President's Day Outing And Homemade Barbecue Ribs!

 

President's Day may be an average holiday that many people don't get off, but I did. So, the plan was to take full advantage of a rare three day weekend, and maximize it.

My day actually started the night before when I prepped my barbecue ribs that would become dinner for the holiday. This began by preparing my rub.

INGREDIENTS

6 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
3/4 Teaspoon Black Pepper
1 1/2 Teaspoons Chili Powder
1 1/2 Teaspoons Salt
3 Teaspoons Onion Powder
3 Teaspoons Garlic Powder
3 Teaspoons Paprika
1 1/2 Teaspoon Oregano
1 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper (Optional)

Throw all those spices into a bowl, and stir them up, ensuring you crush all the clumped bits of brown sugar. You want to get everything good and blended, and to ensure you do, you can even run it through a sifter, but that may be a bit overkill.

Once you have a nice mixture, take your ribs (or chicken, or really any kind of meat you want to turn into barbecue), and pat it dry.

You want to get as much moisture off the surface of your meat as possible. This will ensure your mixture actually adheres to the meat versus running off the liquid.

Generously coat the top side of your meat with the mixture, and then get down and dirty, rubbing it into the meat. Get every nook and cranny.

Flip your meat over, and repeat the process, making sure you get the sides as well.

With your meat coated, you're going to want to seal it, and let it rest in the fridge overnight. Alternatively, you could also freeze your meat if you want to eat it on a different day. Tinfoil will work if you want to let it sit over night. However, for me, I'm going to vacuum seal that bad boy.

If you don't own a vacuum sealer, I highly recommend one. This is not only perfect for marinating food, but also allows you to buy large portions of meat, which is ultimately cheaper, and then freeze it in portions. My girl and I find this so convenient.

Yes, I know the debate that vacuum sealing may or may not aid in the marination process, I do it for one specific reason. No mess in the fridge. Bottom line, sealed bags don't leak.

With my ribs set up, they go to the fridge, and the night slowly comes to an end.

The next day was a day of outings with George of G.I. Jigsaw. Our first stop was McKay's. I've been many times, but for George, it was his first.

I spent most of my time there digging through the CD's, and while I didn't necessarily find anything from my want list, I did grab a few CD's which intrigued.

Soundtracks
The Jungle Book*Mary Poppins*Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
2001: A Space Odyssey*Cinderella*Fantasia

80's Soundtracks
Somewhere In Time*Sweet Dreams
Sea of Love*Children of a Lesser God*Bird

80's Albums
Run DMC's Tougher Than Leather*Split Enz' History
Never Repeats (The Best of Split Enz)*Paul Young's Between
Two Fires*Elvis Costell and the Attractions' Blood &
Chocolate*Randy Newman's Land of Dreams*Mike
Oldfield's Discovery

From the CD section, I made my way over to the cartoon DVD's. I found a complete series of the 90's Superman the Animated Series, and felt the price was right for it to come home with me.

Our next stop was Echo Base. I wasn't necessarily looking for anything here, but when I saw a few back issues of What The, and the crossover series Evolutionary War, I decided to grab them.

Feeling happy that I wasn't spending a ton of money for the day, I made my way to the exit, only to find George and I in a conversation with the employee there. It was at that moment that I glanced to my left. Big mistake.

Ugh! Mega Man 5 and 6 were the last two games in the series that I didn't own, and while the latter of the sequels has always been "reasonably" priced, 5 has always been rarer and far more expensive. Today was no exception. I paid double what I got all of the above comics and CD's for these two games. My budget for the day was blown, but I wasn't going to leave these two out in the wild.

Our last stop was 2nd and Charles, another store which George hadn't been to. While I glanced around to see if there were any diamonds in the rough, my shopping spree was more than over. As such, I didn't end up picking up anything.

What I did do was ask my girl at noon to open those barbecue ribs up, wrap them in tinfoil, and throw them in the oven on 250°. They'll sit in that low temp for the next five hours, getting all delicious and tender.

After the five hour mark, take those bad boys out of the oven, and carefully open them. There's going to be a bit of liquid in there, so be mindful of steam and spills.

Go ahead and dump that liquid down the drain, being careful to not send your ribs with it. Then give a bone a gentle tug. If it comes out clean, those ribs are right on the money.

Now give those ribs a kiss of sauce. A little, a lot, it doesn't matter. Whatever sauce you like, and as much as you like. Me, I just like a nice thin coat.

Then I use a cooking brush to spread it all over.

Now you have a few choices. These are done, so you can eat them as is. Alternatively, you can throw them back in the oven on a high broil, or even on a grill to get the charred up.

I personally prefer the high broil method for two reasons. One, I'm just looking to get that sauce gooey and sticky. Two, while there's definitely an appeal to charring them on a grill, with how tender they are, you risk losing meat down the slats.

Whatever your method, it's all good. The end result is to get you a good plate full. Eat them off the bone, put them on bread, heck, even dump them on a salad if you're into the healthy lifestyle.

Either way, you know what's up. Dig in and get you some!

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An Underwhelming Visit To Echo Base

 

You know how when you go somewhere, and you have such a disappointing experience that you think it may have to be your last trip to said location? That's me with Echo Base as of yesterday.

I've done a lot of business with the owner, David, since the day they opened their first location, Tosche Station, and I was their very first customer through the door. However, the problem I've come to find is that if I'm not dealing directly with him, I just don't get the experience I expect.

Thanks to George of G.I. Jigsaw, I was feeling the need to flesh out my Marvel Legends Retro line, and I knew that Echo base would be good for doing so. They always kept this section relatively well stocked, and though it had shrunk, June 16th was no exception.

I grabbed three figures from the pegs, and made my way to the comics, where I pulled a handful of books. I then started getting the idea in my head for a custom figure, and made my way over to the Star Wars section, actually finding the two figures I would need to accomplish what I wanted.

It was here that I also took notice of their loose Star Wars figures which had a custom cardboard backer within the plastic snap closed bubble. Not wanting any of these figures, but more so the container and backer to ultimately utilize for my custom figure, I grabbed the cheapest figure I could find, and added it to my pile.

Leading up to all of this, things were already heading a little South in my overall experience. I stopped at the counter, and asked the two people working about some books David was pulling for me from a recent series of texts. Basically, I just wanted to inquire if he had gotten an opportunity to pull any of them from their back stock, and if so, if they were by chance available.

The response I got back, "I don't know." After a short few seconds of staring at the guy who answered, it became obvious that he was going to put no further effort into the matter. Not a, "I don't know, but let me call him and see." Nothing. It was a combination of awkward and annoying at the same time.

Fast forward back to my armful of stuff, which I headed to the register with. It was here that I found out that the loose figure I had picked up for the case and backer came with an unknown stipulation. You don't get the case and backer. Instead, they just want to give you the figure, and keep the case. The woman said to me, "There's a plastic shortage, so we need to keep these."

This is where I reached my limit, but kept my cool.

Rather than start arguing with an employee just following direction, I instead put everything back, and walked out.

Walking back to my car, I though to myself, "That is the stupidest thing I'd ever heard at a toy store. Really? Plastic shortage? 90% of what you sell is plastic! You are literally in the business of selling plastic."

The whole thing just annoyed me. Possibly more than it should have, but it did. It was just a building, building, building of annoyance with the whole trip, and it culminated in me just needing to walk away. I felt like me being there to spend money was an inconvenience to the staff, and quite frankly, I'm not going to force my hard earned money on someone.

Everything about the visit was disappointing.

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Echo Base: Take Two

 

If you read yesterday's post, you know I went to the newly opened Echo Base, and bought some great comics, toys and NES games. Well, today, I went right back there. This time with George of G.I. Jigsaw. I didn't have any plans to actually buy anything, but that plan went straight out the window fast.

First and foremost, I want to take a moment to answer a question from the comments of my last post. That being about the prices on the MASK figures and vehicles from reader Marcus. While I couldn't see all the prices, and because the store was rather busy, I could only get a range on these. The smaller ones were around $40.00, with the mid-sized being around $60.00. I could not see prices on the larger vehicles or individual figures.

George grabbed himself a few items, and I too set to task on rummaging around. I had to stop myself when I picked up a Marvel Legends retro style Hulk, Daredevil and Human Torch. While I was trying to justify to myself that these characters made frequent appearances in the early days of Spider-Man comics, I ultimately put them back, reminding myself that was not the plan I had for collecting this line.

Of course, that didn't stop me from buying more comic books and G.I. Joe toys.

I don't know what my obsession is with vehicles as of late, but I added two Cobra Ferret's to put in the garages of my Terror Drome. I've wanted one or two of these for a while, and when I saw both of these together, and then talked the guy down fifteen bucks plus ten percent on the final sale price of everything, I had to have them.

I had several more comics in my hands, but the price just wasn't right for the majority of them. I ended up grabbing just three of them to fill in some missing gaps. X-Force number 2 is part of the crossover event between (McFarlane) Spider-Man 16, and X-Force 3. I then nabbed up the Adventures in Reading promotional comic featuring The Amazing Spider-Man (AMS). While I don't typically buy AMS comics past issue 441, where volume one ended, there are a few here and there that I wouldn't mind owning. Such is the case of issue 611, which features the first appearance of Deadpool and Spider-man team-up. It's more so for the novelty than the actual story.

After today's trip, it has become very obvious that having this store in such close proximity to my house is going to be dangerous. This is not the kind of place where I am going to exhibit a lot of self control. I'm definitely going to have to limit my visits.

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There's A New Rebel Base In Town

 

The owners of Tosche Station have opened a new location, and I must say, Echo Base feels far superior to its predecessor. Check this place out!

What amazed me the most, beyond its incredible selection, was how neat and organized the place was. Further, where Tosche Station felt like it was just a bunch of incomplete toys thrown in a pile, Echo Base seemed to have a lot of 100% complete items.

I could have spent a ton of money here, but had to really try to limit myself. I still walked away with some great stuff though.

I had been on the fence about these retro style Marvel figures since they were first announced in 2020, and decided on the spot when I saw these two there that I was going to at least collect the figures based on Spider-Man. Too bad I had passed up the traditional red and blue one three times up to this point, because they didn't have that one in stock.

The Guardian Legend is a game I thought I wanted for the NES. However, when I got home and looked it up, it turns out it was not. Oh well. I'll still add it to my collection of games to play.

I've been intrigued by a few G.I. Joe vehicles as of late, and when I saw this complete Serpentor Air Chariot, I kind of wanted it. After a bit of negotiating, the price was right.

I had no clue these trade paperbacks existed, but when I saw them both on the shelf with a really reasonable price tag, I jumped on them. What these two books contain are reprints of  Amazing Fantasy #15, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 - 19 and Annual #1.

As someone who collects these comics, I have reached a point where it's become the question of, "What can you reasonably afford?" I don't know about you, but I can't be spending $500.00+ on one comic book. As such, I've needed to start looking for other means to fill in those gaps between issue one and ninety-nine. If these volumes continue to be printed, this will be a perfect and suitable alternative to the single first print issues. At $15.99 each, I can easily fill that gap for less than $200.00!

Then I saw these five copies of Spider-Man number one, and decided, "I want them all!" I don't know what my obsession is with this particular issue, but I have this desire to own every copy in print. That will never happen, but that doesn't stop me from continually buying up every copy I come across.

Lastly, I grabbed their copy of The Amazing Spider-Man Annual 9. I haven't bought Spider-Man comics in a long while, and it was great to find one out in the wild that I actually needed, was in great condition, and affordable.

I enjoyed this trip so much that when I got home I sent George of G.I. Jigsaw a text to see if he wanted to go back with me. We'll be doing that tomorrow. Can't wait to go back!

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