Fall down seven times, stand up eight! and make the world laugh with you while you're at it. You go, girl.

I miss your stalkings! What did you end up doing with the cow?

Drew, I threw it away, with a sigh of DISGUST and also HORROR. That I had made such a mess.

Changed up my Dubya reference to Karl Rove. I prefer blaming him. He's more blameworthy. Totally his fault about the steak, too, somehow. Heh heh.

Software training is boring! I don't want to go!

Meat + oven = EVIL. Meat should be cooked outside where it cannot smell up your ventless kitchen and by extension your entire house or splatter all over the interior of your oven. The broiler is especially EVIL with the grease spatters even if you DO take your entree out in time.

If you have a gas BBQ, it's worth firing up even for a 1 person meal just b/c it is pretty fast. Charcoal takes a little more time, but the flavor is worth it, imo. (For charcoal, I'd probaby cook a couple of steaks, tho.) Lots of gals tend not to cook so well when they are eating alone - but you are worth the effort!

I know what you mean about them broilers. Mine magically turns steaks into shoe leather. Evil thing. Then I end up eating a whole bag of microwave popcorn for dinner... like I did last night.
I have come up with a new diet, though... inspired by what happens the day after you eat corn on the cob. It's the "eat-only-what-shows-up-in-your-poop" diet. Corn, beans, whatever; if its recognizable coming out as well as going in, you can eat it!
(While I thought this very amusing when I proposed it to my dear boyfriend last night, he was totally grossed out and insisted we change the subject... which made me laugh even harder. Funny diets burn more calories, ya know!)

Wow, Laurie! You made CAJUN COW!

{scribbling down note to self} No Knitting Before Coffee! I am redoing one of my panels for the bag I am making because it was uglified & I will felt the bag eventually & I didn't know whether felting would shrink or magnify the uglification.

Wednesdays suck w/out Lost.

I, even as a confirmed atheist and rational thinker, firmly believe that broilers are inhabited by little flaming demons who assail your poor food with itty bitty torches, gleefully blackening everything inside.

Hey, how did I miss the last post? I blogstalk you every day! I find it hard cooking for 4 - cause they're boys - and they eat like boys eat. Ugh! Nothing green shall touch the other foods on the plate. Now, they will eat the green things (even broccoli and asparagus), so long as it doesn't touch anything else!

But now, I want a steat - and a good one too!

April

steat = steak. I'm really hungry now!

When my fiancee and I broke up and I faced the prospect of attempting to cook, I bought a book called "Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen!" It proved to be pretty useful, in that I no longer get lumps of charcoal when I try to make garlic buns or shishkebabs in the oven. Well, at least not ENTIRELY charcoal. Isn't charcoal supposed to help with digestion anyway?

I blame Karl Rove for my recent knitting maladies. In fact I think he is responsible for my summer cold.

Heh.

Let's blame Karl Rove for everything. I like this idea!!

I've burnt many a dinner by blogsurfing while cooking. Ooops!

That poor steak! Oh no!

I shall mourn your steak for you while you are stuck in the evil training room. And also curse your broiler. Bad broiler!

hehehe I've lived in this apartment and I have yet to brave the broiler. I can't honestly say I ever tried using one.

I hear you on the knitting while tired. I tend to knit late at night and then have to rip it out the next day cause it is crap. hehehe

Laurie: Hurry up and get done with your labs. I'm feeling unloved and unstalked.

BTW, I thinks you and me is gonna have some cooking lessons. You NEED to be able to char cow any way you can. This is SO sad.

Um...I can't...well...so, the broiler...that's one sad...um...Pizza, huh?

Sorry about dinner.

We missed you last night, BTW.

Even watching the stove conscienciously I manage to do that to meat. I can't help it, I've been vegetarian 22 of my 28 years and don't know how to cook meat for DH. Don't want to *undercook* it, you know...

Yayy for knitting more Kitty Pis - remember all those pointers I emailed you about the felting! I'm going to make one soon too - maybe we should get some others doing it to and have a Pi-Along (sounds like Thai food).

Re: the stitch marker and the hat. Just follow the vertical line up from your cast-on tail and you'll see where that marker needs to be.

I am planning on making cow tonight myself and was tempted to broil.
Seeing how the evil broiler is, I will fire up the grill.

I love your posts, and am also on the diet chuckwagon from hell. Your comments on what you wanted to eat made me feel like not such a loner(-:

I'll be thinkin' of you while I eat my side of beef and asparagus.

I think it's very funny that you are lovingly stroking the hat in the first picture and giving it the finger in the second picture. Subtle.

Laurie, what yarn is that you're using for the hat anyway? I love it!

Just remember that Thursday is practice for Friday - now you've got your bad things out of your system and today will go better. Even with training. Although training is pointless since it always seems like they find the person who knows the least about the software and have them explain all too vaguely how to use it (well that was my coporate experience at least). I hope it's different for you. Have a happy weekend! :o)

The gals in my knitting group turned me on to the Food Network. Before I was a good cook, but only one dish a meal, please! Watching Rachael Ray and 30 Minute Meals helped me get things under control. Her recipes are good, but I've had the best results with the more traditional, less creative stuff.

Alton Brown had a show on cooking steak in the oven on Wednesday night. Basically, you heat a cast iron skillet real hot, sear the meat, and then finish it off in the oven. Haven't tried it yet (my oven needs cleaning before I do anything at 500 degrees!)

A GREAT starter cookbook is Lora Brody's KITCHEN SURVIVAL GUIDE. Brody is a cookbook writer who saw that none of her kid's friends could cook, so she went through her standard recipes and pulled out the easy ones. There is even a list of basic kitchen supplies, and a standard pantry shopping list. If you stock this list, you can cook anything in the book!

My sister uses it to teach her girl scout troop to cook. No one passes through her troop without being able to put at least two different meals on the table. There is super easy, super yummy lasagna recipe - it really is just opening jars and packages of shredded cheese and throwing it in the oven.

My boyfriend and I decided to be "healthy" and broil some fish one night. All was well until we noticed the alarming amount of smoke filling the kitchen (and hallway and living room). Turns out that the box holding the leftovers of the previous night's pizza was still in the oven, and now on fire. Yeah, that sucked.
Sorry to hear about your cow. Maybe next time try stir-fry? :)

You poor thing. That steak did get the life charred out of it. I had the same experience two days in a row except with a toaster strudel for my son. Gas ovens and broiler on high = a smelly burnt mess.

Tanya

Note to self: Do not broil steak. :-P

I also like the idea of blaming Karl Rove. Not your fault at all!

If it makes you feel any better, I got to the last row on the left Chicken Pox Mitten I made today before realizing I had just made a second right mitten. And, to top it off, the feral kitty family I've been feeding and hoping to make MINE, ALL MINE just got up and moved away for no apparent reason. I'm sad. Oh, then, my mother-in-law just called, forcing me to get up from my spot in front of the computer only to knock over a cup of apple juice my 18-month-old strategically placed between the phone and my husband (couldn't have been water, huh?). What can I say? Some days are definitely better than others.

Sorry to hear you had a crappy day. Hope tomorrow is beter.

Llesson number 1 of living alone: It is absolutely worth it to fire up the barbecue for that steak. If you are going to get a healthy relationship to food then you have to believe you are worth making a fuss over and making a nice meal for.

If you are really concerned about firing it up for one steak, put a breast of chicken on at the same time because cold chicken is good. (and can be torn up and stuck in a wrap with some salad for a nice quick meal the next day).

Sounds like you need one of those coffee makers with the timer you can set so it's ready when you get up. Then you will be able to take coffee on the bus and not screw up your knitting.

Yesterday I was working on a hat on the train AND on the subway, and I was so proud of myself! But I was also so sleepy, having woken up at 5:23 am to go meet my family at Disneyland. At one point during stitch-n-bitch, I was like, "hey, my hat seems like I flipped it around or something and I think it's uneven." But Carrie reassured me that it was fine, and I kept knitting away. And then all of a sudden I came back to the starting point, and you know what? One side had three rows. And the other side? Had six.

I don't think I like hats anymore.

We always broil the steaks in our house (we don't own a grill), and we've never had that kind of trouble! Did you keep the door cracked open? That can help prevent this kind of thing . . . poor cow!

Uhm. I HATE broilers. Why you ask? Because, while you may have treated a side of meat horridly in one, I actually set my first 'big girl' solo apartment on fire with one.

A fire big enough to require not one, but two, TWO!? fire engines. I have a story about it somewhere, if you'd like more details. If you prefer to pretend to broilers no longer exist, I understand that, too. Good luck with the hat repairs. Why the heck were you knitting at 5:30 AM, anyway?!

Sorry about your cow! I love to cook. I would recommend firing up the grill any day over using the oven. Think of it as a reward for not eating anything fried.

Always fire up the BBQ. For added incentive, keep a bag marshmallows on hand.

(mmmmm toasted marshmallows)

That bastard Karl Rove.

He couldn't stop at hat-icide, he had to go whole hog (er. cow) and ruin your dinner, too?

I had the same problem with a hat the other night... only replace "the train" with "the Yarn Store" and "Half asleep" to "Drunk on wine and busy running my mouth"... oy.

Mmm, barbecue. It is so nice to have a good guy working on the grill. Poor poor steak, such a waste of good beef. But we won't bring it up again :)

honey, my bad day was worse than your's I swear, you wanna spend days e-mailing about dumping and years from hell I'm your girl. Oh and Laurie? I don't drink. Ponder that, a year from hell and I can't medicate with the booze

Ha! The way we solved this problem at our house?
Broken Broiler.

Doesn't work. No way I can burn steak like that ever again...

And since my stuck-in-mid-century-design-era husband of mine won't buy a new oven because you can't find one that looks like it was made in the 60s -- we will never broil again. Ever.

Pastey white food. Yup. That's what we cook.

I forgot to mention that I love gals who can BBQ! This means you! I never let my husband touch the grill....except to clean it. ;-)

This also means I'm usually the one using the BBQ at friends houses. Like my friend Kat up there....course she mentions marshmallows...but never has any marchmallows...cuz that would mean grocery shopping...right Kat?

Or maybe she eats 'em all before I show up.

Great. Now I want s'mores.

Girlfriend! Don't you so totally KNOW that the grill is worth firing up for one measly hotdog?

Broilers are nasty, nasty things! Never use 'em We're big carninvores around here--so--my steak-cooking technique. Salt and pepper a cast-iron pan. Put on a high flame on top of stove. Heat that sucker up till a drop of water pops and sizzles on it. Time to add the steak. Cook on one side till it gives--believe me--when that side is done the pan just lets go of it. Turn steak over and cook briefly. Remove. Now the best part. The pan is somewhat meaty crusty. Deglaze the pan with a little bit of old cold strong coffee. Heat is still high and with a spatula type thing, stir up those meaty bits. The coffee will begin to evaporate--don't let it disappear! Pour the meaty stuff and the coffee over the steak--yum--coffee gravy!

Dammit, Bones! We -need-more-red-wine! And take the heat off the transporter as I don't want to be looking like CAP's steak!
I have no idea where that came from-interesting-hm...
Next steak will be better, BBQ always makes it better, hat will be better. Promise. WooHoo!

I get the thing about the broiler. I see that other commenters do too. But one commenter mentioned "pizza" and "leftovers" in the same sentence. I don't get that. Is there such a thing as leftover pizza, meaning you don't eat the whole thing??

Oooooh, that looks delish! LOL

Oh man, no knitting before coffee? But that means I can NEVER knit!
A broiler looks like a griller to me - is it the tray bit that sits under the elements/burners and has its own elememt/burner?

stalker number 47 today... broilers are bad, they are only useful for browning the cheese on nachos when you are standing in front of the oven with the door open a little - they should come with warning labels.
No more knitting at 5:30 unles you are drinking coffee,

Hey Laurie -- If you BBQ, don't worry, it's worth it for just you. If, however,like me, you have had a little accident (like leaning over to see why it wasn't lighting and having it light suddenly and explosively in your face setting bits of your hair on fire along with removing your eyebrows and some of your eyelashes...) you probably don't BBQ...ever. (Honey...would you please BBQ this veggie burger for me..? Said while batting what is left of my poor sorry eyelashes....) Broilers may be tricky, but so far, they have not caused any of my bits to catch on fire (knock wood).

Happy software training...

Kate

Whenever I go to a restaurant (or whatever) that serves a Margarita As Big As My Head, I have to order it. I've never had Wine As Big As My Head. You are my hero. I bow to your greatness.

Now I know what "charbroil" means.

I love that you posted pictures of your steak. Even though, sadly, you burnt it, the pictures still made my mouth water. Let me explain. ... My husband and three kids are all vegans. I am the only carnivore in my house and it has been a really really long time since I have even seen real meat. Really, Tofu-rkey isn't all it's cracked up to be.

you cook as well as mommy..... why not eat it raw - I would

I say it's all the steak's fault.

W. :)

Laurie, I have two words for you. George Foreman.

hey whats with the finger dude?

My favorite part of your posting was where you mentioned sidling over to the grill and turning the meat the RIGHT way as soon as the menfolks' backs were turned. *grin* Soul sister.

My worst kitchen mistakes ... hmm ....
* GROSSEST: My chicken-sicles, where I found out that the inside of fried drumsticks doesn't cook quite as fast as the outside. Mmm-mm, there's nothing like a crunchy outside coating over chilly raw chicken meat.
* BIGGEST "DUH" MOMENT: My first attempt at making french fries, wherein we learn that one must actually heat up the oil BEFORE one places the potatoes in the oil. (I cooked them for over an hour, waiting for them to "crisp up.") They eventually started to dissolve. (And did you know that oil will actually smoke? Hmm. Of course you do.)
* SCIENCE EXPERIMENT: My egg boiling while I was "just closing my eyes" and waiting on the timer to alert me. Lesson learned: Eggs can boil until they turn brown. And bounce around. (That woke me up.)
* A LITTLE SALT GOES A LONG WAY: My one attempt to cook "greens" for my first husband with some salt pork added for flavor. (I'll pause now while all you healthy cooks retch briefly.) I didn't taste it since I didn't eat cooked greens at the time (but have since learned the error of my ways, thanks to pepper vinegar sauce -- yumyumyum). So I thought, why skimp on the salt pork? I was making a tiny pot of greens for him, and I sliced off a hunk of salt pork the size of a bread slice. Then I cooked it nice and long and slow, so all the flavor from the pork would soak in. To his credit, he managed to choke down a few bites of my Salty Greens Delight before admitting he was going to have to stop or be sick.
* HEALTHY CAN ALSO BE GROSS: He was as much as a trooper as my third husband, who manfully downed 1/3 of a bowl of my carrot soup during a brief healthy phase. (Hubby No. 3 -- Mr. Wonderful who's still hanging in with me -- threw down his spoon with a clanging "Thank God!" when I spat out my first horrible-horrible mouthful into my hand (delicate lady that I am).
* NO NEED TO YELL "FIRE": And finally, the one time when I was making boiled shrimp (with corn coblets and potato chunks and other goodies thrown into the shrimp boil for flavor) and the water and veggies and shrimp boiled over so fast (like it always does since I never learn) that it slopped into the gas stove's burner, which flamed up magnificently. And I nonchalantly reached for the box of salt and dashed some on the fire to put it out quickly without stopping my conversation with my friend, Sherman. I stopped to inquire about his goggling eyes. He said he wasn't sure whether to be (a) impressed that I had handled it so calmly or (b) appalled that I had enough kitchen fire experience to know just what to do. (Sherman is a magnificent cook, and yet he still bravely chokes down my cooking occasionally.)

This is all to say -- YOU SHOW THAT STEAK WHO'S BOSS! ;o) (By the way -- I still can't figure out why my postings don't have paragraph returns ... I use them, really I do.) -- Carolyn B.

Oh, I am such an idiot. I see now that the paragraph breaks show up when the posting actually posts ... just not in the preview. Duh.

You are correct. it is all Karl Roves fault. The bastard.

You are SO worth firing the grill up for! BUT, if you're still hesitant to do so i agree with Levis Mama - GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL.

My grandma is infamous for her "Lola Toast". If we're having the whole family over for dinner she'll take a loaf of french bread, slice it in half legthwise, butter it up and pop it in the broiler (with the door slightly cracked). Inevitably she starts multitasking in the kitchen and forgets about the bread until the smoke alarm starts going off. When done right, its delicious. Lightly toasted & golden with too much butter. Mmmmm. But, it's only come out that way 1 or 2 times in my life. Its like the sighting of a rare white buffalo.

My embarassing cooking moment... there have been many but the first that comes to mind was when I cooked dinner for my father. I decide to make some asparagus. When my father bites into his first spear he chews.. and chews... and chews.
After a minute he delicately takes his napkin and spits the asparagus out into it saying "I don't think you snapped enough of the ends off" I just stared at him blankly for a moment and said "You're supposed to snap the ends off?"

You have an Uncle Truman? All I have are a couple Georges and one Bob.

I love reading your entries! They make me laugh and laugh.

I had a neighbor who never emptied the grease out of their broiler pan (that was built into their stove)-- they were moving and the stove was lifted and FIVE YEARS worth of slimy, ucky grease came out in a trail from their kitchen, across the floor and out the door... ick!

You might have mentioned this in a previous post, but do you work in Downtown L.A.? If you do, I feel sorry for you! I'm serving jury duty ( lucky me got picked as an alternate juror ) in Downtown and I'm lucky if I can find the parking garage at the end of the day!

Haw, haw! That's just nature telling you it's not safe to eat beef.

A couple years ago I bought a giant-sized discount package of chicken thighs at Sam's Club. Thought I'd cook 'em a day ahead. I put 'em in the oven while I was cooking that day's dinner. But by dinner time, the thighs were still way underdone, so I left them in. We sat down to dinner, and I cleaned up, and I went to bed . . . having forgotten the thighs in the oven. In the morning my little child tiptoed into the bedroom and whispered to me, "Mommy, Dad wants to know what you want to do with the chicken that's in the oven." Fourteen hours and counting . . . "Meat falling off the bone" doesn't even describe it. More like, "meat completely gone from the bone." And Lesson #1 was that no, you CAN'T just putting it in a soup or something. And the house smelled for a week.

It is always worth it to fire up the grill. Even better is dragging the grill out to the front of the house, or getting one of those little miniWebbers and taking it to a park. Men cannot resist the obvious charms, skillls, and scents of a woman grilling steak solo and will swarm you. With the fire-in-public theme you've got going on, I think the universe is trying to tell you to get outside and grill already.

Hi! I just found your blog and I've spent the evening reading through the archives (sent the boyfriend off to play with his friends). Unfortunately I didn't have any Californian wine at home, so I had Chilean Cabernet. And the leftover pizza from breakfast. And an alpaca raglan cardi. Thank you for a great evening! You've made me laugh out loud and cry a little.
/Monika

PS: Eurotrash question: What's a broiler? Is it different from an oven?

I just found your blog and LOVE IT! You sound so much like me in some of your entries.

And that precoffee thing? I'm feeling you.

Hey.... I know they bugged you about this when i came over BUT I want to read the blogs of all the other cool non-dogs that were at your house when I came over. But I can't figure out who they might be by the comments. Who are they where can I find them.
Maybe we should do a mini CRAZY AUNT PURL only tag where you have to list all the blogs that you stalk!!!!! heh heh heh it would take you weeks.
As my Mommy would say - I am a better stalker cause I know where you live..... heh heh heh....

I did something similar to a soy corn dog last week. Thought I set the microwave for 45 seconds. Actually set it for 4 minutes, 45 seconds, then left the room.
DOH!
Walked back in to see A LOT of smoke coming out of my microwave.

I set off the smoke detector every timeI use the broiler lately. Every time!! Even when the food doesn't burn, the pan itself does. Aargh.

You rock! Food is such a pain to make I hear you, and I think it is eternally unfair that you have to REMEMBER things in the oven where there is wine to be had. (Or as Aimee the Sis says - VODKA TONICS, the Low Cal exixer of life). But seriously, for super easy resepies that even a fellow broiler boiler can make with grace and ease (and the use of a kitchen timer to remind me to stop drinking on occasion) check out meals.com, it will give you anoter fun internet place to play while you are done blogstocking. It's fablous and very non fancy fancy, nor worries about nose in the air chefs or hard core make it from scratch stuff.

Good luck on the cooking and I bet the cats loved the burnt steak, so all was not lost.

You rock! Food is such a pain to make I hear you, and I think it is eternally unfair that you have to REMEMBER things in the oven where there is wine to be had. (Or as Aimee the Sis says - VODKA TONICS, the Low Cal exixer of life). But seriously, for super easy resepies that even a fellow broiler boiler can make with grace and ease (and the use of a kitchen timer to remind me to stop drinking on occasion) check out meals.com, it will give you anoter fun internet place to play while you are done blogstocking. It's fablous and very non fancy fancy, nor worries about nose in the air chefs or hard core make it from scratch stuff.

Good luck on the cooking and I bet the cats loved the burnt steak, so all was not lost.