Salisbury Steak with Mushrooms

Day 2:

Tonight was Salisbury Steak with Mushrooms, courtesy of Food Network Magazine.  I'm going to be honest and admit that I wasn't a huge fan of this dish.  And the making of it was oddly fitting with the day that I have had.



While mixing the steaks, combining ground beef, eggs, crackers and seasonings, I found the quantities of the seasonings to be a little... lacking.   That's what I could have said if I had actually had fresh sage in my kitchen. Instead I used rubbed sage... Hoping it would be similar enough!  I'm not going to go into it, but this is how my day at work went.



Then the recipe said to brown the patties in a tablespoon of butter on medium-high heat.  The butter burned off faster than the patties could cook.  I kept adding butter to make it look the way it was supposed to.  (This time I'm equating the cooking experience with returning to the gym after quite a long hiatus. And again, lets just say, things weren't going as smoothly as I expected. Or looking the way it was supposed to...)

Fine,  patties are now browned. Now I have to add the mushrooms to yet another tablespoon of butter.  The mushrooms are fatter than I thought they were.  There wasn't enough Worcestershire sauce, and that burned off really quickly.  Then I was supposed to add flour directly to the mushrooms and "liquid." HA. That's funny.  (So, back to my day-of-things-NOT-going-the-way-they-should: I had been putting off getting the oil changed in the truck for about, oh say, 1,500 miles give or take 500 more miles.  The Jiffy Lube is right across the street from the gym. Outwardly seems perfect, right? In the past, it has been.  Today not so much.  I got there and couldn't get a hold of B to verify that I was just getting the basics done. Not too bad.  I was sitting in the waiting room and heard a rather disheartening, ratcheting sound as a beast of a man pulled the hood open.  Ok, I'm a little panicked and still no answer from B.  A fifteen minute oil change turned into just that - plus 45 minutes of four young guys trying to get the hood latch to take!  Now I'm super flustered and STILL can't get B to answer the phone! They zip-tied the hood shut and sent me on my way, mentioning that I should probably not drive at freeway speeds...)

Towards the end of cooking tonight I was hot and flustered and I couldn't taste anything.  But cooking wasn't fun and I kinda didn't care anymore.  The resulting dish was a little unattractive and flavorless.  A bit like it would have been great to not get out of bed today.