Uli

I hope you don't mind if I hijack your thread a bit, LizD: My partner and I are going to Columbus next Saturday for a concert at the Southern Theatre, which, I gather by google maps, is downtown Columbus. We're staying at the Country Inn and Suites about 10 miles west of the theatre off I-70. We'd like to have a nice dinner before the concert, but would rather not drive all over heck and back and risk getting lost. I've been toiling away on Google, but it's just a little challenging between finding a restaurant that sounds good, then mapping it, yadda yadda -- so I'm hoping someone here can help us:) Sushi, Thai, or Indian preferred somewhere near hotel or theatre or reasonably in between? Molly Woo's seemed promising on opentable, but unless there's a separate sushi menu not shown on the website -- their claims of 'sushi fresh from Japan!' are a little, erm, robust (there's only 6 rolls on the menu, no sashimi, etc). Plus, I think it's out of the way. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, man -- I wish it was chickens you had. For some inexplicable reason, my sweetie refuses to eat lamb. This is a continual source of sadness for me. Congrats on the birth of those rams, though:)

So, the ribs I posted about up there turned out very well, so well, in fact that I woke up in the middle of the night to munch on the leftovers. The posole seems to have turned out well, too. I froze most of it and just had a taste, but the pork was very tender and the broth had a nice flavor. I used kernal corn instead of hominy because it's what I had and because we don't really like the texture of hominy. I also did a pork confit over the weekend from a recipe I found on epicurious. It's supposed to sit in the fridge for at least 2 weeks, but I couldn't help having a little taste as I was jarring it, and it was very nice, lots of strong herb flavors. Yesterday I made cream of mushroom soup and added big sausage meatballs that I had baked before adding to the soup -- yummy! I'm so glad I posted here -- I think I was in a bit of a 'pork rut', we had gotten a bit bored. But, now I'm newly inspired. divalasvegas, haha, if only you lived closer (we're in southern Michigan), we'd be more than happy to share our plethora of pork! HungryC thanks so much for the grinding recommendation -- I blame you for my meatball idea of yesterday. I'm also going to experiment with some pork stir fries, which will be a nice change. Thanks everyone for all the ideas:) You saved us from pork boredom!

I just put the ribs in the oven. I think i did a sort of combo of the above suggestions -- made a bed of celery, carrots, whole garlic cloves, and onions - sprinkled that with olive oil and a bit of lemon, s&p -- rubbed the 4 racks of baby backs with a mixture of s & p, dry mustard, paprika, and sage. Now, they're in the oven, tented with foil, hopefully travelling slowly along their path to yumminess:) I'm about to start a slightly modified batch of that pasole recipe, too. Thanks for all the inspiration!

Well, this place is clearly very awesome! I'm slowly working my way through that pork search. I'm going to try a combo of these wonderful rib recipes you've all shared tomorrow -- I'll report back. Thanks so much, everyone:) Oh, and so that I'm contributing, as well: soaking pork chops in generously salted milk for a couple hours prior to cooking produces wonderful results.

Hi - I'm new here, this is my first post. My partner works on a large pig farm. One of the perks of her job is that we get the equivalent of two entire pigs per year, one in the winter, one in the summer. The pigs go from the farm to the local processor, who offers a good, but somewhat limited, selection of cuts, sausages, etc. I try to change our order up each time for variety, but what we get is always partly a surprise, for reasons I haven't yet been able to figure out Anyways, this time around, I have a ridiculous amount of pork chops, some spare ribs, baby back ribs, tenderloin roasts, lots of sausage patties (some Italian, some sagey) and bacon, a couple hams, and several packages of pork steaks. My long, rambling point is: hit me with your favorite pork/ham recipes and techniques using the above cuts, please and thank you:) I'm especially in need of ideas on how to make delicious baby back ribs without a grill -- past efforts at boiling then broiling have falied miserably.