Tip-Toe Through the Tri-Tip No More

As paradigm shifts go, my reintroduction to beef recently is an 8.0 on the Richter Scale, the entire notion quite out of the question for an avowed, aging hippie. I have disdained the consumption of red meat since I emerged from the Big Green Machine, back in 1973, more often out of economic necessity than for any other reason.

While teaching I once went five years without so much as a nibble of any sort of meat, let alone beef. I also weighed in at 155 pounds, and had people asking Gluten-Free Mama what sort of cancer I had that was wasting me away. To save my life I could not have told you why at the time, but I could not properly digest beef, so I avoided it.

6-8 of these babies daily, nowadays...

That I was simply dehydrated, the entire time I spent in the classroom, never occurred to me because I need to be hit upside the head with a brick, now and again, to comprehend some of the basics. I remember I never saw Ms Stange without a tall water container-with straw-and instinctively knew that it was a smart thing to do, but still…

No staff bathroom over in our tiny middle school, made the trip across the elementary playground to get to the LES/LMS staff room, necessary. Let’s see how this plays out, “Class, may I have your attention, please?”

Damn. First time in recorded history that I actually got their undivided attention. “So, uh, hey there, I need to make [another?] a quick trip across campus, to uh, you know, uh, use the facilities.”

A hand shoots up in the air.

“Timmy? Question?”

“Yeah, Mr. O, I just wanna know. Is it like always? No running around on the table tops while you’re out of the room?”

Finally, the laughter dies down, though I take the question seriously and am able to respond that yes, it is like always, but that hand shoots up in the air again.

Water! Stay hydrated with water!

“What about the pencil sharpener. If I need to sharpen my pencil, so that I can work harder, is that OK? Or if my throat is parched? Can I get a drink? Of water, I mean?”

More snickering, or maybe it was chortling. Hard to tall with eighth graders. 

“No, it’s best that you stay in your seat until I get back. That incident last month, you know, when poor Billy was accidentally stabbed with a sharp pencil when you tripped? We want to try and avoid that. But enough chatter, or I’m going to splatter.”

The deck is stacked against teachers, when it comes to staying hydrated, but I am long gone from the classroom, and living it up. I no longer tip-toe through the tri-tip; in fact I broil the meanest tri-tip on the block. Since my block extends from the intersection of Highway 101 and Bell Springs Road, all the way up to Mount Shasta, I got this stuff covered.

Choose your weapon.

Because Gluten-Free Mama has a fairly restricted diet, I am on my own when it comes to cooking these days, and I am finding out that a two-pound tri-tip steak, lasts me for at least six meals. I do not even heat it up, because I have already broiled it to the perfect degree of medium rare, and do not want to shove it over into too well-cooked land, for me.

I still confine my indulgence to one tri-tip every month, and I finished my last one only a week ago, so I guess I better hold off for the time being. Though now that I have brought the subject up, I wish I hadn't. I am starving! And now I am facing this self-imposed ban? Arghghghgghghg! What am I going to do?

I could settle for a rib-eye, instead…