Slow Cooked Barbecue Country Style Ribs

In an attempt to make budget friendly, time friendly and variety filled menu plans, I am always on the lookout for new recipes and easy ways to get supper on the table.

I found the original recipe online on a southern food website and tweaked it a little to suit my tastes better and it was DELISH!  I used country style ribs from Aldi's that were about $5 for 2 pounds of meat (so I halved the meat, but only back off the liquid a little just to be sure it didn't get dry), but the original recipe called for 3 to 4 pounds of boneless country style ribs,so I will give you that recipe in case you are cooking for more than two people. 

3 to 4 pounds boneless country style ribs
Sprinkling of meat tenderizer (to your preference or you can omit if you like)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 minced garlic cloves (I used the Pampered Chef garlic press for mine)
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup apple juice
1 bottle barbecue sauce (16 to 18 oz of your favorite) I used a honey flavored for mine

Grease 5 to 6 quart crockpot with cooking spray.  Wash pork and trim excess fat and dry with paper towels.  Put sliced onions in the bottom of the slow cooker.  Sprinkle tenderizer, salt and pepper on each piece of pork and place in crockpot on top of onions.  Sprinkle pork with half of brown sugar and minced garlic, flip and sprinkle other half of sugar and garlic on other side, making sure each piece is coated.  Pour apple juice evenly over meat.  Cover and cook on LOW for 7 hours and check (original recipe called for 8 to 9 hours, but I found this to be too long).  When meat is almost cooked through, drain liquid and reserve for gravy if you wish.  Pour barbecue sauce over top of meat and onions and stir carefully to coat.  Continue to cook for 1 hour or so to infuse the meat and sufficiently coat all pieces.

I made mashed potatoes to go with ours so I used the drippings from the crockpot with flour, salt and pepper and a splash of water and about a tablespoon more of apple juice just for something different and it was very, very yummy!

Pictures of crockpot food are challenging, but I promise this dish was worth making again and RC loved it!  I had enough for our meal last night and 2 lunch meals for the next day.

Crockpot Barbecue Country Style Ribs

Gravy made with juices poured off after cooking meat

Photo Card Birthday Invite

Photo card invites are pretty popular these days, but they do require lead time to order and be delivered and can sometimes be pretty costly...being on a budget makes it necessary to evaluate how to cut spending on birthday party preparation (so you have more money to spend on cupcakes of course..HA!) and making your own invites doesn't have to be hard! 

I made this super cute one with a selection of pictures I took of the birthday girl dressed up for her tea party and made the pictures into a collage using the free Google Picasa software...super easy to do!  I took advantage of 10 cent 4x6 prints from CVS and printed 60 prints for $6 and tax.  Then I mounted each picture on a 4.5 x 6.5 piece of cardstock that I had in my scrapbooking supplies and used a single picture cut to size on the back along with the party wording...This is the end result...I used pastel papers because that will be the theme colors of the party, and I'm showing two different invites so you can see the front and back...I covered the party invite details for privacy reasons, but you would put your where, when, etc information there.  I think they are super cute and they took me about 1.5 hours to cut, mount and put the invites in envelopes.  All for a little over $6 for 30 invitations...of course if you have to buy paper and adhesive it would cost a few more bucks, but still very affordable, personalized and a great keepsake!