A Three-Pound Rump Roast: Recipe

Cook's Illustrated called its recipe The Best Recipe and I decided for my first rump roast -- organic beef -- to give it a chance to impress me. I impressed myself! Tasty! My meat thermometer came from an estate sale.

1. Heat oven to 250 degrees. No, that is not a typo. Sprinkle roast with salt and ground black pepper as you like. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large, heavy pot or pan. Add the roast and sear until it's brown on every side, about 4 minutes per side.

2. Place roast in pan and roast uncovered 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the meat's internal temperature is 110 degrees.

3. Increase the oven temperature to 500 degrees and roast 15 minutes longer, until internal temperature reaches 130 degrees. (Because I like beef rare, I roasted only 10 minutes at 500 degrees.)

4. Remove from the baking pan and let the roast stand 20 minutes before carving it.

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!