Korean-style ribs, FINALLY!!

**NOTE OF WARNING: Please excuse the messy kitchen!! In this case sleepiness is trumping shame, so I'm not bothering to edit the clutter out of the pictures. I am definitely working on it...I'll be PROMing the kitchen soon**

So the ribs are finally in the crock, after 40 minutes of trying to wrestle to cut them up. I wish I was joking. These things were frozen solid. Part of the reason it took so long is because I had to stop every 2-3 minutes to get feeling back in my fingers. I'll upload pictures of the epic battle later. (Edit: since not everyone wants to see raw meat, I wont post pictures here, but if you want to see my efforts so you can applaud my force, ingenuity, and perseverance, go to my photobucket

Anyway, here is what I mixed up for my "Soy sauce"

1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup+1tbsp water
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp Red Wine Vinegar
2 tsp Sushi vinegar
1/8 tsp salt

It yields somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cups, depending on how much honey and ketchup you're able to scrape out of the measuring cups.

I'll update this post later, just wanted to get the soy (fake crab=krab, fake soy=soi?) sauce recipe up before the dogs manage to lick it off the dry erase board...

Update:

Oh my goodness. These are amazing!!! While waiting for the pictures to upload, I keep getting up and sneaking bites out of the crockpot. Yes, they're that good. Once I got them in the pot (with the help of my wonderful husband, who did a fabulous job bulleting the brown sugar for me), I turned it on high for 40 minutes while getting ready for our lovely sushi date. I then put it on low for 8 hours when we went out. Wow. It smelled so good I didn't even care how sick it made me feel (husband and I tend to eat WAAAAY to much sushi when we go out. What? We had a coupon!! For the best sushi place in town, no less. Don't you judge me -_-)

I stayed up so I could taste them warm, and around 2ish (1 hour left to cook) I went to flip them over. Because they were so big, I had to stack them in the crock pot, so I wanted to make sure that the top layer got just as much flavor as the bottom layer had. I shouldn't have worried, as there was plenty of liquid to cook the top layer as well. However, I had to fight to flip them over, because I couldn't touch them without the meat falling off the bones!!!!! That made me a little nervous, but I am pleased to report that it was merely out of heavenly tenderness (which is great because DH doesn't like to eat ribs off the bone, says they're too messy for too little meat). I am so very pleased. We'll have leftovers for a while, and I have no qualms feeding them to our foodie friend who is coming to stay the weekend. The soy sauce alternative worked out great, and while I don't have the original to compare them to, I think this first attempt worked out pretty well, and there will be no complaints in my house. Such flavor!

*Update-Upon further tasting, the tops of the top layer did get a little dry and chewy, but as I will be storing them in a bit of their own liquid, it shouldn't be a problem.

Update again-I tried putting the pictures on here, but they were cut off, so i'll have to downsize them tomorrow and try again. Right now, I have to put the food away and try to cram in a few hours of sleep before going to get things prepped for my sister's baby shower!! Good night!

-Janelle
(Remorseful Nightowl)

Epic fail!!

So today was a bust. After getting my car I was in so much pain that I had to take some vicodin which, well, knocked me right out until my dr. appointment. Needless to say there is NOTHING in the slow cooker right now (except that "science experiment" as a good friend called it). Instead I am sitting on my back deck eating a cucumber and watching the dogs sniff around. Dinner tonight will instead consist of noodles with either soy-free spaghetti sauce or just canned tomatoes and olive oil, crusty bread with THIS roasted garlic recipe (I couldn't find Alton Brown's on foodnetwork...??). Dessert will be THIS mini-crock brie recipe with strawberry jam and fresh strawberries. Minues the pecans and cranberries. On the plus side though I got the Brie on clearance!!!! Half off in fact, $2.99 for 4 oz!!

Dinner Math:
4 bulbs of garlic- $1.47
Brie-$3.99
Crusty Italian Bread-$2.00
Strawberries-$2.50/2 pounds (Will have to double check with DH on that one)

The pasta, crackers, jam, can of tomatoes and leftover broccoli probably come out to be $1.50 for what we'll use tonight

GRAND TOTAL: $9.96

The leftovers will keep us fed for several days and I am REALLY looking forward to the brie tonight. I'll keep that a surprise from the husband until its ready XD

I decided to give the bananas another day or two to get really ripe and easier to mash up. But I am definitely going to shoot for the rib/potato meal tomorrow. I work from 2:45-9:00 tomorrow, so I'll likely get everything going around 1:00 and it will be ready when I get home.

Off to cook now. Ill take pictures and everything!!

-Janelle (Remarkably well-rested now)-

P.S. Anyone have good recipes that include dog meat? We're about to have a whole bunch around here if the doggies don't shape up. *Evil eyes*
P.P.S. Only joking, I love my doggies. I just don't love their hole-digging, wrestling, not-going-in-her-room-so-i-have-to-chase-her-all-around-the-basement-for-10-minutes-ing. *Takes a deep breath* Right, off to cook...

...And so it begins...

I've spent the last 5 hours looking through recipe blogs (mostly this one, which is my ultimate current uber-favorite) and I realized that there a lot of recipes that I shy away from mostly because of the soy content. So many recipes call for soy sauce in marinades, and so many ingredients contain soy-especially ingredients for easy meals. So inspired by Steph, I've decided to become a guinea pig and start trying out alterations of recipes that I find so that I can eat dinner without putting quite so much work into it. I hope to use this blog to chronicle my (mis)adventures trying to eat soy-free, to compile recipes, to aid other soy-intolerant readers and to befriend other foodie-bloggers. It will likely also contain some gardening exploits (I'm hoping to grow my own veggies and herbs in the near future) and tips for saving money and shopping more rationally.

(If you don't want to read my intro, just scroll til you see the row of asterisks...)

Perhaps this calls for an introduction. About 5 years ago, I decided to try being vegetarian for a month (this was minutes finishing my all-you-can-eat chicken dinner at the Bavarian Inn in Frankenmuth, MI). Things went well for the first few days, I had no problem with cereal in the morning, and pb&j for lunch and dinner. Then I tried my first boca burger. Let's just say that didn't go well. It all seemed to go downhill from there. Now in small amounts soy gives me a fever and makes me drowsy. In large amounts it gives me flu-like symptoms. 'Nuff said.

By the time I narrowed down the cause of my seemingly random illnesses, I was engaged and living with my soon-to-be DH in our condo. And discovering that I LOVED to cook. (2.5 years later I am still learning how to cook within a reasonable timeframe, but that's for another day). Much has happened since those first days of cooking-making amazing steaks and ruining Kraft Mac-n-cheese...I don't get it either. We added two dogs to our family, got married, bought a house, and we are probably close to halfway unpacked!!! -_- Life for us is chaotic, and cooking is my tranquil time of somewhat organized chaos.

This has probably rambled on far too long now (boo kidney stones, yay vicodin!!), so I'll just dive into dinner plans for tomorrow.

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This is the plan for tonight. I will be using some way hella-frozen pork ribs that have been in the freezer since....never mind, I'm too scared to check the date. 5 jalapenos (I'm not a huge fan, but DH loves them so I wont omit completely). And-somehow-a soy sauce substitute. I've made some in the past by mixing random ingredients together (sweet and sour sauce, duck sauce, plum sauce, honey, A1, worcestershire, jam, ketchcup, barbecue sauce) but I've never gotten around to writing down a specific recipe. Hopefully today will be the day.

I am also planning baked potatoes, leftover broccoli (with the Magic Bullet nacho cheese recipe to drizzle over both...I know, I'm terrible...) and maybe some sort of banana dessert as I went a little....wait for it......"bananas" at the store the other day. (Please forgive me...it's the vicodin, I swear!!) But for .39/lb how could i resist??? I will likely go with this recipe for banana bread. It is the greatest banana bread ever, and I'm not a big fan of banana in most forms. (Although if you have any good banana recipes please feel free to change my mind!)

Shopping List:
-8 russet potatoes
-6 jalapenos (one for mixing in the nacho cheese sauce)
-Frozen coke (If I'm getting up in 2.5 hours, you bet I'm going to be running on pure caffeine today!!!!)

6 am-DH will drive me to pick up my car
6:30 am-running to the store for ingredients
7:30 am-hopefully leaving the store? maybe?
8:00 am-Cleaning 7 inches of science experiment out of slow cooker (don't ask)
9:30 am-Whipping up faux-soy sauce (KEEPING TRACK OF INGREDIENTS AND PROPORTIONS)
10 am-putting ribs in on high for 1 hour
11 am-putting ribs on low, nap???
2:30 pm-Dr. for more vicodin, or a reason why this kidney pain hasnt stopped (and more vicodin?)
5 pm-Start baked potatoes in oven
6:30 pm-Get banana bread ready to go in oven as soon as potatoes come out
7 pm-Wow and amaze DH when he gets home from work. Pray that the food tastes good.
8 pm-Enjoy banana bread. Fall asleep shortly after (if not during) dessert

Day one of soy-free starts in approximately 2.5 hours. Ready, set, go!!!

~Janelle (Queen of parenthetical statements!!)

P.S. Please let me know what you think if you stumble across this blog! Any input will do, even a "You suck!" comment will let me know that I am not posting to an empty internet...