If it could go wrong with lunch today, it did!
I found some steaks in the freezer the other day and decided that we'd fire the grill up for lunch today. We were going to fry up some onions and mushrooms to go with it, cook up some rice pilaf, and make up some iced tea.
The calamity of disasters started with the opening of the rice pilaf box. Don't they usually have the rice in packets inside of the box? Well, the box opened kind of roughly, and rice went everywhere. We saved what landed on the countertop and discarded what landed on the floor. Since the portion was going to be smaller, we decided to make up some potatoes to go with the steaks.
We have the cheater potatoes - those flakes that come in a box. Apparently, the boxed potatoes have a shelf life, because even following the directions they came out crumbly. Still tasted okay though, and I added some garlic and herbs to make them a bit less boring.
I went to cut up the onion that we had, and discovered that it was no longer suitable for human consumption (it would have been okay to plant though - it had a nice stalk growing!). What we thought we had left of a white onion in the fridge was turning black, so we were out of luck with the onions. Mushrooms were okay though (they were canned), so I saut?ed those while the potatoes were preparing and the rice pilaf was simmering - oh wait, the burner under the rice is turned off instead of low. Okay, so maybe we're just not meant to have rice with this meal.
It was at about this time that the tea had finished brewing, and we discovered that the switch was set to "open", which meant that the tea was a bit weak (it didn't get to steep in the machine before it went into the pitcher). Still okay for our meal though, as we were planning to use flavored syrup anyway.
I went out to check on the steaks and discovered that we had run out of propane. The grill was still around 300? and the steaks were just about done, so I let them sit on the grill for a few more minutes while we got everything else to the table.
Through all of the troubles, the meal actually came out quite well. Steak was good, although a bit tough (it's been in the freezer for so long that we don't even remember buying it). Potatoes were dry but tasted fine, and we'll have to try the rice pilaf for dinner (it still wasn't done by the time we were done with the rest of the meal).
