BBQ Beef Ribs =)

The fishless cycle has now happened and the Nitrite and Amonia levels have bottomed out. This means that the bacteria has been established in the filter media which take care of the Nitrogen cycle for us and make sure our water doesn't get toxic. The kids got some guppies. Kel got a rainbow shark and I got myself some tetras.

The pressure switch and manifold turned up from eBay =) It's now fitted and wired, set to go off at 100PSI.

I managed to talk Kel into letting me get two racks of pork ribs after my success slow cooking the chicken bits the other day. I used a basic rub based on garlic and smoked paprika powders with a little Cajun pepper and brown sugar. It caramelised really nicely. The only thing missing I think was a baste. In spite of not basting, the ribs were quite moist still and very tasty - with just a little warmth from the Cajun pepper. Same MacGuyver technique with foil over the grill and the adjacent burner on for a slow cook (2.5hrs).

Kel got some "Chicken Ribs" from RedLea to try. The biggest problem I've had previously with little chicken things is that if you grill them, they burn. If you cook them on the hotplate, you have to burn them to cook them through. So I decided to try and slow cook them, like you would if the BBQ had a lid. As I had no lid, I put the burner on under the hotplate and covered the grill in foil. They turned out really well.

I have "un-bodged" the EGR on the Barina after a lot of de-gunking and scraping of the mating surface of the block. Whoever had bypassed the EGR used a piece of tin (which is fine), but they also use this horrible grey gunk which was a pain. There was also a slug of the stuff in the intake side of the EGR manifold! Thankfully they also gunked the original aluminum gasket in with the tin, I was able to recover it. I bypassed the EGR this time around with a piece of coke can. Click the image on the right to see the rest of the photos.

I do this occasionally and it's really tasty! All that is required is a small amount of oil on the hot plate and you can cook these calamari rings and prawn cutlets on there, no problem.

Today I was fortunate to score a Tandy TRS-80 from a friend along with a collection of tubes and old transformers suitable for tube equipment. I look forward to firing the TRS-80 up, I have never actually played with one. The key I think is going to be to clean it (obviously) and check all of the capacitors and connections before I fire it up. I don't want to let out the blue smoke!

The kids managed to ruin their XO and I could not even recover it. So, back to factory setting. This is what the flashing screen looks like.