1. When I open the freezer in the basement and see our small and thick ribeye steaks, I don't think about grilling them or frying them in a cast iron pan or baking them. I don't think about eating one of them with a baked potato nor do I think about having a steak fry for family dinner.
I look at these steaks and I see soup or stew.
So, today, having thawed a ribeye, I cut the thick steak into two thinner ones and, in a Dutch oven, I fried bacon pieces with cubes of steak alone with white onion, mushrooms, and chopped celery seasoned with salt and pepper.
While these ingredients cooked away, I turned a tablespoon and a half of Vegetable Better than Bullion paste into a quart of broth, added it to the pot along with with four chopped carrots and about half a bag of corn.
I let this emerging soup bubble until the carrots were cooked through -- the other ingredients were in good shape -- and I added Montreal Steak seasoning and oregano to the soup.
I also added egg noodles. For me, this was the perfect finishing touch, or, if you are a Russian aristocrat in War and Peace, it was le coup de grace.
I enjoy cooking for Debbie and doing it when it's my turn to fix family dinner.
That said, I enjoy the freedom of cooking for myself. I can more freely try out seasonings, use noodles instead of potatoes in stew/soup (like tonight), and feel more confident about cooking without a recipe.
2. Here's the kind of irony I enjoy.
Well, let me ask you, have you ever been in a social situation with someone who talks and talks and talks, never seems to notice that no one else his participating because this person is dominating the conversation, and then this same conversation dominating person says, "You know, I really like Barnaby, but he sure talks a lot."
That's irony!
Irony often reveals lack of self-knowledge. In the case of the non-stop talker complaining about a non-stop talker, it's not hypocristy, it's just being clueless about one's own behavior.
Leo Tolstoy employs irony masterfully in the early chapters of War and Peace. These chapters focus on the manners, concerns, and preoccupations of the Petersburg and Moscow aristocracy. Tolstoy's use of irony exposes false confidence, shallow knowledge, little true self-understanding, and more.
Repeatedly, these instances of irony had me flashing back to novels I've read by Jane Austen.
I wondered, did Tolstoy admire Jane Austen?
I looked into if a bit and the answer was a resounding YES. He loved Austen.
I think she taught him a lot about moments of withering irony in a story and how they can make a reader laugh or feel fear and how these moments always succeed in revealing more about the character than the character realizes is being revealed about her (or him).
3. Today, I became an amateur (maybe amateurish) veterinarian as a follow up to having been an amateur (no, amateurish) cat groomer.
Friday evening, while working to remove a plug of matted fur from Copper's fur, I wounded him, just below and to the left of his chin.
I kept an eye on the wound all day Saturday and tried with materials we had on hand to cover the wound, but I didn't have the right stuff.
This morning I bought gauze pads, a roll of self-adhesive wrap, and cotton rounds.
I had better success cleaning the wound with the cotton rounds and water. I was able to clip fur around the wound, cover it with a gauze pad, and hold it in place by wrapping the self-adhesive material loosely around his neck.
Copper has been unbothered by this whole situation.
My attempt to clean the wound and clumsily cover it haven't fazed him.
He definitely is not in pain.
And once my gauze/neck wraps were in place, he left them alone.
For all of this, I've been most grateful.
Update: It's now Monday morning. I've been to the vet. He'll perform a minor surgery and stitch the wound. I'll have Copper back home by 3 or 4 this afternoon.
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