Had my mom come visit me and made my ribs

My mom came to visit me so I had to make my ribs. I have not seen her in 3 years and I was stoked to see her.  From when I was 7 years old till now I was always on my own. My mom worked from 5am till 7pm and my dad worked from 7am till about 9pm at his normal job amd then his business he owned. My brother was the athlete so he had some sort of practice and this left me to do all the cooking for dinner.  I learned a lot through trial and error and came up with some great recipes over the years. My favorite are my ribs which I came up with when I was 12.  Since I can't work I am using my time in culinary school and having a blast. I will be posting up a lot of my cooking ventures here in the future. Here is my rib recipe.

Rib rub - Rub this on the ribs and put in fridge for about 24 Houra. Make sure to add the salt about 15 minutes before you cook so it does not dry it out. You can alter this to how big your slab it

• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons paprika
• 3/4 tablespoons salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Sauce

3 parts favorite bbq sauce - If I don't fully make it on my own I use sweet baby rays -  Don't get the brown sugar one cause you are already adding brown sugar

1 part ketchup

1 part catalina salad dressing  

1/4 cup brown sugar -- of course depends how much sauce you are making

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp of basil

Grill the racks on a normal grill for about 30 minutes. You want a good brown on both sides to lock in the juices while it is in the oven and give it a nice crunchy texture.

I use a large steaming pan for this. Here is my 3 slabs waiting for sauce.

I then liberally add my sauce and about a 1/4 cup of water.  I sprinkle some pre-cooked chopped garlic clovers and onions over the top.

I cover it with 3 layers of foil. I want to cook and steam it at the same time.  Cook at 300 degrees for 45 minutes and then take out and baste. Then cook at 250 degrees for 3 hours. Every hour take it out and baste making sure it does not dry out. If you have it covered properly you should not have any escaping air drying the meat out.

After it is all done you should have a very juicy fall off the bone delight. I am not the best at plating and presentation but the food speaks for itself.  As you can see from the picture I just lifted the bone and it fell right out...  PERFECT

Thanks for viewing

Rare Billinghurst reel??

 Trout Journeys has made a post about a rare Billinghurst reel that really caught my eye.  I love learning about the history of fly tying fishing.  I have always wanted to own a piece of  fly fishing history but for now I can only look at pictures.   Check out his blog as well, he has got some great posts

An original BILLINGHURST fly fishing reel pat. dated 1859. 

The rarest of the rare of all fly fishing reels ever made. It is the smallest version the 3 inch model with a fixed handle. 


William Billinghurst (1807-1880) produced reels of different sizes and materials, from small brass reels to giant sized nickel plated trolling reels¹ (though only one of these is currently known to exist). The most common, if any Billinghurst can be called that, is the nickel plated 2^nd version, or dual patent marked reels circa 1873 to 1880.


You can own one now......................

www.sidemountedreels.com

The only thing I have that I can see as history is I have a lot of old and rare style hooks.

Helping out Owl Jones on his trip to the west

I wanted to help Owl Jones out with his trip to Yellowstone and what better way is to send him some flies.  This is going to be a short post but here are 60 flies that will be leaving on Tuesday so hope he likes them and hope he can put them to good use!

THANK!! you Bullets and Biscuits -- I won a contest

Bullets and Biscuits had a contest where you stated your weirdest food combination to win a jar of strawberry and banana jam. I eat a lot of normal stuff but the only thing I could think of was toast with butter and ketchup.  Granted I eat ketchup with EVERYTHING it didn't seem to weird with me.  It started with breakfast making toast normally and my eggs. I always ate ketchup with my egg whites and used the toast to soak up the yokes.  Well I got too excited when I was squeezing the ketchup and made a huge mound that I would have ended up throwing half of it away.  So......  I decided to use the rest of my toast and I was hooked.  Needless to say I won along with a couple others and I am a HUGE jam fan.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't sitting at the mailbox every time the mailman came crossing my fingers it came.  Sitting at the mailbox for literally 30 minutes in  109 degree weather paid off today!!  I got a priority package in a small box and became very excited!!  I would not let the mailman leave until he tasted it!  So I literally ripped the box open and the pretty red padding went everywhere..  I cracked the bottle open and broke the seal with my key.  I booked into my house to grab a knife so the mailman could taste it. He got the first taste and a huge smile came to his face.  I couldn't wait so the white trash in me dipped my most likely dirty finger in and took my first taste hmmmmmmmmmmmmm......  Is all I could say!  It was amazing and just wanted to thank him for sending it to me.  Now for the real taste test.

I tried to put everything back together since I already opened it to show how it came.

Doesn't that look amazing!!  Chunks of banana greatness mixed perfectly.

Here is the start to my weirdness!  Toasted me a nice piece and cut it in half.  On the left, butter and Jam.  On the right, butter and ketchup.

To do it right I took a bite out of each one. I already knew I was expecting with the ketchup so after I took the bite with the Jam......
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The ketchup went into the trash :)  Thanks again for bullets and biscuits for holding this and the Jam is AMAZING!!  I will be cooking some pork chops and use this as a sauce.

F - Midge ---- Step by Step

I have been playing around with midges lately and found this pattern online. I changed the colors a little and added deer hair for the hackle.  Also just a side note I tied these in a thin wire scud hook but when I wanted to do the step by step I found I ran out of them so for this I had to use the thicker wire which is wrong for the pattern and could sink it. This is a real cool pattern that dumps the hook below the surface replicating the midge coming to the surface.  I found this pattern at http://www.barbosconmosca.com/

F - Midge

Hook:  Any light wire scud hook size 12-20

Thread: Olive 8/0

Tail: Callibaetis colored CDC

Rear Body: Black Floss

Rib: Chartreuse UTC 140

Wing: Callibaetis colored CDC

Upper Body: Peacock Black Dazzle Dubbing

Spinning Wire: Small wire

Hackle: Natural deer hair

Start your thread and take it to the middle of the hook.

Your tail should be about half the length of the shank.  Tie that in and make sure it is secure. I just use the tip of the feather.

Tie in your black floss and then tie in the UTC chartreuse thread. 

Wrap your floss leaving a little under 1/3 of the shank. Now rib your chartreuse thread making 5-6 ribs. This thread tends to spread out as you wrap it but I like it cause it makes the black kinda show through.

Now tie in the copper wire at the front of the hook. You may do this as your first step in the fly but it tends to get in the way.

Tie in 3 CDC feathers from the tip and wrap to the end of the floss.

Making a ball with the CDC by folding it over itself and tie it off.

Now dub your dazzle dubbing thicker at the tie off point of the CDC and taper it smaller towards the eye.  From here you can tie off your thread. You can bunch the wire up to make it easier to whip finish.

Cut your deer hair and stack it. I use a semi small clump.  A pencil size clump should do. It you do use too much hair it can be clipped off from the top after it is spun.

Using anything with a hook spin the wire. The hair will start to spin and flare out. Make sure not to over spin the wire of you could break it off.  Clip the wire however close you want.  Now add some super glue to the top of the wire and you are now done. Bend the wire forward a little like shown.

This is how the fly will sit in the water.

THANKS EVERYONE FOR LOOKING AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK AND IF YOU GIVE IT A TRY

Some recent home improvements - Another reason I love garage sales!!

This is not fishing related but I felt I needed to show why I have not been posting lately :)  I went to a garage sale looking for tying stuff and found hundreds and hundreds of tile for $10.  I always wanted to get rid of all my vinyl flooring and this was my kick in the pants to do it.  My house is a cookie cutter house where every 4th house is the same and want mine to stand out. It was a foreclosed house and the people before took EVERYTHING out!  Ceiling fans, vanities, and even down to the light switch covers.  It was a deal I could not pass up and knew I had my work cut out for me. I purchased it when I had an amazing job and was VERY affordable at the time. Not being able to work now has really slowed it down since I am doing everything to keep the house!  It is my first house and quite attached to it.  But I have been able to keep up with payments as of now so that is one less thing to worry about. I love working on my house cause it gets my mind off other stuff and that feeling of accomplishment.  I will be able to do my kitchen and also the upstairs bathroom as well with this tile. Here is what I got done so far.

These are the tiles I picked up.

This has been the biggest project. My father for my birthday bought my bricks for me and then it was on! I have been working on this for a couple weeks.  110 degree weather has made it quite rough!!  This RV side was just dirt and needed a make over.

You can't really tell from this picture but it goes all the way to the sidewalk.  I am quite proud of this addition since I really am not the biggest handy man.

Thanks for viewing!  

Owl Jones spotted in VEGAS

www.owljones.com was nice enough to send me some stickers and I had to put them on my cars.  Now I need to contact Christian at the The tailing loop to send me a couple more so I can do the same. I LOVE being able to support our fly fishing friends cause it is people like these that make our sport fun and the ability to network with these guys is AMAZING!!   Now if I can get Cofisher and Mysteries Internal to make some stickers than the offer is up to them as well for my window space :)  oh and of course Trout Magee!!  As far as the header, Thanks to everyone that responded!!  I will contact you within the day. I had some medical stuff I had to take care of over last weekend so sorry for the lack of response!