Martha Stewart saved me the other night. I was in need of a good salad to make using the over-abundant lettuce that resides in the potted garden in front of my place. In desperation, I turned to one of my Martha Stewart post-prison cookbooks for a suitable recipe and found a great recipe for a Thai Steak Salad. Although I’ve been to Thailand and have never eaten nor seen a Thai Steak Salad, I thought it would be my best bet.

The recipe called for a quick marinade. The basic marinade ingredients were: lime juice, soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper and vegetable oil. After checking through my cupboards and refrigerator, I decided to make a few modifications to Martha’s recipe- I substituted lemon juice for lime juice and decided that I really didn’t need any sugar in the recipe. I quickly mixed the ingredients together, thought about adding minced garlic but decided against it, and put two flank steaks in about 1/4 of the marinade juice. I then waited the requisite 30 minutes for the steak to marinade.

As I waited, I started in on the salad. Again, I changed the recipe slightly by choosing a wider variety of lettuce from the garden than the recipe called for- including a little of the purple lettuce that always tastes a little bitter. I then used my super-duper peeler to peel some thick slices of carrot and added it the salad to be tossed.

According to the anonymous chef who was lurking in the background trying to see if I would do a good enough job, I only made one mistake. After the 30 minutes and before he could intervene, I started cooking the steaks in the frying pan on the stove as the recipe called for. When the real cook of the household saw what I was doing, he started gesticulating wildly in the background in some kind of strange folk dance. I couldn’t hear him and didn’t understand what he was saying, so turned down the music that was blaring in the background.

He was pointing at the BBQ. Apparently and in his opinion, I had ruined the meal by following the recipe. By ignoring the BBQ in the background, I had broken the cardinal law of the summer time- always grill when you can. Always.

Despite my mistake, I am happy to report that the salad turned out well. Once again, thanks and kudos to Ms. Martha for giving me the courage to try to cook healthy, tasty meals for myself.