUSE 10 is now available for
   download (5 binary CD images; versions for i386, x86_64, and PPC).

o  Ditto beta 3 of Mandriva 2006 for i586 (3 binary CDs).

o  Also, there's an initial single-CD image of "Freespire", the freely 
   redistributable (and, in fact, all open-source) community variant of
   Linspire.