How Guys Eat

Often, when I'm home alone, I get together with my buddy, Ted. Sometimes we go out for a sandwich, and then stop home to have a couple scotches. Other times we might fire up the grill, and then enjoy a dram or two after dinner. This week, Susan was away, and the weather was perfect, so I told Ted, and our mutual friend, Larry, to stop by and we'd cook steaks.

So I went to Wegmans to pick up three steaks. One of the butchers was standing in front of the meat counter with his arms crossed. "Whaddya need?" I told him I wasn't sure; that my wife was out of town; that a couple guys were coming over; and that I thought I wanted to grill some steaks. "Wife away, huh? Guys night out. I've got these nice porterhouse." He was right; he did have some nice porterhouse, about an inch and a quarter thick; they were sizable, generous steaks, but not too much for one person to eat. All in all, it was about four pounds of steak, or a little more than twenty ounces per person. The butcher was into the whole idea, and gave me a great price on the porterhouse; and he told me to have a good time with my buddies. I was half expecting him to invite himself over to join in the festivities.

I also picked up a loaf of bread, and some stuff to munch on first. Bit of salami, some lomo, provolone, roasted peppers and artichoke hearts. But when I got home, I figured I should round out the meal with a starch, and I found some wild rice mix in the pantry, and a salad. Nice well balanced meal. Bottle of red wine, a blend from Argentina, very good with the steaks. I made up the dinosaur red rub, and with Susan away, I used the full amount of salt that the recipe called for. We don't usually get to eat much salt around my house, so this was going to be a treat.

The steaks were fabulous; the rub made them mouth watering, literally. Everyone ate every bit of their steak, right down to the bone. And we ate pretty much the whole loaf of bread. But not the rice. In fact if it wasn't for a single spoon of rice that Ted took, really to be polite, there wouldn't have been any rice eaten. Same for the salad. No one put any salad on his plate, although we picked at a pepper here, or a tomato there. When we were finishing up, Ted apologized for not eating anything but the steak. He figured I felt bad; that I had gone to the trouble of cooking rice, and making a salad, but no one ate any of them. I told Ted not to worry. It was just market research; I just wanted to see what everyone liked and didn't like. And next time we do this, I said, the hell with the rice, and the hell with the salad. I'll buy a loaf of bread, and maybe some stuff to munch on first, but we'll eat steaks, washed down with red wine, and we'll drink scotch after dinner, and we'll forget about all the non-essentials.

Oh, I almost forgot. We smoked cigars with our whisky after dinner. Just how good is a scotch, especially a smoky Islay scotch, with a cigar, after a steak dinner? That covers all the important food groups I can think of.