One way Luke and I are different is in our desire to socialize.

Luke would be perfectly happy to stay home all weekend and relax, while I feel the urge to go out and spend time with friends. Luke has a small group of friends he’s really close to, while I have a larger network of people I try to keep up with.

The problem is, living in a city like Chicago (where half of my hometown migrated to after college) means I have A LOT of friends to hang out with (I know, tough problem, huh!). Most times I love having so many options of things to do and people to see, but occasionally I start feeling stretched too thin.

With busy jobs, relationships, vacations ect its becoming nearly impossible to get all my friends together in one place, which makes it hard to maintain meaningful relationships with EVERYONE.

I’m starting to feel like I’m foregoing  strong relationships with my closest friends to be “sort of” friends with a lot of people.

What do you think, is it better to be friends with a lot of people or have a close-knit group of core friends?

How do you keep up with the network of people who are important to you?

I am a HUGE ribs fan. We eat them at least once a month in the summer following my dad’s technique for slow braising and then char-grilling. There really isn’t a more flavorful, tender piece of meat in my book.

Luke woke up early on Saturday and picked up two gorgeous racks of pork ribs at the farmer’s market. This is a good 5 lbs of ribs, which embarrassingly enough, we finished between three of us!

I like my ribs spicy, so I made a great rub that added some zing then spread it all over the uncooked ribs.

Here’s the rub recipe adapted from a paleo blog I read:

- 3 Tbsp paprika
- 1 Tbsp onion powder
- 1 Tbsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- lots of fresh ground pepper
- 2 tblsp olive oil

I put the rubbed ribs in the fridge to let the flavors sit while I made some homemade BBQ sauce. I can’t stand how sweet store-bought BBQ sauce is, so I decided to make a sugar-free sauce myself from a recipe I found on Son of Grok, another paleo blog I follow.

This sauce is super simple and tastes amazing. There’s so much depth and spiciness to it and it has a thick texture to really coat whatever meat you use it with.

To make it, just combine all the ingredients below and simmer for 25 minutes until thick.

Ingredients:
- 1 6oz can tomato paste (preferable organic)
- 1 to 1.5 cups of beef stock (look for low or no salt added)
- 3 Cloves Garlic minced
- .5 of an onion minced
- 2 tablespoons dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 2 tablespoons chili powder

Yum! This sauce has quickly become a staple in our fridge. I highly recommend you try it out.

So now that my ribs are rubbed and sauced, I placed them on a 1 inch deep cookie sheet and wrapped them in foil.

Then I baked them in a 325 degree oven for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until the bones are clearly showing. I love this method of cooking ribs because the meat gets so incredibly tender and the house smells amazing.

To finish them off, Luke fired up the grill to medium/high heat and charred the ribs for 5-7 minutes.

I served the ribs with spicy green beans (cayenne pepper) and sweet potato fries.

This was an AWESOME meal to end the weekend. My mouth it watering just thinking about it!

Being married to a traveling man isn’t always fun. This week Luke is in San Francisco working on a project that will likely keep him on the road for several weeks. It’s the first time we’ve been apart since getting married, and I don’t like it one bit!

I joke that Luke tricked me into falling for him. See, the first year we were together he didn’t travel once. I thought I had a great guy who would always be around whenever I wanted to hang out.

That was until he smacked me with the news that he was put on a job in….TEL AVIV, ISRAEL and would be gone for two months straight. Waaaaa??? Say it isn’t so!

I was really worried about what would happen to our relationship while he was gone, but it ended up being a good thing because it forced us to evaluate how we felt about each other and talk about how committed we wanted to be to our relationship.

Luckily we both felt the same way and decided to stay together while he was gone. Right before he left, we said “I love you” for the first time.

While it can be hard when Luke is gone traveling for work, it’s helped me become independent and more sociable with friends. I know how important it is for me to maintain interests and hobbies to keep me busy and happy while he’s away.

I think maintaining a full life with friends and activities, some of which we share and some we do alone, is what makes us both happy and ultimately attracted to each other. I think our friends appreciate that we’re not tied to each other all the time too. Sometimes you just need to hang with the girls!

Of course, when he walks in the door on Friday I’ll have a weeks worth of hugs saved up for him. :)

How do you guys maintain your independence in relationships?

Now that I’m married, I get to take a unique perspective to the dating game my single friends are playing. Whenever we go out, I get to sit back and watch them get hit on. Some guys do it great….others, not so much.

This weekend Luke had to work, so I had a lot of time to spend with my friends and witness the many awkward ways men in Chicago hit on them. I can appreciate how hard it can be for a guy to approach a pretty girl, but some of their tactics were just downright rude.

For example, on Friday night a guy was clearly checking out my tall, blonde friend. However, instead of talking to her, he hit on another girl in our group and did everything possible to make sure the one he was really interested in saw.

The little game he was playing was SO OBVIOUS it was sad…and incredibly rude to the girl who he ultimately ended up using for attention.

On the totally opposite scale, on Saturday while at the pool, my friend spotted a cute guy. They clearly were attracted to each other by the smiles and eye contact that ensued.

Instead of beating around the bush, the guy confidently came over to our group, approached my friend and said “Sorry if this is a little awkward, but I wanted to come introduce myself to you.”

A++!!

They exchanged numbers and the guy got two big thumbs up from our group of girls.

So guys, what’s the lesson here? You’ll likely get much farther with that pretty girl if you act normal, confident and NICE. There’s a time and place for game playing, but in general we see right through it.

Ladies- what’s the worst way you’ve ever been hit on? How would you like to be approached by a guy?