A glovely day and no mis-steak

2020-04-06T18:45:52Z

Eureka! As I was looking up nitrile gloves, I remembered that those looked an awful lot like gloves I'd bought some time back for wearing while washing dishes. I checked my hall closet for medical supplies, didn't find them, but did find a long-forgotten box of dust masks that I'd bought, apparently when I had a really bad cold and didn't want to infect people. While they're not ideal for stopping viruses, they would at least block large virus-carrying saliva droplets. And I'm expecting a shipment of KN95 filter masks to arrive today, which I can wear when I'm venturing into more crowded places like grocery stores.

(Amazon has filter masks in stock that at least claim to be KN95. These masks are similar in effectiveness to the N95s that medical providers use. Don't pay more than $3 or so per mask, though. And read the description carefully to make sure that it at least says they're KN95, though there's no way you can really be certain even if it claims to be. But it'll be better than nothing, for sure.)

Then I went downstairs to the kitchen and peeked under the sink, and voila! There were those gloves. They were aged and a bit discolored in places, but I think they'll be effective for wearing when I go out to get groceries. Which means I'll be perfectly set for if I should need to make an expedition into the great wide infectious world for in-person grocery shopping and such. I feel like I just unearthed buried treasure!

In other news of me, I've gotten pretty good at pan-searing steaks lately. You'll laugh at me, but until just a couple months ago I didn't even know this was a thing you could do. I love steaks, but I thought you needed a grill for them, so you had to go out to fancy restaurants and overpay. But one day when I asked the local neighborhood Facebook community for recommendations for cheap steak places, and one of the members told me "Aldi and your stovetop."

And son of a gun if they weren't right. All I need is the meat, sea salt, some butter, steak seasoning, and garlic, and I can make the best darn steaks I've ever had. Plus, with a little experimentation, I can time cooking them exactly right, so I can make them perfectly blue rare and not have to hope that the restaurant doesn't overcook it. (I tell them, "I want it to say 'moo' when I poke it with my fork," but do they ever listen?) Usually I do strip steaks, but with the grocery shortages I had to get sirloins in my last grocery order. But I just adjusted the sear time downward by a minute or so, and it still works just as well. A perfectly seared steak, some instant mashed potatoes, and I have a dinner fit for a king. And it's sooooo much cheaper than going out for it!

(I suppose that cooking my steaks rare isn't necessarily the safest thing to do, but these days just going out into public spaces and breathing isn't the safest thing to do. If I'm going to get sick, I'd rather do it for a tasty steak than just for breathing!)

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robotech_master

A glovely day and no mis-steak