Rah! Rah! Rhubarb Crisp

Instructions

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   In bowl, combine rhubarb, 1/4 cup flour and sugar. Stir in jam, set aside. In separate bowl, combine remaining flour, granola, cinnamon and ginger. Stir in brown sugar and pecans. Blend in butter until crumbly. Press 2 cups of the granola mixture into the bottom of a square baking dish. Spoon rhubarb mixture over top, cover with remaining granola mixture. Bake in 375F oven for 45 minutes or until deep golden brown and filling is tender.

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   Adam’s Search for the Ultimate Rib We have traveled all across North America, searching for the ultimate rib. Surprisingly, there are many others who have also embarked on this culinary quest. In fact, if you mention to someone that you are a “rib freak”, they are just as likely to tell you about their favorite restaurant, recipe, or sauce. We even have a friend, Gerry, who collects jars of sauces. Some people have wine cellars, but there’s our Ger, down in his basement late at night, applying a quarter turn to each dusty bottle, to keep the lid wet, naturally. Ribs differ wherever you go. Some people prefer pork ribs, the side variety for thinness, baby backs for meaty, sweet flavor, country style for thick pleasure, or sweet and sour cuts. Others swear by beef ribs, from the full bone of the standing rib roast to the short rib type. And then there’s the sauce. Ah, sauce! Ketchup-based, mustard-enhanced, garlicked, honeyed, hickory-smoked, hot, medium, sweet, or even no sauce at all. The varieties are as endless as the rib aficionados who swear by them. Many of the commercially prepared sauces rely on an ingredient called “liquid smoke” to give a hickory flavor to the sauce. Liquid smoke was first commercially prepared in Nebraska in 1895, originally from the tar of burned wood that was dissolved in water (boy, does that ever sound good!). Nowadays, it is synthetically produced and the unhealthy tars and resins have been removed. Because it is concentrated, a very small amount of this ingredient goes a long, long way and can easily overpower more subtle flavors. For some, hickory smoke is an acquired taste and should never stand in the way of enjoying ribs, your way. And so once committed to the rib quest, one needs to search out, in every eating establishment, the “rib dinners” on the menu. However, for the true and venturesome, connoisseur, it’s simply a matter of saying, “I’ll have the ribs, please.” We have eaten ribs in franchise-type restaurants, in smoky beer joints, in specialty places where the ribs are smoked in a pit, or baked in a brick oven for up to

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   is that it is never-ending. Oh, rapture! The best rib story I can think of, I owe to Alan Alda in his role as “Hawkeye Pierce” on the long-running television series, M*A*S*H. During this memorable episode, Hawkeye has had two weeks of liver and fish, and he’s had enough. As he says, “I’ve eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish, and I won’t take it any longer!” What’s the answer? “Ribs,” he says to his partner in crime, Trapper John McIntyre. “But not just any ribs. They have to be ‘Adam’s Ribs’. With sauce. And coleslaw. From Chicago!” Their bounty is shipped all the way to Korea marked “medical supplies”, and after a number of comic mishaps, finally arrive. Was it worth it? Any rib-lover watching the episode would say, “Yes!” We couldn’t understand why anyone would think it an unreasonable request, or quest, at all. The search for the ultimate rib goes on. It knows no boundaries. There are as many ways to cook ribs at home as there are sauces to cook them in: boil to tenderize, marinate or not, bake, broil, barbecue. I think we’ve tried them all and here are the best of the ones we like to prepare.