Steve Can Cook: Steak

So I've finally decided to start cooking at my house again. It's a bit of a chore, since I have a very tiny kitchen, and I don't really like using my oven – It's very close to the wall, so I don't have room to stand in front of it when the door is open. Plus, it is one of those ovens with a pilot light, and it's from roughly 1923.

Because of all of the preceding factors, I finally bought the bullet and got a Foreman grill. Well, to be more precise, I got a fancier, nicer version of a Foreman grill, a clone made by General Electric. You can see a picture of it to the right. Unlike the old Foremans, this has removable plates, which makes the clean-up about a million times easier. It would be about a billion times easier, actually, but I don't have a dishwasher at this place. (This also factors into my laziness when it comes to cooking.)

I got it on Friday night, so I tested it out Saturday after a thorough washing. It actually cooks pretty well! I had a thick cut of London broil, plus another smaller cut that I fileted. While it did really well with the fileted cut, it still did a passable job on the thicker cut. With the older Foreman, it would normally just char and burn the top and bottom layers, and leave the middle uncooked. Not so with this grill.

To the right is my dinner for Sunday night. In lieu of buying a bunch of BBQ and liquid marinades, I rely more on flavor packets, since they just require vegetable oil and vinegar. Saturday's delicious steak dinner was peppercorn, and Sunday is baja citrus. I think that implies a mix of tang and sweet, but the flavor is always somewhat ambiguous until it is cooked into the meat.

Normally, I wouldn't make steak two nights in a row. Unfortunately, I took advantage of a 2-for-1 sale on the steaks, and I didn't notice that the expiration date for them both was Sunday. Thus I find myself in my current dilemma, overdosing on steak.

… Well, I suppose there are worse fates. Bon appetite!

Peach Rings and Other Convenience Store Food

For whatever reason, there is a whole subset of food that only exists at gas stations and convenience stores. A good portion of it is really disgusting crap – you know, like those hot dogs on rollers.

But thanks to my trash compactor stomach, I must confess a guilty pleasure for all of it. The aforementioned hot dogs aren’t my actual favorite, but every couple of months, I just have a craving for hot dogs. I’ll usually buy a few at a gas station as opposed to buying a package of dogs and buns, since they normally go to waste.

(An overlooked negative aspect of living alone is that it’s tough to properly buy food in proper amounts. Hot dogs come in packages of six, with six to eight buns, which means I have to commit to two to three meals of hot dogs in a week. The same goes with salad, or in my case this week, London broil steak. I got two big, beautiful steaks because they were 2-for-1 this week, but I have to freeze one because they’re both a pound and a half each.)

My most recent obsession of the past two years? Peach rings. I don’t know why, but the only place they sell them around here are at Cumberland Farms and other gas stations / convenience stores. Along with things like gummy worms, Sour Patch kids and dried fruit, they exist in their own weird subset of food only sold at gas stations.

I wish the Sweettooth candy store, which the picture at the top comes from, was closer to me, because I’d buy those peach rings all the god damn time. As-is, mmm, maybe getting 100 pounds shipped to me isn’t such a bad idea...