Aside from that, though, I took today as mostly a vacation. By which I mean that I made no efforts to graduate from grad school but otherwise carried on mostly as normal. Which included avoiding the fuck out of anyone I know. For a while, I had assumed that I would be spending today with friends, but when the day itself arrived, I found the prospect of spending the entire day on my own, without the necessity of interacting with people whom I enjoy greatly but whom I constantly see in the context of work and school, to be much more enticing. To hell with dealing with crowds; I've seen fireworks before and felt no urge to go out of my way to see this little New England city's display. Why spend Independence Day among my fellow citizens when I could instead spend it dicking around on the internet and improving my Spanish?
In other news tangentially related along the lines of things I supposedly learned in high school, The Economist has reminded us that math is actually important and that we consumers are often pretty dumb, which leaves us vulnerable to having advantage taken of us. "Consumers often struggle to realise, for example, that a 50% increase in quantity is the same as a 33% discount in price. They overwhelmingly assume the former is better value. [...] This numerical blind spot remains even when the deal clearly favours the discounted product." So while fine, make your argument that the average person doesn't need calculus, but please! Remember your fractions! Don't let yourself be a passive sucker in our capitalist jungle! Especially my national compatriots -- how much more American can you get than refusing to let yourself get screwed over by people who are trying to take your money?
Independence Day actually isn't so much my holiday. Catch me again in September, when Constitution Day/Citizenship Day rolls around, and then you'll be subjected to the full force of my estadounidense-ness. True story, there are two books that have a permanent home on my bedside table, and those an old family Bible and the Federalist Papers.
Anyways, it's not as though I let the day go by without some sort of celebration. Today deserved a special meal, something that I had been idly contemplating since the farmers' market last weekend.
As a side note, all of this food talk is rather amusing to me. Once upon a time, I actually wasn't quite welcomed in the kitchen, being viewed as a hazard to myself and others. While the former had changed, the latter retains some truth, as evidenced by my managing to throw mustard all over the kitchen floor today. Not spill -- throw. Twice.
It was worth it, though. The result: porterhouse steak with honey-mustard and shiitake reduction, rainbow chard with shallots and goat cheese, and quinoa. And a cold beer.
I based the steak and sauce off of a recipe in Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill. As per usual, I adapted based on availability of ingredients and equipment, as well as personal taste.
After seasoning the steak with freshly-ground black pepper and letting it rest at room temperature for a bit, I cooked it in a pan over stove-top, using about a large spoonful of olive oil. I prefer my steaks medium rare, erring on the side of bleeding, and cooking over medium-high heat for about three minutes per side, flipping it once, seemed to do the trick. When I was finished cooking it, it immediately was removed from the heat and put on a plate to rest.
While the steak was cooking, I sauteed the well-washed rainbow chard in a bit of olive oil. I prefer my vegetables on the side of crispy -- I'm sensing a theme here -- so I cooked it over medium heat and added one chopped shallow when the leaves had just begun to wilt. Then, I just continued to saute it, checking the done-ness of the stems by stabbing them with a fork every so often. When they were just about where I wanted them, I tossed in a handful of bits of semi-soft goat cheese.
Also during this time, I sliced up a handful of shiitake mushrooms and sauteed them in a small pan with olive oil.
When I removed the steak from the pan, I kept the pan warm and added about half a small spoonful of olive oil. Then, I added the mushrooms, a chopped shallot, a big spoonful of whole-grain mustard, big spoonful of lemon juice, a spoonful of honey and some parsley. I stirred that over low heat for a while, then grabbed the plate on which my steak was resting and tipped the juices that had gathered on the plate into the pan. Stirred it all up and let it reduce a bit.
For the final plate, I put on some leftover cooked quinoa, still cold out of the fridge, since it was a hot day. Then, onto the plate went the chard and the steak. Finally, I spooned the sauce onto the steak.
The verdict: would do it again! One thing to note is that, despite the fancy-sounding ingredients, the sauces and other bits aren't overwhelming at all. Your base items -- the steak, the chard -- completely show through, so if those aren't good, the other things won't save your meal. Also, the chunky sauce will inevitably fall off of the steak while eating it -- especially if you're eating it right and getting every bit of the best meat by picking it up with nature's utensils (i.e., your hands) and gnawing right down to the t-bone -- and then tastes great mixed in with the quinoa.
Topped it off tonight with a simple red-white-and-blue dessert: plain low-fat yogurt with blueberries and grenadine to accent.
A stray thought to follow up with the Anderson Cooper business. It occurred to me that publicly coming out is, in a way, a comparable opposite to a hate crime. The reason that a hate crime is a hate crime and should be addressed as such is because it's double in its attack: it targets both the individual(s) and a community. Beating a gay man for the sole reason that he's gay both injures that specific man and is a message to the gay community, both locally and in generally, that they, too, deserve the same treatment, no matter who they are. It's a threat and an attempt at intimidation to others beyond the specific, direct victim. But when someone publicly comes out, it also has those dual levels: the personal level, where that individual is dispelling other people's possible misconceptions, and the societal level, where they are making a statement that whatever they are is a presence that exists and is not to be hidden or shamed. To the threats of Get out and Keep your head down and Don't let us catch you comes the countering declaration of I am here and have just as much a right to be as anyone else.
Land of the free, home of the brave. So to my fellow Americans, and anyone else who wishes to crack a beer or shoot off an illegal firework in solidarity, I wish you a happy Independence Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment