07.22.08
London broil, a feast to feast upon.
This morning I watered the garden a second time for Daniel. The dirt is soaking up the water like a sponge. No sign of pumpkins yet, but the weeds are beginning to poke up again. Last evening, Daniel planted several seed packages of flowers and herbs in three cedar window boxes and three large ornamental glazed flower pots he had prepared on Sunday. It rained again this evening, matter of fact, it’s still raining. We’ve two more days of rain forecast. The seeds should love that.
I forgot to write about my marinated london broil from last Friday. Yum. Daniel cooked last Monday through Wednesday and we had leftovers on Thursday, so the poor steak had to marinade an extra day. Five days it bathed in a combination of soy, ginger, brown sugar, garlic, lemon, and oil. I turned in each morning and each evening. When I removed it from the marinade it was the color of mahogany. I grilled it over a low flame for 25 minutes, turning it after 10, then again every 5. The grill grate was caramelized with a thick coating of sugar when I removed it. I placed it on a large dinner plate, it had shrunk about 25%, and let it rest for 15 minutes.
While the steak was grilling, I poured the marinade in a small pot and brought to a slow boil over my simmer burner. Once it had boiled for five minutes I stirred in a tablespoon of flour that I had mixed in less than a quarter cup of cold water and brought it to a second boil, then let it simmer over a very low flame until the meat was cut. We had this with fresh cucumber and macaroni salads I had made after lunch. I add a little yellow zucchini into my cucumber salad for color.
Daniel bought me a mandolin, made in France, back in the winter, and this was only the second opportunity I had to use it. The cucumber and zucchini was sliced so thin you could literally have read a newspaper through it. I also add one quarter of a medium size onion to the cucumber salad. The remainder of the onion goes into the macaroni salad.
We had this meal a second time on Saturday, then again on Monday. Today I finished the last of the meat mixed in with stir-fry that Daniel had made for dinner yesterday. I baked cornbread in the toaster oven out on the porch this afternoon to go with the dinner that Daniel made this evening. It was too damned hot to turn the oven on in the house so I took the toaster oven outside and sat it on a table on the porch. It worked quite well. Dinner tonight was BBQ pork, beets, and cornbread. The cornbread was sweet enough to have for dessert even without the honey we drizzled over top
Daniel owns a postage stamp machine and has an account with the Post Office. After dinner he weighed the envelope with my poetry submission and printed out the postage. I’ll mail it tomorrow.
O.P.W.