"And we're underway..."

The Major League Baseball season started this week, and I couldn't be happier. The return of my favorite sport is a good thing in and of itself, but it's also a marker of our movement through the year. Everything that happens from January to March is preamble, a three-month dress rehearsal for the year that kicks off for real right around the beginning of April.

Our household calendar is quickly filling up; between youth baseball, field hockey, horseback riding, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, drama club, birthday parties, running races... well, suffice it to say, the greatest self-own I've ever executed was writing this piece a few years ago. Things look highly unlikely to slow down any time soon.

After this week, things should settle down.

Next week at the latest. Probably.

The Action Cookbook NewsletterScott Hines

That's okay, though, because at least I have baseball.

Maybe you're not as romantic about the sport as I am. That's okay. (Nobody's perfect.) My team probably isn't going to win the World Series this year, considering that they haven't done it in mine or my parents' lifetimes, but I can go into the new season believing as foolishly as ever.

(Friday morning edit: nevermind, they're winning the World Series, Chase DeLauter MVP+ROY?)

Championship dreams notwithstanding, I appreciate baseball for the rhythm that it provides. It's not a sport that demands my full attention, and that's good, because there are weeks where I simply don't have much attention to spare. It's always plugging away, though, waiting to reward whatever attention I'm able to give it. It's after 10pm on Thursday night as I write this, and I've got a game on in the background just because I love the sound of baseball so much.

The year has finally begun, and hey: maybe it's finally our year.

Friends, it's Friday once again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

It's a tale of two porches here today, as I kick off both Barbecue Season and Porch Drink Season. Read on for:

• new experiments with familiar old sauces!
• a simple front-porch sipper!
• fascinating new music, a new-favorite book, roadside attractions, pets and more!

Let's play two.

It's still Spring Training for the smoker...

I'll grill in pretty much any weather, but the onset of spring has me ready to kick off Barbecue Season for real. My personal favorite–and the thing I've cooked more than anything else over the years–is to smoke a pork shoulder, and I've got a couple waiting their turn in the basement freezer. That's an all-day operation, though, and I'm not quite there yet. It's better to kick off the season with a few racks of ribs–a much less daunting task, as they only take about five hours on the smoker.

I don't vary my methods much–as I usually do, I coated these with Magic Dust the night before, and ran them at 250F with applewood chunks until they hit 200F internal and were basically falling off the bone. In order to scratch my ever-present itch for experimentation, though, I decided to try something different with sauce: a cocktail-meatball-inspired sauce built around grape jelly and Thai sweet chili sauce.

Cocktail BBQ Sauce

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1/4 cup grape jelly (I used Bonne Maman's grape preserves, I'm a sucker for that French stuff)
• 1/4 cup Thai sweet chili sauce
• optional (I added it later): 2 tablespoons Crystal hot sauce

This was pretty good–not something I'd use every time, but certainly a fun change of pace from the spicier, smokier sauces I usually use.

Oh, and Olaf took great interest in the proceedings:

Sorry, bud. Grapes are bad for dogs. I'm just gonna have to eat all these ribs myself.

... but it's peak season on the front porch

The weather's been wild here lately. Granted, it's March, and that's just the way March is, but we've had everything from 20 degrees to 85 degrees in the past two weeks alone.

In between, there's been a couple perfect porch nights, a rare commodity in a climate where it's either too hot and humid or too cold and windy 90% of the year. That calls for porch drinks, and today I'm highlighting a simple one that's become my wife's go-to request when one of those nights comes up.