Ironclad Love

Chapter 6

When he got home after school, Thomas played video games as he pondered how best he might ask Elaina out again.

This time, however, he didn't feel so terrible about it. In fact, he was somewhat looking forward to the excursion and the opportunity to eat some good food again as he wondered where she might recommend this time.

Remembering her eating the school lunches gave him an idea. Once again neglecting his homework after school, Thomas decided to put his cooking skills to use. Though an idiot, he did have some useful life skills at least.

Thomas entered the kitchen and previewed what was inside the fridge. He decided to make steak and rice, so he took out the steaks from the fridge. Since his family had both the three steak packs that were on sale, he decided to just use all three of those. He laid some tin foil down on the counter to make cleaning up afterwards easier and then brought out a cutting board. After opening the steaks, he used a fork to stab some small holes in the steaks to tenderize them and seasoned them with a simple dry rub of fine grain Morton sea salt, finely ground black pepper, a little bit of garlic powder, and a touch of paprika and chili powder because he liked the little bit of kick it gave. Then, he put the three steaks into a large ziplock bag and left them in the fridge before going to play some video games and take a nap, still forgetting about his homework.

Later that night, he got up and played some more games before eating dinner with his parents and going to bed.

"Oh yeah. I still need to do my homework, huh?" Thomas thought out loud as remembered his homework for that day as he got into bed, "Oh well. I'll just ask Peter tomorrow."

Thomas awoke to his alarm the next day at around 6:00 AM.

He got up, fixed his bed, took a shower, brushed his teeth, and checked his ever so precious hair to make sure he didn't have any cow licks.

After completing the first parts of his daily routine, he went to the kitchen and put a large pan on the stove and turned it on. Then, he went to measure four cups of rice, washed it, and put it in the rice cooker on "quick" mode like usual. Afterwards, he took out the three steaks he had left in the fridge overnight, took out another cutting board, and put them all back onto the tin foil he had left on the counter from the previous day. Worried when he noticed the underwhelming aroma, he used a fork to stab a few more holes in the meat to tenderize it and heavily re-seasoned the meat with the same spices as the previous day to make sure that the spices wouldn't wash away and leave the meat plain when he cooked it. He could always add more rice, but he just hated plain-tasting steaks. When the pan had appropriately heated up, he added a few tablespoons of butter to it and melted it with some thyme and minced garlic before searing the steaks on high heat. After giving the steaks a nice sear on all sides, he cooked them both for around four minutes on each side on high heat. After he finished cooking the steaks, he turned off the stove and put them both on a cutting board. He cut them into strips, revealing a perfect medium inside.

Once the rice cooked went off, indicating that the rice was now done cooking, Thomas took out three metal tupperwares and scooped around one cup of rice into each before laying down the the slices of steak on top to allow the rice to absorb the rest of the steak juices, and then layer some of the remaining garlic and thyme from the pan on top as a garnish.

Obviously, he ate a few pieces to "test" them and make sure they weren't overly seasoned as he plated them.

He quickly capped the containers and sealed them to ensure that as little heat escaped from them as possible.

Afterwards, he packed the lunches into two insulated lunch bags, putting two into one and one into the other. Realizing how empty the bag with only one looked, Thomas decided to make two yogurt parfaits. He packed one of them into the lunch bag with only one steak and rice lunch dish as he put a bottle of Snapple from the fridge, wooden chopsticks, and a few napkins into each, as well as a plastic spoon for the bag with the yogurt parfait, and dropped them into his backpack as he headed out on his bike at around 8:10.

He got to school quickly and ate the second yogurt parfait with the plastic spoon he brought and threw his trash away. Once school started, he got through his first four classes, sleeping or almost falling asleep at least half the time, much to his teachers' annoyance, before making it to lunch.

~~~

And yes everybody. I basically spent an entire chapter vaguely describing how to cook a good steak, so you Plushies better not screw up the basics of cooking one in the future.
😀😐😠