Steak, potatoes, and greens

Top round, sofrito potatoes, and collards

“Steak” just means a boneless slab of meat. It could be from any cut of meat, or a large fish, even. This here is top round steak. It’s not bad broiled and sliced thin, like you see here, but don’t expect it to be tender.

I peeled and roasted these potatoes, then seasoned them with a bag of frozen sofrito I made last summer. Sofrito is a mix of braised onions, peppers, and garlic, with oregano. If you’re avoiding nightshades, this isn’t your dish, but I am not.

The collards perplex me. We bought conventional, frozen collards and then cooked them the way I usually would, braising them in some stock and wine. But they taste funny. They’re shredded beyond my ability to understand even how you can get collards broken down that small. Does it involve liquid nitrogen? Why don’t the collards I buy frozen taste like ones I buy fresh, or get from my local farmer, and I mean, at all? Now that I’ve bought these, I’ll recognize them on a hot bar anywhere. And avoid them.

We usually watch TV while we eat dinner together. Lately I’m burned out on “Hell’s Kitchen”—too much drama, not enough creative cookery—and thought we’d try “Empire.” I like it but may be continuing it alone. We also usually have ice cream sandwiches for dessert. Tonight we’re trying a frozen dessert modeled on a moon pie, with marshmallow flavored ice cream between two graham cracker cookies, and the whole thing enrobed in chocolate. While we haven’t settled on a new TV show for the dinner hour yet, we have consensus that moon pie ice cream sandwiches are good.

Beef steak

Rib chop, spaghetti squash, turnips, garlic toast

Slices of baguette, rubbed with garlic, then toasted, then buttered. Enormous, brontosaurus style rib chops from the grass fed quarter beef we bought in the fall and are still eating. (And will be. There’s no end in sight, though we’ve done this before.) The spaghetti squash and turnips are both gifts to my present self from my past self. Last summer, I made the spaghetti squash with fresh little tomatoes, basil, and garlic, all from the farm.

I’m reminded that I heard a bird today outside my window and wished for it to be spring. I generally try to stay in the now, enjoy what is: if there’s one thing I can’t control, it’s surely the season. But no, more snow is coming. Not, no more snow is coming.