Last winter, Niman Ranch had an online special for beef ribs, two packs per order. They weren’t short ribs, individual ribs with meat attached; it was a slab of meat with three ribs going through it, and not a lot of fat. There was one in a package and each package weighed just shy of a pound. I think they called them Beef Back Ribs. In any case, when it came to cooking them, I got busy doing something else, and then I lost the recipe that Niman was kind enough to send with the meat, so I stuck ‘em in the freezer for later.

Later came last week, when in a confluence of coincidence our oldest son and his wife came to visit for a week and the New York Times ran a David Chang recipe for Braised Short Ribs. So I had more than two mouths to feed and the means to feed them. Hooray.

I supplemented the Beef Back Ribs on hand with 3 pounds of actual Short Ribs from Golden Gate Meats and was good to go.
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Brussels Sprouts for two instead of ten,
A Frittata with Eric’s blue instead of brie.

When cooking for two, it’s important to adapt, not only to quantities, but also to what you have in your larder.

I’ve always been a guy who insisted on cooking the recipe as written the first time, just to see what it’s like, then make modifications in subsequent cookings. In those days we often ended the week with a refrigerator full of leftovers. Not that that’s a bad thing—cooking for two surely involves the creative use of leftovers—but too many leftovers and some inevitably drift into the past the eat-by-date category and wind up down the disposal.
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More from the back of the can…And a Universal recipe.

You don’t have to be a Spam guy to like this, but if you just can’t get your head around the idea of Spam, use a ham slice instead, and some generous shakes of Tabasco.

But Spam has gone practically healthy on us. Remember when your Spam came in a can with a key and you rolled the top off by inserting the little metal tab in the key slot and rolled up a metal band around the key exposing some pink meat (and the tab broke off and the can was pure Hell to open)? When the can got open, there was this geletenous stuff around the meat, and that wasn’t too appetizing, but you could scrape that off and enjoy the wonderful, salty spamilicious Spam, fried to perfection for your sandwich or casserole or a tastey addition to vegetable soup… even for Mom’s Chop Suey.

Now, there’s a tab on top, just like your can of soup, and the top effortly peels off and there’s a way to squeeze the ends of the can and shake the brick of Spam out onto your cutting board. And there’s no fatty geletenous stuff.

Not only that, but there’s a lot less sodium, fat and cholestoral than in the olden days.
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