@shrinkrap helpfully answered your first question with her infographic. “Country-style ribs” is a tricky label - it usually means shoulder chops, but in this case was lean, thick-cut loin chops. The first usually takes a long cooking to be tender (unless very thinly sliced and grilled), the latter short cooking or they dry out and toughen up. If it looks kind of uniform and pink without much intramuscular fat or connective tissue (like a b/s chicken breast), it’s probably a loin chop. Very lean meat.
I don’t really have a recipe for the salad - totally made
up on the fly. I’d guesstimate it was about 2 cups haricots steamed and ice-bathed, half an orange bell pepper cut into strips, a small cucumber cut into strips, 2 tomatoes cut into wedges, 1 avocado pitted and cubed, maybe 3 Tbsp chopped cilantro, and a small seeded jalapeño thinly sliced. Dressing was the juice of one lime, 1-2 tsp soy sauce, 1-2 tsp agave nectar, 1 Tbsp neutral oil, 1/2 tsp fish sauce, and maybe 1 Tbsp peanut butter (I’d sub cashew butter and chopped cashews for the peanut butter and peanuts - it has the right creaminess and sweetness). The dressing sort of channeled Vietnamese nuoc cham but with nut butter, if that helps? I think sliced mango would be a great tangy addition to sub for the apricot granules. Don’t be shy with the salt and pepper.
Tonight, back home after 4 nights camping, I was craving vegetables. So I made summer minestrone, served up with cheese ravioli in our bowls. Just right.
Now the camp meals:
Saturday - grilled BBQ chicken thighs, COTC, cucumber-tomato salad, cherry hand pies. I only managed 1.5 thighs.
Sunday - "American Kobe beef" burgers on onion buns with the works, more tomato-cucumber salad, jalapeño-bacon beans, s’mores
Monday: butter-sauteed local triggerfish, scallops, and shrimp, Old Bay-dusted grilled shrimp, and beer-battered local grouper. We adults demolished all that seafood. Then peach hand pies with locally-made vanilla ice cream.
Tuesday: turkey breast sloppy joes on onion buns, natural-casing German hot dogs in ww buns, salad with
homemade Dorothy Lynch(ish), kettle chips, s’more for the kiddo and leftover ice cream for us.
Just for fun: My day 2 breakfast was inspired by Nadiya’s Time to Eat: egg whites, sauteed spinach, and cheese topped with a toasted ww tortilla and eventually folded and seared. Served with salsa.
My riff on Masala Eggs (sautéed onions, garlic, ginger, chiles, spinach and spices with poached eggs) and The Sprout’s riff on these great grilled cheese sandwiches we get at little place in Edison, NJ. The sandwich includes paneer, tomatoes, cucumber, red onions, edam cheese and a masala relish. We don’t have any good Indian food within 1/2 an hour so have become relatively adept at cooking it at home. Not authentic but tasty which is all that really matters to us.
Damn that all looks good, but especially the beer battered fried grouper - you did some deep frying at the campsite? Nice!
Hot dog looks great too - good hot dogs are an underrated food group, it’s oddly hard to find natural casing dogs.
I think I could replicate something like this, but with an almond butter or a sunbutter. We can’t do cashews either. Thank you for the ingredient list!
Yep, thanks! I got a deep non-stick pot for camping that has a built-in locking strainer (for pasta/veg) and silicone handles. Worked great for deep frying (DH manned the fish; I grilled the shrimp - HARD on a widely spaced grate!).
What a loving DIL. Your in-laws are very lucky to have you, and I’m sure they feel the love in your cooking and all your other efforts to care for them.
One of my hard drive suddenly became invisible and without files. Frantically, I tried everything to get back my data. Luckily after a day’s research, I found a neat software that can see the drive again and saved my data!
Pork with mustard and quetsche, a type of prune.
The prunes were very acid, and for days I was wondering what to do with them, as neighbour brought us from her visit somewhere.
Ikea meatballs - not those you bought in stores, but using the ikea recipe published during Covid. Before cooking, H wasn’t convinced, but he loves them and asked for more …
burgers on onion buns with the works, more tomato-cucumber salad, jalapeño-bacon beans, s’mores 
