Ribs and date shakes

I wrote recently about our experiment in preparing ribs using the Instant Pot (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/03/cooking-and-celebrating.html). 

We had purchased the ribs at Costco, so we had 3 full racks. We had frozen two of the racks, but decided we had better go ahead and cook them, because we finished them on the grill, and we're not planning to take the grill with us when we leave Mesa (it is pretty rusted out and takes up a lot of space in the basement of Gracie). 

So, Wednesday night, before going to Organ Stop Pizza, we made the rub and put it on the two racks. We sealed them up in plastic wrap and left the rub to sink in for about a day. On Thursday afternoon, we put the two racks into the Instant Pot and cooked them, and then put the barbeque sauce on and Carl carmelized the sauce on the grill.

Ribs with sauce on them ready to go to the grill

On the grill -- they smelled wonderful!

It is funny when we are out biking around Venture Out, we'll smell other people's grilling and it always smells so good. Maybe we caused some other folks' stomachs to growl with our grilling!

The ribs tasted as good as they smell while cooking - yum!

We had also gotten dates a couple of days ago at Agritopia, and we had ice cream in the freezer taking up space, so we decided to make date shakes too.

Preparing to pit the dates

Carl pitted the dates (he said they were the freshest dates he has ever worked with!), then put them in water for about 20 minutes to soften them up even more. He then blended the dates, vanilla ice cream, and milk together.

Yum! They were very good!

Just a few of our culinary adventures!