Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. Well, I decided yesterday that I should let all of you readers know all about me. And I had a purpose to doing it, but by this morning the whole idea was gone, just that I wanted to let you know a little more about me. So I guess I will wing it and see if I can figure out what my purpose was.


-My real name is not Punky. I know you are shocked and thought you had finally found some love child with a weirdo name, but alas that is not me. Its not that you couldn't find my name any number of places, but for those of you who don't want to look, you can just keep calling me Punky.


-I have a master's degree in Counseling Psychology and my dream job is to work for an HIV/AIDS organization providing counseling. To get to that point I am going to work as a retail manager...No really, I am working in retail while I start doing some volunteer with these organizations and get an "in".

-I am getting married in April. Funkbobito and I have been together for almost 5 years so don't worry, I am not rushing into this. I am super excited to actually be married, but I feel that I was seriously misled about the fun of wedding planning, its not fun at all.

-I sometimes think that I am not cut out for this whole cooking thing. I know you were wondering what all this self-disclosure had to do with my little food blog here. Well, now you know. This week I reverted back to an earlier time. A time when I didn't cook, and when I tried I was reminded how far I still have to go.

Monday-Tuna Salad and Chicken noodle soup: I did actually make the soup, but it was a bit thicker than I was planning for. I am always amazed how much liquid gets sucked up.

Tuesday-Chicken soft tacos, black beans and rice. Ok this was a no brainer. I actually had steak tacos planned but after cooking the meat we decided that it didn't taste as fresh as we would have liked. So we pitched the steak and cooked up some chicken real quick. I added a little salsa to the black beans and nuked them while I cooked everything else.

Wednesday-Pizza Hut. Enough said.

Thursday- Ok this may be the most shameful meal of the week. Poor Funkbobito may change his mind about this whole marriage thing if I fed him this everyday (actually he was super excited when I said what we were having). In my defense I had worked at 6am for the last 4 days, hadn't been to the store and had seen the sunrise 5 days in a row. Don't get me wrong, sunrises are real nice, but I have no need to see one everyday, and if I am going to I don't want to do it while dressing a mannequin. Anyways we had PB&J sandwiches and Parmesan noodles. It really did taste pretty good, but not exactly a gourmet meal.

Friday- I'm finally cookin'. Now I have lived all my life in Kansas City. I am surrounded by good barbecue restaurants. And it is kind of questionable if someone around here doesn't own a grill or a smoker, or something else that makes a fire you can cook on. Everyone you ask will tell you their favorite BBQ sauce, restaurant, and brand of charcoal. In fact I joke that Funkbobito finally proposed because I bought him a gas grill. He hasn't corrected me yet. So on to dinner, being that I was cooking for BBQ lovin' Kansas Citians, when I decided to make ribs for dinner I knew I had to do a great job or I would be called out quickly. So I found this recipe for Fall off the Bone Baby Back Ribs. So here is where my lack of kitchen knowledge really did me in. So the recipe tells you to remove the membrane. So I call my best friend who is an amazing cook and ask her how I am supposed to do that. She gives me some tips and I get going. After about 20 minutes of picking at these ribs I realize I am getting nowhere fast. So I turn to the Cooking Light Bulletin Board and get tons of responses on how to remove this membrane. But I am still not making any progress. This is when I realize I need a visual so I turn to the internet. Well I find a picture of ribs with the membrane and they look nothing like mine. I start to get the sneaking suspicion that I am missing something here. So I call the grocery store where I bought them and sure enough, they had already removed the membrane for me. So I then realize that I spent 30 minutes picking the extra fat off the slabs of ribs. I couldn't really do anything but laugh about it, because really it was pretty funny. So for any of you who have never used ribs before, if they look like this picture, they have already had the membrane removed.

Well, I used bottled BBQ sauce instead of the one called for in the recipe because I am trying to thin down my BBQ sauce collection a bit (I tend to buy it all the time, even when I don't need it. I also do this with tuna and diced tomatoes. It is a sickness really). Any ways these turned out great. I would recommend these to anyone. They were super easy and really did fall off the bone. I finished them off under the broiler because it was too cold for me to stand outside with the grill. They were tender and had great flavor and were worth the 30 minutes I spent "removing the membrane". We served them with corn and baked beans. Nothing better on a chilly Kansas City night than ribs, bear and college hoops. Great evening.
Well next week will be a bit crazy since I am closing at work 2 nights and then its Thanksgiving (I would like to file a complaint with Father Time, as I believe I have lost a month or 2 this year). But have a wonderful holiday everyone and I will stop in and give some updates when I can.  ¶ 6:31 AM