Roll Up Your Sleeves and Dig Into Some Ribs

This past weekend, I had the good fortune of spending the weekend at my friend Sheri’s family beach house. There’s nothing like the sweet fragrance of beach plums, the feel of soft sand between your toes, and a great grilling adventure with friends to revitalize the soul.

After flipping through the Get Out and Grill recipes, we all agreed that the Cherry Cola Ribs were the way to go. Just the thought of grilling up ribs made us hungry. I mean who doesn’t love ribs? They’re smoky, sweet, sticky, messy and have summer written all over them. For the side dish, we decided on the Grilled Sweet Pepper Poppers, partly because we liked saying “Pepper Poppers,” but also because the recipe sounded tasty and they were so darned cute in the picture. What resulted was a memorable food frenzy we will not soon forget!

Rib-tastic!
I have never made ribs on the grill and have probably only made them a couple times in the oven. So I was a bit nervous about tackling them. But I have had great success with the Get Out and Grill recipes thus far, so I figured if I followed the recipe, all would be fine – and delicious. And, once again, success! Very easy, too, but there are a few things that are I discovered along that way that I thought you all might find helpful:

1. Read the whole recipe through before you start. There are 3 phases to these ribs and it’s
    good to get your head around how much time you’ll need and the ingredients and tools
    you’ll need to get the job done. Tip: Put the Cherry Cola in with the ribs in the morning and
    go to the beach for the day!

2. When you wrap the tin foil around the ribs, secure them tightly in there because you’ll be
    pouring a little more Cherry Cola in the packets and you don’t want the liquid to leak out.
    You may need 2 pieces of tin foil because one prick with a knife or fork and you could
    spring a leak.

3. Place your ribs meat-side up and keep an eye on them! Don’t just leave them there for 45
    minutes. Every grill is different and you may find that your ribs are done in 30 minutes like
    we did. We had the grill set to medium but it was more like medium/hot so we turned the
    grill down but they still cooked up rather quickly. Once the meat starts pulling away from
    the bones, they are done.

4. Reserve half of your Barbecue Sauce & Cherry Jam mixture (which is SO delicious by the
    way). Make sure you don’t use all of this mixture to baste your ribs. It’s great to have some
    at the table that everyone can put on the ribs themselves for some extra sweet, smoky,
    sticky goodness.

5. Ribs are clearly not a fine dining experience. Get a roll of paper towels out and let
    everyone have at the ribs. You’re amongst friends so who cares how messy you get. Just
    enjoy!

Pepper Poppers - as fun to say as they are to eat
I love grilled peppers and have made them almost every time I have grilled this summer but just as is, not stuffed in any way. So I was excited to try the Grilled Sweet Pepper Poppers recipe, which are sliced in half; filled with onions, tomatoes and cheese; and topped with sour cream at the end. They take a little time to assemble but once again, a very easy recipe that you could make new every time by stuffing the peppers with different ingredients of your choice.

Ideas were running through my head about all the different variations you could try for the filling. I bet ground turkey or chicken sausage with fresh thyme would be really great in there. Or even goat cheese and chopped rosemary. Lots of great possibilities! For this first time out, I stuck to the recipe. And it worked out great. Great little bites of flavor. And cute cute cute! These would make great appetizers for a party. I’ll keep that in mind and this recipe on hand for future reference.

I hope you try these 2 great recipes and feel free to post a message if you have any questions.

Thanks again to my gracious hostess, Sheri, her mom, and her sister, Kim, for indulging my grilling experiments, and for having me at their wonderful beach house. Happy summer!

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