cook: salisbury steak for two & television for one

My accomplishment yesterday was vacuuming my grains and beans drawer. Yeah I only organized just one drawer, but I also assessed what I have (don't need more pasta as I try to limit gluten) and what to cook in the coming weeks (grain bowls for me, pasta bowls for hubs).

Last night though I cooked an All-American meal of Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and green beans.                            

And I reviewed Ree Drummond's recipe and luckily had all the ingredients in my pantry to go into the football shaped patties. 

And I decreased the recipe to just a little less than half a pound of ground beef for a quarter pound of meat per person. I suppose ground meat doesn’t resemble steak, and hence that’s why recipes call for shaping the patties into ovals to resemble steaks you can cut with a fork and knife. The French onion soup I cooked a few nights ago became the base for the steak’s gravy.

And so a tablespoon of corn starch slurry added to the soup and meat juices made for a delicious gravy even if I didn’t include mushrooms.

And there were no leftovers.  Yes!                       

But in looking at my plate above, I’m obsessing over the plates I’ll be making in the pottery studio this winter and pondering clay bodies and salivating over glazes at Coyote Clay. 

On this winter break I’ve been watching lots of t.v. Matrix Resurrection was a thoughtful revisit and of course had me pondering reality, mental constructs and choices. I feel like art is my rebellion against a constrained and mediocre existence. 

I’d also watched And Just Like That because Sex and the City (the series, NOT the movies which were excruciatingly bad)had reflected dating life in my own 30s even if I wasn’t a cisgender white woman in NYC; unlike my life though I never had those loyal female friendships. I am rather terrible at them though here and there I’ve enjoyed girlfriends from work or hobbies, which went away as I moved away or my interests evolved. However, the show is trying to rectify those inequities and unrealities of portraying only heterosexual white women by having a more inclusive cast and mirroring those cringey collisions of privilege and awkward, difficult conversations about sexuality and race. I have to laud it for trying to right some wrongs and make the lives of 50-something women more visible in popular culture. And for these women finding friends outside their all-encompassing life of dating and exercise/shopping/brunches. 

But at the same time, I loved the comedy and the glamor and the FASHION of Carrie Bradshaw’s world which is why I also lapped up the second season of Emily in Paris, which at least included an Asian best friend who can belt out songs that won the songstress her Tony and an Emmy awards. And the most romantic, iconic, and gorgeous settings of Paris.

I likewise loved Mindy Kaling’s multiculturally casted The Sex Lives of College Girls that addresses socioeconomics as well as interacial relations just as I had earlier adored Lena Dunham’s Girls, which was so narrowly straight and white in contrast. 

And if that weren’t enough HBO, I’m also loving the first season thus far of Issa Rae’s Insecure—and gawd why wasn’t there a show like this for my 20s and 30s to relate to about my own experiences of micro aggressions and outright aggression from white people? 

That’s a whole ‘nother discourse on race, gender and identity. Peace out.