Month: August 2012

St. Louis Style Pork Steaks

St. Louis Style Pork Steaks

I was inspired to create this recipe by my love of smokey flavored slow-cooked pork. It’s easy, inexpensive, tender, juicy, and flavor-packed! If you have a local butcher, they can provide you with pre-cut steaks. It’s more likely, however, that you’ll have to cut your own from a Boston Butt.

 

Ingredients

  • Large Boston Butt Pork Roast
  • Olive Oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper

Sauce Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup ketchup
  • 18 ounces Light Beer
  • 2 Tbsp Brown Suger
  • 2 Tbsp Liquid Smoke
  • 1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
  • 1 Tsp Hot Sauce
  1. Cut the pork (against the grain) into 3/4-inch thick steaks. One large roast should produce 6-8 medium steaks.
  2. Coat both sides of each steak with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  3. Sear the steaks 4-6 minutes per side over high heat on a grill or stovetop.
  4. Mix the sauce ingredients and pour into a 9×12 baking dish. Add the steaks and coat well with sauce.
  5. Cover with foil and bake at 375-degrees for 90-120 minutes.
  6. Remove steaks from sauce and let the fat float to the top. Skim and add sauce to a saucepan. Baste steaks while finishing over high heat on the grill for 1-minute per side.
  7. Plate the steaks, spoon a bit of sauce on top, and serve hot.

Note: You can cook the steaks in a disposable foil pan right on the grill. Just be sure to cover with aluminum foil. Try spicing up this recipe with more hot sauce or thinning the sauce with some white distilled vinegar. The steaks go great with garlic-sauteed egg noodles and greens.

The Greatest Creation of My Life | Week 13

This week was also relatively uneventful in the land of pregnancy. Tina’s pregnancy symptoms are slowly fading and she’s returning to (almost) normal.

She had another ultrasound exam Wednesday which I was privledged to attend. It’s amazing to watch the baby tumble and move around inside her while the sonographer takes measurements. I filmed the whole process so if you’d like to see, call me and I’ll share. The baby looks much less like an alien and more like a human this week. Everything looks perfectly normal and healthy.

They drew five vials of blood from Tina for genetics testing. They’re going to do all of the usual testing plus several new “experimental” things. We won’t know the results of those tests for a while and we don’t have another appointment for a couple of months. We are definitely in the easy stage of pregnancy.

We’re now trying to finish spreading the word to our families. That’s been quite a chore for me but I’ve received only positive feedback so far. Very happy, indeed!

I probably won’t have much to write about for a while, so please just keep us in your thoughts until the next update!

  • Ultrasound of our baby sittin’ back and relaxing!

Unlimited Data? What a Ripoff.

I just got my twelfth Sprint bill, which means it’s been a whole year since I purchased my smart phone. I did a ton of research before I made the jump and I made my selection accordingly. My phone is the Galaxy S version of the Samsung Epic 4G with service from Sprint.

“You probably don’t need as much data as you think.”

I just got my twelfth Sprint bill, which means it’s been a whole year since I purchased my smart phone. I did a ton of research before I made the jump and I made my selection accordingly. My phone is the Galaxy S version of the Samsung Epic 4G with service from Sprint.

I chose the phone over other options for one reason. My fingers are pretty large – I have a hard time forming legitimate words with the on-screen keyboards on most smart phones and the Galaxy S has a slide out keyboard with large buttons. It was an easy choice since there’s not much competition on this feature. I did favor the HTC Evo over the Epic 4g but just had to have the keyboard.

The choice for Sprint service, however, was not as easy. I studied data plans and service providers for many hours before I decided to use them. My decision was based primarily on their “Unlimited Data” advertisement. The plan costs a bit more than the competition, but I had a good feeling that I was going to use some serious data, and I was right. I use A LOT of data.

At least I thought.

I am almost continuously streaming data into and out of my phone. I listen to streaming music, watch YouTube, browse websites, get hundreds of emails constantly, and use my WordPress photo uploading app which sends every photo I take to my website. Those photos are about 2MB each and I take a lot of them. Lastly, I use my phone to tether Internet to my laptop almost every day.

So I figured out the “unlimited data” “scam” as I was actually browsing the bill for the first time in a year. I’ve only actually used just over 1GB of data all month. I cannot even rationalize how someone could possibly bust a 2GB plan with the competition, except for one reason. The competition’s Internet connection is FASTER. Sprint’s 3g/4g is pretty slow compared to the competition.

There’s another year left on my contract. After it’s done, I’ll be switching back to the competition with a 2GB data plan. It’ll cost me a bit less and have a faster connection. My advice to you if you’re in the market for a new plan is this: You probably don’t need as much data as you think you do.