Company Pork

Guest Food We had the wife's family here for the past four days.  While working up the menus I decided to step up the coffee for them,  and bought a 12 ounce bag of Seattle's Finest because it was, at $9.79,  the cheapest premium blend Giant carried.. God help me. I'm not a coffee snob, and we've been happy with Wal-Mart coffee—I buy it by the case, home delivered—but that there Seattle coffee is so noticeably better that I can't go home again.  The good news is that WalMart sells it for $6 the bag delivered.  I ordered 6 bags (and some paper towels) so there was no tax or freight.  What the hell,  we only use one ounce of coffee a day (8 cups), so one bag will last—let's call it two weeks—so six bags will last—lets call it 3 months.  Just 40¢ a day.  Piece of cake. On the topic of guest food, I made spare ribs Saturday.  Remember that oven pulled pork recipe?  Well I prepared my 4 slabs of ribs the same exact way.  Brined, slathered, rubbed and baked in foil sealed pans.  The only concession I made for the lighter mass was to bake @ 275° for about 45 minutes, then @300° for about 45 minutes, and then 325° for one hour.  But wait!  When I took the foil off and tasted the sauce all I could taste was pepper!  WTF?  Maye I screwed up the dry rub?  I rubbed a handful of brown sugar on each slab and let them crust up for an hour at 275° (while watching to make sure the sugar didn't burn).  For about the last 10 minutes I turned the heat up to 500°.   I anticipated that the whole lot would be a bust, but no!  In fact, they were hands-down the best ribs I've ever made, maybe ever had!-and that was the table's  consensus too. I mean, perfect.  Not quite falling off the bone, and firm enough that when you bit into them the bite mark remained. A sign of perfection.  FWIW, I also made this recipe  for pork and bean.  Result was much better than I anticipated.  Quite wonderful in fact,  despite using only about 12 ounces of  pork roast that I had in the freezer. Damn I miss Saturday Terp  basketball.