The Ranch Kitchen: Cajun Baby Back Ribs

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Happy New Year from The Ranch Kitchen! Foods for good luck!

Crazy to think we are about to close off the year 2015! I remember thinking as young woman how old I would be in 2015... Well I am a bit older, hopefully a bit wiser and life is speeding by, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

As we look forward to tonight, our New Year's Day celebrations or simple family meals, here are some tried and true recipes that are good luck foods. We always try eat to these recipes to bring us prosperity and good health in the year ahead.

One of my favorite appetizers to serve on New Year's Eve is this The Ranch Kitchen's Black-eyed Pea Salsa. It's a fast and easy side to make and is great with corn tortilla chips or as a side vegetable. I love to serve it in a large over-sized champagne glass or footed crystal bowl for some height with the chips underneath it. There is seldom any of this left, but if there is and you make a ton it will keep up to one week in your refrigerator.

Click here for the recipe for The Ranch Kitchen's Black-eyed Pea Salsa

Each New Year's day I also make sure to cook a pot of black-eyed peas from scratch on my stove-top. I'm a little silly about eating it out of the can as I think I have to cook it to have the good luck. But if I had to I would as we are that superstitious about it! These are one of my very favorite peas and one thing we always make sure they are full of is some smoked ham.

You can eat the black-eyed peas alone or over white rice and make your own Hoppin' John dish. I usually make around two pounds of black-eyed peas so that we can take them out with our other evening meals the next few nights. One note is to buy your black-eyed peas early on New Year's Eve or before as the stores are always sold out. And I have been known to cook them in a crock pot beginning at midnight of the new year to have them ready the next a.m. for lunch.

Click here for The Ranch Kitchen's Black-eyed Peas

At our house, you also have to make sure you make my Granny's Wilted Cabbage. Cabbage is a sure fire way they say to have wealth and prosperity in the new year ahead...so we always make sure to eat a ton of it! This is as close as I can remember her recipe and we really do love it. The surprise is the mustard that you add to the cabbage. Don't add too much mustard or it will overpower your cabbage. The mustard really gives it an added kick. We rarely have much left of this cabbage recipe. You can also add smoked ham or Kielbasa sausage to it to make a complete meal.

Click here for Granny's Wilted Cabbage

And last try these Baby Back Ribs because anyone can cook them, you don't have to have a grill and can even get them done on a counter top oven. The trick is to spray your foil with oil, season liberally with your favorite Cajun Seasoning like Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning and cook away.

My husband's mom, Billie Nolan always served up ribs on New Year's Day at her house along with sauerkraut as her cabbage side dish. It was always a great lunch and welcomed meal after a night out the evening before. Our tradition the last few years was for Scott to smoke the ribs on his smoker, but in a pinch or when it's up to me to make them this was always my go to recipe. You can baste these ribs with BBQ sauce ten minutes before taking off the grill, just before serving or eat alone as they are that good.

I like to make huge double or triple batches and use the left over rib meat in pork enchiladas using my King Ranch Chicken recipe. We will miss her lunch this year as she is now watching down from heaven on us, but will eat these quickly before we head to Houston to take our Bethany for her internship there. We wish her the best and are going to miss her.

Click here for The Ranch Kitchen's Baby Back Ribs Recipe

I hope these food help bring you the very best year yet. To say I am excited about the year ahead is an understatement. As we all know luck is what you make it. It's truly about how hard you work to achieve your goals and to have a little fun in the process.

So here's to slimming down, blogging more for me, making time for yourselves and loving your families, friends and life.

Enjoy your evening with family and friends and from our ranch to your home - Happy New Year!

Alise - The Ranch Kitchen

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Traditional New Year's Day Foods

Many people have superstitions and in our house, we only have a few... They are like most people in the south and only in regards to New Year's Day and eating the traditional foods that are said to bring luck, prosperity - good fortune in the year ahead.

Each year I do my best to purchase my black eyed peas from the grocery store a month or more before the new year. If you wait to late, you are sometimes scrambling for both your black eyed peas and your cabbage. Last night I braved a local Walmart and bought one of the last ten heads of cabbage in the store. Rather guiltily I bought two head, because I had to prepare my cabbage two ways, both on the stove top and then raw in a cabbage slaw for the next days lunch. My black eyed peas I'd bought a month earlier along with my holiday grocery shopping in the bulk two pound package.

History says the tradition of cooking black eyed peas comes from the Civil War when Northerner's burnt the Southerner's fields as wars go. They left the black eyed peas in the fields because they thought they were not meant for people to eat, but for their animals. The Southerner's made many a meal off their left behind black eyed peas and felt 'lucky' for having them. A tradition was born.

I thank my mother, a teacher at heart for this history lesson today as we sat and ate our New Year's Day meal together. Once a teacher, always a teacher, and from her you know why we eat our black eyed peas.

As history also tells us collard greens were another food left in the wake of the war and being green in color as was cabbage, the southerner's again felt lucky to have it and with their rich nutrient value helped them survive after the long war and subsequent loss of their food supplies.

Pork is eaten because they always 'root' or dig in the ground in a forward direction and that in turn leads to 'looking forward' in to the new year ahead. So, in our house like my husband's growing up, we cook pork ribs because it's his families tradition. I want my girls to always experience some of traditions from the Nolans.

It was always my families tradition growing up to eat our cabbage and black eyed peas. Our youngest daughter turned up her nose today, but she ate it with a smile and as my Grandfather Herbert Young would have said as my mom reminded her, 'Eat it, like you like it!' Someday her 'educated taste' as he also called it will mature and she'll hopefully love it like we all do.

So today, we ate our lucky foods with The Ranch Kitchen's Black Eyed Peas, Stove Pot Cabbage, Cajun Baby Back Ribs, cornbread, 'Sure' Is the Best Broccoli Rice Casserole and Cole Slaw Dressing. The cole slaw dressing or 'slaw' as we call it in the south was especially for our Steve since he doesn't like any vegetable cooked. So he also had his broccoli rice casserole in a side dish without the broccoli or the onions. I think we might be spoiling him just a little, but we couldn't do what we do on our ranch without him.

Click on the blue'd links below the food dishes for all the recipes.