Single Women Want Meat

"Eww!! Meat! It's touching my eggs!" said my friend when her breakfast eggs arrived with a sausage patty she hadn't ordered. I took it and ate it myself, but women aren't supposed to do that. It's fattening. It's fried. Worst of all--ewww--it's meat! (It also abuses small children, and greases the convent staircase!) Women today like "Thai places" and "good salads." Listen: The Piehole is sick of julienned raw carrots and some days I have no interest in veggie burgers. It's practically impolite to eat meat in public anymore.

Even some of the men are that way. On a lunch date I said I grilled my own steaks and maybe I'd grill one for him sometime. The guy said, "I don't eat red meat." Then I mentioned a great glass of wine I'd had the other day. He said, "I don't drink," and began an hour-long whine about his software company. I mentally crossed this pantywaist off my list and ordered a plate of carpaccio and a beer and let him pay for it.

I think peer pressure has a lot to do with eating rabbit food in public and everything else in private, and you know we do, because we're always dieting. I too used to put on a show of being health conscious and weight conscious and avoided hearty meals and then, 90 minutes after my 340-calorie Healthy Choice lunch, I was at the vending machine for a 400-calorie two-pack of PopTarts I hid in my jacket on the way back to my cubicle. One evening after a workout I felt dizzy and unwell. I stopped at the firehouse and let the firemen ambulance me to the hospital. I told the doctor I'd been exercising and felt faint but he found nothing wrong. He asked me, What did you do at the gym? I said, Elliptical, weights, and treadmill. He said, "What did you have for lunch?" I said, "A spinach salad."

He said, "You thought you could work all afternoon and then work out at the gym on a spinach salad?"

So here you see my healthy single-woman lunch: four ounces of grilled flat iron steak and homegrown tomatoes, and I didn't feel hungry again until dinnertime. Avoid between-meal snacking, women and men. Eat a little meat!

Cast-Iron Grilling

Grilling six greasy bratwursts for my biker brother-in-law I seared them first to get grill marks, then finished cooking in a disposable aluminum pan to contain the grease and flare-ups.

In 106-degree weather I also wanted to cook hunks of beef like this flat iron steak. I chose as my grill the indestructible, portable (35 pounds), very low-tech, like 19th century, Lodge cast-iron "sportsman" grill. Photo is by the artist/poet/my bff Mantrap Marcie. "Natural" charcoal is my fuel.

Grill Features: The grill rack can be flipped to add an extra inch between the heat and the food, very handy. There's room for 6 bratwursts for one brother-in-law still loyal to Rush Limbaugh. Cast iron must be seasoned to work well, but that doesn't mean leave it outside; I don't do that. When finished grilling I scrape the rack, let it cool and then clean the rack, empty the ashes, and rub every part with a little bit of cheap vegetable oil on a paper towel, and so far no complaints. Grill cost $100 delivered, and will outlive me and the person who will buy it at my estate sale.

The $4 Steak Plate

Why dine out when you can cheaply home-cook and plate yourself some grilled London broil and fresh vegetables? Sliced cucumber I got from gardening: free. Tomato came free, a bonus from the farmer I buy eggs from. Lettuce is one-half of one-third of a package of three organic romaine heads, which means what's on the plate cost 70 cents. London broil got on sale, 18 ounces for $7.47, is 41.5 cents per ounce. That times the six ounces you see here is $2.49. That's $3.19 total. Add in the onion and the cup of cooking wine that went into the marinade, and the homemade steak sauce (recipe follows), and the meal cost around $4. Optional: a Stella Artois whose green bottle and red label matched prettily with the meal. It's a clean-tasting beer good for summer, with a great buzz factor. It came from a six-pack, so it cost $1.16.

Easy Homemade Steak Sauce. Very simple and you'll never want store-bought again.

1/3 cup raisins (Yes, raisins. You'll see.)

1/3 cup boiling water

1/4 cup ketchup

3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons mustard

2 tablespoons plain white vinegar

salt and pepper

• Pour boiling water over the raisins in a bowl and let them sit 5 minutes until they're plumped. Then pour the raisins and their water into a blender with the rest of the ingredients except salt and pepper, and then puree until smooth. Salt and pepper to taste. Makes a little over one cup. I discovered that this sauce freezes well if you want to make it ahead.