My wife has been on vacation for the last week. We did a lot of neat things while she was off. We also made a lot of good food. So, I'm going to blog about our wonderful week and inter twine some recipes in here that I made over the week.
First off me and Angela rented a nice secluded Cabin in Missouri for our 5 year Anniversary. Kid Free! We we're more than ready! So we arrived last Friday to our love nest for 3 nights in Cherryville, MO
Our cabin was named Jude's Dream after the owner Judy, whoever Judy is! She must be rich though because her and her husband owned the 100 acres that our cabin was on along with about 7 other cabins.
Anyway, here are some snaps of the inside:
Here is our porch where we sat a lot at night. That overlooked tree's. Ton's of trees!
Now, with all of these great Amenities. Including satellite TV, central air, and a Jacuzzi, we didn't want to sit in the air all weekend because my wife is a very outdoors person. I like the best of both worlds, especially when the temperature is above 100 degrees which it was this weekend. But we opted to load up our cooler and drive a short way down to the spring fed creek for the day!
It was really nice to do absolutely nothing!! The water felt great! We drank some beer, and I did some fishing! Drank a little whiskey! and had great conversations. After 4 or 5 hours of sun though it was time to get back. Hit the Jacuzzi, and fire up the Grill. Tonight we we're having Coffee encrusted cowboy Rib eye's, with grilled fries and Chipotle ketchup!
Directions & Ingredients
I picked up two nice thick bone-in Rib eye's from my meat market. Now, for the coffee rub I ground up:
- 1 tbsp coffee
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp all spice
- 1 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp coarse black pepper
- 1/2 tsp smoke paprika
I made the rub a day before. Rubbed them really good, then refrigerated them in a zippy until they we're ready for the grill! I like mine Med-Rare for best flavor. Make sure you have a nice HOT grill for searing and crusting that coffee rub. For my grill fries, I just put 2 Idaho potatoes in a bag and nuke them for 5 minutes. Remove them, let cool, then quarter them long way. Drizzle on a little EVOO, salt pepper, garlic and paprika. Crisp them on the grill. The ketchup is just 1/2 cup ketchup, 3 tbsp of Adobo sauce from canned chipotles, and a dash of honey.
So we got our bellies full the 1st night. Tied a pretty good one and stayed up late!!!! Fun!!!
Day 2
My wife would always wake up fairly early and make coffee. She loves coffee, but I only drink it on vacation. I could sleep all day if she would let me, but it's nice to get up and get moving at a decent hour. Back to the creek for the day. We we're pretty laid back on this day because we we're hurting a little from the night before, lol. Just sat in the creek and enjoyed the day. Once we got back I fired up the grill for our second night of dinner! Tonight I did, Bacon wrapped whiskey glazed pork chops with spiced apples.
Directions & Ingredients
- 2 thick pork chops
- 1 cup of Whiskey
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 strips of bacon
- tbsp adobo sauce
Wrap your pork with the bacon, and put all other ingredients in a saucepan and reduce down by half for about 30 or 40 minutes on med-high. Let glaze cool then pour into a Tupperware dish. Brush on the glaze all throughout the grilling process. Sorry didn't have any pics.
For the spiced apples, I roughly chopped up 2 red apples, added a tbsp of butter, 1/4 cup of whiskey, 1/2 cup brown sugar, t tbsp cinnamon. Cooked them on medium for about 30 minutes until they we're soft.
We made some daiquiris and took it easy this night. My wife went to bed about 10, and I stayed up watching funny home videos till about 2.
Day 3
Woke up to another beautiful Day! Decided to make my wife some Biscuits and bacon gravy. I generally make Sausage gravy. But I wanted to consolidate our food list to make it easier and cheaper so I went with bacon. I always use Pillsbury Grands butter flavor biscuits. For my gravy I simply browned up about 7 chopped pieced of bacon. added 3 tbsp of flour into the grease until it was a darker tan, then I poured in a little bit of whole milk and whisked while on med high heat until it started thickening up. Then I would add a little more until I had the amount I wanted. Then I hit it with a good amount of black pepper and some salt and mixed in the bacon pieces. Oh ya! You have to use a cast iron skillet too!!!
Off to the creek we went after breakfast for our last day of fun & sun!! We loaded up our cooler with some rum, and more beer. This day was so fun. I caught a quick buzz drinking rum and diets. We came up with a game called flip flop races. We would each throw 1 flip flop upstream about 15ft, and whoever floated back first would win. Whoever lost had to do a shot, LOL Toward the end of the day we started collecting crawdads as I had decided if we get a half dozen, I'd cook them up. My wife was like an old pro at spotting these little guys. It was a blast though and we caught 6.
So after our last day of fun in the creek we returned to our cabin to make a dinner. I was a little tipsy. So for dinner I made 3/4 lb old fashioned bacon Cheeseburgers with more grill fries, chipotle ketchup and NOW, crawfish!
This was my grill area all weekend. they had a charcoal Weber. Perfect!
If you want to make Crawfish it's really easy. Just keep them alive in water until it's time to eat them. Put them in a calender and wash them off. For my boil I did water, chipotle sauce, garlic, olive oil, salt, and smoked paprika. Got it boiling and dropped them in for about 5 or 6 minutes. They didn't take long at all. They turn a real nice red once they're finished. The only meat you going to get is the tail meat. So don't even waste your time with the claws, legs etc. You can suck the brain out but that's up to you. It was all delicious!! But we could only eat half of our burgers. They we're huge!!!!
It was an amazing weekend!! It went too fast but we made some great memories!! Once returned home in Illinois my wife and son went to a water park on Thursday, and then on Friday we took our son Ty to Six Flags for the first time. For being 6 he amazed me how brave he was. He rode basically every ride he was tall enough for including the roller coasters. My wife is even crazier. She rode the Superman Tower of Power which takes you up 150 ft. on a cable then just drops you at 50 mph with no warning. She's the one covering her face after it was over, lol
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Here are some more pics from Six Flags:
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Another amazing day with the fam!
Saturday we celebrated Independence Day by having a bonfire at my mothers house. It's an annual thing she does every year. It's really fun because all of our friends and family get together and eat, play guitars, and sit around a huge bonfire. They have a great setup with a couple acres in the county. This year they got a pony barrel of Bud Light, woot, woot!! As a matter of fact we we're doing Keg stands and shotgunning beer by midnight. Including my mother, LOL It was awesome!!!!
The fun part for me though was grilling and smoking all the food. We had a big pork shoulder, a big pork butt, chicken legs, chicken breasts, about 30 polish sausages, and a big slab of Ribs. I used my special rub blend to rub the meat.
Ryno's Good Rub
equal parts:
garlic powder
white pepper
kosher salt
coriander
smoked paprika
brown sugar
We had so much meat I had to use three grills.
I had to build a divider out of foil and firewood to separate my blocks of Hickory. Everything turned out good though, and we had an amazing time.
So that's it! I'm sad this week had to end! I had such a wonderful time with my family all week. I'm pretty sure my wife enjoyed her time off from work too! I'll get back to the regular recipes soon! Thanks for letting me share this special week with you!!
