Category Archives: Cooking

Jul13

Cooking at “home” in Poland!

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Wednesday, 19-June-2024, and Thursday, 20-June-2024


It’s been a while since I’ve cooked at home. Since… Iceland, I think? Huh, wow. Yeah, since Iceland. So just about a full month. I do think that may be a record for me.

I needed a break.

As strange as it sounds, eating out and going to restaurants was tiring me out. Regardless of how chill the place, and how little effort I had to put into being fed, eating out in countries that don’t speak English natively is tiring. I couldn’t really relax all the way while I was out.

I needed a chance to put on some music, dance around the kitchen while cooking, poor myself a glass of wine, queue up a stupid YouTube video, and just decompress during dinner.


So… I did.

My first day in Warsaw, I headed out and tracked down a grocery store near my apartment. I poked around, found some interesting looking food, checked out, and headed home. I’d checked the kitchen ahead of time, to calibrate what sort of food to buy based on what cooking implements I had, and so I pretty quickly dove into the fun of cooking. I cranked some music, whipped out the chefs knife, and flew around the kitchen.

It was absolutely what I’d been needing.


Wednesday, the first evening, I cooked up Pierogi with broccoli and red bell peppers. Simple, delicious, and paired well with a crisp Polish lager.



Thursday, the second evening, I boiled up some tortellini (stuffed with cheese, chicken, and prosciutto), along with some sliced tomatoes and broccoli… and Parmesan cheese, of course. I even used the same playlist for my kitchen dancing, simply picking up right where I’d left off the previous evening.




It was awesome. No two ways about it.

Don’t get me wrong – I do love traveling and adventuring, exploring new restaurants and living the good life out on the road. I also love cooking, though, and I love being home and cozy and quiet. I’m endlessly thankful for the opportunities that’re carrying me around the world, and around Europe, but I’m also just as happily looking forward to settling back down in my future apartment in Dublin. My cast iron in hand, a pot of pasta boiling on the back burner…

All aspects of life are beautiful in their own way, and the variety that I’ve been granted is simply superb.

Feb14

Cooking babyback ribs!

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Saturday and Sunday, 22-Jan and 23-Jan-2022

Last weekend, I had a rather intense adventure out in the snow – and as a celebration afterward I got baby back ribs for dinner. Now, Oregon has some excellent BBQ, don’t get me wrong, but this… well, those ribs were not excellent BBQ. They were… I mean, probably mediocre?

I knew I wasn’t in for a treat when the chef brought them out 10min after I ordered them, and they kept that expectation in mind when I ate them. They weren’t bad, per say, but they were solidly mediocre grocery-store ribs.


Obviously, I deserved better.

So I cooked some myself!

  • Bought a rack of ribs from the grocery store. Opened them up, and cleaned off any fat or other gristle.
  • Absolutely slathered them in rub. Just… so much spicy mesquite rub. Honestly? Probably too much rub – next time, I’ll tone it down to about 75% of what I used this time.
  • Let them sit overnight and for a day, for a solid 36 hours.
  • Cooked them in the oven, uncovered, at 225 Deg.F for 30min
  • Covered them in tin foil, and cooked them at 225 Deg.F for another 4 hours, until they hit ~190 Deg.F internal temp.
  • Took the cover off, slathered some BBQ sauce on (a 50/50 split of Sweet Baby Ray’s and pan dripping from the ribs). Put them back in the oven for 30min. Next time, I’ll cook them to 170 instead – the internal kept heating up to a full 203, which was too high I think.
  • Warmed up some buns, served the ribs when they got down to 170, and enjoyed fall-off-the-bone ribs!