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cooked some honey-garlic ribs in the oven today. it's a two part process: first i bake the ribs for an hour (covered in tin foil) before actually applying the sauce. the sauce is just a simple heated mixture of 1 cup soy sauce, 1 cup honey, a dash of cider vinegar, some chopped garlic. every 10 minutes i'd crack open the oven and baste the ribs to keep them from drying up. i don't have a fancy basting syringe so i just use a spoon, carefully navigating my hand into the oven so as to not get burned. another hour later, the ribs are done! afterwards the whole house smelled like a barbecue, which can either be a good or a bad thing, but i rather have the house smelling of blueberry muffins (hmm, that gives me an idea).

my mother came to pick me up and we went to the cafe to unload some supplies. i was outside inspecting the potted plants growing in the parking lot. one of the costa rican chili peppers is starting to change colors. the rescued jasmine plant is doing very well; to think that thing was barely clinging on to life living in the sunless environment of my kitchen this past winter. my father is also keeping alive a bunch of mulberry seedlings, besides the one i found growing in my sink. the thai chili peppers are doing fine as well, although none have changed colors yet.

besides having ribs for dinner, my mother and i also made some fried plantains. it was an alton brown recipe i saw sometime ago on good eats, involved smooshing the plantains and soaking them briefly in a salt & garlic bath. my mother cooked while i basically directed. the finished result was so-so, the plantains tasted sour though (not ripe enough?). the salt bath seemed superfluous, it would've been a lot easier just cutting the plantains into thinner slices and deep-frying them.