Laptop Lunches #74

My apologies for the blurriness. I don't know why all the pictures I took of this turned out so badly. Herbed spaghetti squash, banana slices, leftover dry aged ribeye steak slices with homemade steak sauce, two Hershey's Hugs and one Kiss with caramel, and a banana-nut mini muffin.

The mini muffin was from a banana bread recipe in America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two (2009, maybe?). The great thing about it is that it makes precisely one dozen mini muffins, and it uses exactly one banana. I so rarely have more than one banana around here looking sad enough to turn into a baked good at once.

The squash was a little bland. I tossed some of the leftovers with parmesan cheese later, which helped a little. I think the main problem is that there is way too much butter in the recipe. But I do love spaghetti squash. Instant veggie-noodles!

I did not mean to buy dry aged ribeye. It was on clearance and mislabeled and I didn't realize this until I got it home. I guess most people would have said, "Jackpot!" to finding one of the pricest cuts of meat there is in their shopping bags, but I'm not really a steak person. I cooked it according to the best instructions I had, and yes, it did taste very strongly of meat. For people who like a very strong "meat" flavor, this is for them. I guess I'm just not a big slab of meat kind of person. Hence, the steak sauce.

The thing about steak sauce is that if you live alone with a non-standard sized fridge that is all of 5 feet high, you do not want extra bottles of stuff hanging around. You learn to improvise. You learn what is in all of those sauces and dressings, and if you don't use it on a constant basis, you just make your own in tiny batches. And this is what I did with steak sauce, adapting a recipe I found here. Here you are:

Ribeye Steak and Sauce for One

Preheat toaster oven set on "broil." Line the drip pan with aluminum foil. Broil 1 8 oz. ribeye steak until desired doneness (for medium rare, this is about 9 minutes on each side).

Meanwhile, mix the following in a small bowl:

5 teaspoons ketchup
1/2 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worchestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/8 teaspoon sirachi sauce (or more, if you want more spice)
Salt and pepper to taste

Serve steak with sauce. Pat self on back for not buying any steak sauce, and sparing the room in your fridge for that bottle of lime juice that is so much more useful.