The community of Lake Lenore showed their love for ribs on Valentine's Day.

The Lake Lenore Knights of Columbus held their first-ever Valentine's Rib Fest on February 14th at the Lake Lenore Community Hall. Cocktails kicked off the evening at 6 PM, Supper was at 7 PM and then a crowd of around 200 patrons danced the night away at 9 PM with tickets priced at $30.

"We've had Valentine's function in town before and this was the first year we were looking for something new to do. So one of the Knights suggested the idea and we had some ribs cooked up and made it a nice casual evening," said Ralph Viczko with the Lake Lenore Knights of Columbus.

That suggestion came from Knight Tom Ripley who owns Lake Lenore Meats. The idea of a rib fest or competition had been rattling around with Ripley for some time. The original notion was to have several cooks pitting their skills against one another. Because of a shift of dates and some timing conflict, Ripley had to undertake the rib cooking himself with the help of his wife Gina, friends, and a small fleet of Traeger smoker barbecues. Thomas and Gina worked on the marinades and came up with three variations. 

“We have three kinds,” explains Ripley, “we have a Teriyaki rib, and one is a cured rib that’s just like a ham that we do with honey. The other one is a Jack Daniel’s barbecue sauce that we make. By the time we were done, we had about 24 hours of smoking.”

The results were nothing short of spectacular. The Jack Daniel’s ribs showed off the smoke both from the cooking and the whiskey sauce. The cured ribs were like eating a honey ham on a bone. The hands down winner of the night, based on audience applause, were the teriyaki that had the sweet and salty ginger flavour coating the tender, meaty ribs.

The ribs were complemented with home-baked beans, coleslaw, baked potatoes complete with fixings.

Vaugh Irlbeck was one of the helpers who pitched in to serve and support the cause. He explained that the funds raised by the evenings’ meal and raffles would all head back to updating the parish house at St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church in Lake Lenore. 

"The parish has done a lot of work to renovate the church itself and we have a parish house that our priest lives in, so we're looking at updating that because it is quite old," said Ralph Viczko.

Following the meal, diners danced the rest of Valentine’s Day away to the band River’s Edge. 

Winner of the “Wagon of Fun” raffle was Jamie Haeusler. Winner of the 50/50 draw valued at $1000 was Michael Foy. 

The Lake Lenore Knights of Columbus also support a number of other local charities.