Summer's here!

Summer is finally here, well at least the weather is shaping up. And that means one thing to me, barbecue!
One of my favorite things to do is barbecue and have friends over. I keep an eye on the sales at Albertsons and when boneless pork shoulder (ribs) goes on sale I stock up. The best thing to do with ribs is soak them in bbq sauce for two to three days and then slowly grill them over medium heat.
Here is a recipe for my favorite bbq sauce/marinade:

1 cup root beer
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper salt

Put all the ingredients in a sauce pan, boil, and then reduce to a simmer for about 3o minutes. Remove from heat and let it cool, the sauce can keep in the refrigerator for two weeks. The best use for this sauce is to marinate the above mentioned ribs in. Place the ribs in a ziplock and pour enough of the sauce to cover the meat. Seal the bag and let them sit in the fridge for two days. Any remaining sauce can be refrigerated for use when you cook the meat.
If your ambitious enough, the sauce can be canned using a water bath method. I typically make at least a double batch for 5 pounds of ribs. Always check the internal temperature of your food before pulling off the grill, pork should be at least 165 F before serving.

Anther favorite is grilled pineapple and goes well as a side with ribs. Buy a fresh pineapple, slice it into chunks and grill it up along side the ribs. For a sweeter pineapple, brush on some melted butter mixed with honey and lemon juice. The honey makes a nice little glaze on the pineapple.

Happy Grilling!

Tubes for Corbin

Since November our son Corbin has had 7 ear infections. To his credit he is such a great baby that we hardly know when he is sick. He rarely has a fever, the biggest indication of an ear infection is a sleepless night. Poor Kid.

Our pediatrician referred us to an ear, nose and throat specialist. The ENT listened to our story of several sleepless nights, one emergency room trip, and several different antibiotics. The specialist recommended that we try antibiotics one more time, I wondered what made this guy a specialist. After all, didn't we just get done telling him SEVEN ear infections?

Anyway, we went and got the prescription filled and three days later ol' Corbs ears were still hurting. Amazing, glad we went to a specialized doctor for that.

On Wednesday June 9th our son had tiny tubes planted into his ears. The purpose of the tubes is to help drain any fluid that collects in the ear canal down into the throat. We have natural tubes for this purpose, but in Corbins case his natural tubes are too small to effectively drain.

The morning of the procedure we had to be at the hospital at 6am for prep time. Surgery was at 7:30am. Now here's the rub, we couldn't allow the boy to have anything to eat or drink after midnight. You can imagine what a long hour and a half that was, as a one year old doesn't understand why he can't have his bottle.

The nurses all loved Corbin. They even had a little plastic wagon that we used to entertain him by pulling him around the corridor.

The entire procedure took about 15 minutes. The nurses took Corbin back and gave him a gas that put him to sleep and the doctor put the tubes in. We had our son back to us very quickly. The worst part was the waking up from the anestisia. Corbin was disoriented and mad! We had a bottle ready for him. Feeding him helped some, but for about 30 minutes all he did was cry as his little body tried to wake up from the effects of the gas.

Two weeks later, Corbin seems to be much happier. He seems to not have any issues with the tubes and so far no more infections.

Lets hope it stays that way..

Corbin's Big Day

This week I am going to depart from the food based blogging and talk about something much more important to me. You see, this week was my sons one year birthday! Corbin Daniel Tuning was born on June 9th 2009, and my life has not been the same since. Let me point out that I will be turning forty years old this year, and I never thought I would ever have a family like I do now.

I spent my twenties dating, partying, and basically avoiding any kind of serious relationship. I then spent the early years of my thirties thinking I should settle down. Frankly, dating in your thirties sucks. It is hard to find someone who is available, let alone someone who is also looking to settle down. Most thirty somethings have been through the emotional, relationship wringer. Most are divorced and have no interest in going down that road again. Most have children and don't want to start over again with formula and diapers.

I met my wife when I was thirty five, she was thirty four, divorced and had a ten year old son. She also had no interest in starting over with a newborn. At that time in my life I had determined that I was too old to be having a baby anyway so her disinterest in having any more children didn't matter. Our romance grew, we moved in together, then an odd thing happened; we decided that we should try to have a baby together. Our feelings for each other brought us to the same place, we wanted to have a child together. Something that was ours together, us, hers and mine. It is a difficult thing to put into words, however we knew we should try to have a child.

After a very short time of trying, we were successful! Seriously, it was less than one month of trying. My wife had a fairly good pregnancy with no sickness apart from some heartburn. We bought Costco sized packages of Tums. Nine months went by and our son was born.

He has affected me deeply, our experience with him has been wonderful. To say that he is a blessing is an understatement. For those of you who are wondering, my step son is now fourteen years old and adjusting from being an only child to being a big brother, and he is doing fantastic as well.

For Corbin's birthday we had a family barbecue. We invited all the grandparents and cousins we could think of. Corbin had a wonderful day. As you can imagine he had a ball tearing open his presants. And as infants do, he seemed to have more fun with the wrapping paper than with the toys inside. He is one of the happiest babies I have seen. Total strangers are always compelled to some up and speak to him. We never leave a store without some sort of complement on what a happy baby he is.

The only odd thing about his birthday was that he did not like the birthday cake! Knowing that he has my genes the disinterest in cake came as quite a shock to me.

Happy Birthday son, we love you.

Spinach Stuffed Chicken

Welcome back! Last time I showed you how to make one of my favorite desserts, this time I am going to show you how to make a great dinner to serve before you dazzle your guests with your perfectly prepared lava cakes.

My favorite meal is a simple baked chicken breast stuffed with a spinach souffle, wrapped in bacon. I typically make an artichoke salad to serve along side the chicken. This meal will please the whole family, and even though it has spinach in it, your kids may love it as well, and if no one is around to see how easy it is to make, they will think you really worked hard to make this dish.


To make the Chicken you will need: Chicken breasts, bacon, and one package of Stouffers frozen spinach souffle, olive oil, chicken broth, lemon juice, and garlic.

The tricky part of this meal is the preparation of the chicken breasts. The easiest way that I have found to stuff chicken is to use a good knife and slice the breast down the middle. Start by laying the breast down on a cutting board, and gently slicing the side of the breast from the thick top part to the thinner lower part. They key to this is to use finesse and not force, anytime your cutting meats, take your time and don't try to power through it, otherwise you may end up with a nasty cut, and I mean a cut on you, not this chicken. Once you have your fist cut you can peel the chicken open and continue to cut the breast in half, but don't cut it all the way through. The goal is to lay the breast open like a butterfly, in fact that is what this is called, butterflying the chicken breast.

Now that you have a nicely opened chicken breast, we can put the filling inside. Take out the frozen spinach souffle and cut it into whatever sized pieces you want to use. I typically cut the souffle in half and save one half in the freezer for next time. Once you have cut up your desired amount of spinach, lay it in the center of the breast and fold it closed. That's it, your chicken is now stuffed! At this point I take a nice length of bacon, wrap it around the breast and use a toothpick like a safety pin to hold the breast shut.

Heat some olive oil in a skillet, add some garlic and brown the chicken on each side for about 5 minutes or until you like the color of it. I use some nice silicon tipped tongs to turn the chicken gently in the pan, being careful to not squeeze too much so you don't lose too much filling. After the chicken is nicely browned, place it in a baking pan and bake on 350 for about 35 minutes, check with a meat thermometer for doneness.

While your chicken is baking you have an opportunity to make a very nice sauce to spoon over it. Your pan has lots of nice flavors left in it, bacon, spinach, chicken and garlic, add a cup of chicken broth, a couple tablespoons of lemon juice and some ground mustard to the skilett. Bring the mixture to a simmer and let it reduce while your chicken bakes. It will cook down to a tastey gravy that you can use on the chicken. Of course the chicken is awesome by itself, so if you don't want to mess with making a sauce, thats okay too.

Now lets talk about the artichoke salad. While the chicken is baking and your sauce is simmering it is a perfect time to throw together this salad. Get one can of artichoke hearts, a jar of roasted red peppers, a jar of kalmata olives, mayo, basil, and italian salad dressing.

Chop up the aritcokes, peppers and olives into chunks. I use the entire can of artichokes, a few peppers, and about 8 olives. Kalmata olives have a very distinct taste and a little goes a long way. I would not reccomend using a food processer, I tried that once to save time and the result was a too finley chopped salad that didn't taste as good. This salad is meant to be chunky!

In a bowl combine about a half cup mayo with two tablespoons italian dressing and mix in your chopped vegitables. Pepper to taste and add in about two or three tablespoons of basil, stir it all together and your done.

The one thing that no kitchen should be without is a meat thermometer, chicken is my favorite thing to cook with, but you must always make sure it is done. I picked up a digital meat thermometer at Walmart for around 8 bucks, and I use it constantly. Poultry should be at least 165 degrees in order to make sure all the internal bacteria is cooked out. Always stick the thermometer into the thickest part of the breast because that part will take the longest to cook through. Once your chicken reaches 165, your done and you can plate it and spoon the sauce, if you chose to make it, over the chicken.

I hope you enjoy the dish!

Chocolate Lava Cake!

Hello and welcome to the first installment of Tuning's Fork! Over the course of this blog I hope to share with you some of my family's favorite recipes as well as offer a glimpse into our lives.

For the Fork's debut blog I decided to start with, what else but dessert! My wife's favorite dessert has always been chocolate lava cake. For a while we were getting by with the frozen premade cakes in Albertsons freezer. The frozen cakes were not bad, but they were not outstanding either and one day they were gone. No longer stocked by the store nearest to our house, my late evening trips to the store for dessert were in serious trouble. And since a wise man once told me "a happy wife equals a happy life," I decided it was time to learn to make my own lava cakes. To my surprise it is an easy task and yielded a much better cake than the frozen variety.
After much searching I found a recipe that I liked and have been using ever since, lets get started.

Here is a list of the ingredients you will need:

6 oz. semi-sweet baking chocolate
6 oz. butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
butter to grease ramekins
Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes

You will also need four ramekins. Ramekins are little ceramic cups that you use to bake with. They are fairly inexpensive and can be bought just about anywhere. I found the set that I use at Shopko.

I would also recommend that you invest in a double boiler to melt your chocolate with. A double boiler is a two tier pan that you put water in the bottom and as it boils it heats the upper pan. The boiler has many uses, you can also use it to steam veggies or make cheese sauces. Of course if you don't want to invest in a boiler, you can melt your chocolate in a bowl in the microwave, just be careful not to scorch it. I picked up my boiler at Fred Meyer for around 25 bucks.

The first thing to do is start melting the chocolate in the boiler, set the burner to a low heat, as you want the water to steam but not boil too rapidly. The steam from the water should melt the chocolate slowly and evenly. If your using a microwave to melt your chocolate, use a low power setting and be careful not to burn it.

As you are waiting for the chocolate to melt, combine the eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat them together until the eggs start to turn white. If you have never beaten eggs to white before, be forewarned that this takes some time! Using a small hand mixer would be advisable and you can pick one up at WalMart for around 10 bucks. With a hand mixer you can get your eggs where you need them to be in about one or two minutes on low, using a wooden spoon and trying to beat them by hand will take over ten minutes. I think the ten dollars spent on the hand mixer is well worth it.

Once the chocolate is melted, give it a good stir and add the butter until it is melted into the chocolate mix. Once your butter and chocolate melted together and look smooth, pour the mixture into the eggs and stir together well. Next you will need to stir in the flour to thicken the mixture into a light batter. If you used a hand mixer for the eggs, you can use it again at this point to make your batter smooth with no lumps from unmixed flour.

Now you are ready to prepare the ramekins for the batter. This recipe will yield enough batter to make four cakes, or you could make two bigger cakes. Coat the inside of each ramekin with butter, taking care to cover the bottom and the corners. Then divide your batter into each ramekin, that's it your done and ready to bake!

The baking time is the trickiest part of this whole process. You can bake them longer for a less gooey center or you can bake them a shorter time for more lava. As you make your cakes you will need to experiment with the bake time in order to get it just right with your oven. What a great excuse to make more lava cake! The cake in my picture to the right was baked for 13 minutes and was a bit too gooey, but then again is there really a wrong way to serve up chocolate?

Now you have the secret to an elegant and delicious dessert. The prep time on this recipe is only about 10 minutes and you can prepare your chocolate batter ahead of time as well. If you choose to make your batter early, I would not store it in the refrigerator as the chocolate will harden and that will alter your bake times. Good luck and I hope you enjoy the cake.