pink floyd and baby backs

somehow, pink floyd came to be discussed at work last week between a friend and me.

(i tried, but could not formulate that sentence any more awkwardly without breaking some serious grammatical rules.)

anyhow, i've been listening to their CDs. yep, i own PF's entire catalog on CD, bought them all up back in the college days. that's one thing i did right in college. anyhow, the floyd has aged poorly in some senses (hey, "the final cut" is a total ripoff of "the wall"!) as i've become a more attentive, discerning person. it's also aged extremely well in some cases (atom heart mother still rocks). some of the lyrics are laughably bad, and some of the themes seem silly and dated -- perhaps because they have now become cliche instead of fresh and original -- but many of the lyrics rock on: now it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around. and by the way, which one's pink?

i grilled/barbecued some baby back ribs last night. also, i made version 2.0 of my greens recipe. first: the greens. in 1.0, i used two dried chipotles and my notes said that the greens came out not spicy enough. this time i chopped those two chipotles into bits, and the greens came out inedible. one of our dinner guests was from mexico and likes really spicy food (she's made salsa that i couldn't eat) and even she said the greens were way too spicy. oops.

i've never prepared baby back ribs by any method. last night, i had 3 half-racks, two of which i prepared using one recipe, the last of which i prepared using a different recipe. the two got a sauce glaze during the last 10 minutes, the lonely one had only a rub, in which it had marinated for about an hour.

i took them all off at the same time, which was my second mistake. my first mistake occurred during selection of the racks: one of the racks (one of the sauced ones) was from a different section of the rack than the others, it had a ton of collagen-y meat on it and was much thicker than the other two. i should have gone for uniform racks. even properly cooked, i dont think i would have cared for that part of the rack: too difficult to eat.

the second mistake was to take them off all at once, instead of testing individually for doneness. now, i can't be too harsh on meself since i've only ever cooked these buggers once, i can't be expected to be a doneness expert yet. but i still shoulda known.

the sauced, non-thick rack came out okay. the too-thick rack wasn't that great. the rub-marinated rack was supoib. the endpieces of the rub-marinated dry-ribs was extra-duper-supoib. in fact, that rack of ribs may be my best ribs so far. a curious but unanimously verified fact: the endpieces of that rack were even more extra-duper-supoib than the rest of the rack. this produces a goal: to make the entire rack as tasty as the endpieces. difficult? i dunno.

a curiousity: i have two grilling books published by weber. they're also by the same author (he collaborates on one of them). in one of them, he cooks all his ribs on "indirect low", in the other book, all his rib recipes call for "indirect medium". i've had better success with spareribs on IM, but last night's kickass baby backs were cooked IL.

one last bit of who-cares trivia: apparently i prefer my ribs dry. my favorite sparerib recipe is dry, and my now-favorite baby back recipe is dry. there are them's that say that sauce is only good for covering up the mistakes you've made cooking your meat. for ribs, with thems i so far agree.

"echoes" is 23 minutes and 29 seconds of masterpiece. AIR GUITAR!

okay, air guitar doesn't really work on this album.