Why is it that articles in magazines aimed at single women are always entitled something to the effect of “The Single Girl’s Guide to Fill-In-The-Blank?” (Insert your choice of: sex, looking good and feeling great, decorating on a budget, canoeing …) And although they’re meant to be read by women much older than 12, they still have the same tone as the Seventeens I used to have stacked under my bed when I was in middle school: “Whip up a oatmeal-honey face mask tonight and tomorrow you’ll be the most popular girl in class!” I should probably take this up with a Fem 101 class, but why do I (just a tiny bit) still take them to heart?
 
Well, apologies for being a hypocrite, but this entry is my Single Girl’s Guide to Cooking For One. The other night, I took it upon myself to “whip up” one of the huge steaks I was going to share with some married friends who found themselves otherwise engaged—all for myself. From Golden Gate Meat, the natural Angus “cowboy” steak was bigger than my face, but it was too cold outside to grill, so I pan-fried, squeezing it into my cast-iron skillet and cooking it over high, high heat until it had a good crust. Then I slathered it with a green-garlic-and-rosemary compound butter I made and paired it with an artichoke and a glass of Pinot (throwing the whole never-have-wine-with-an-artichoke-caution to the wind—crazy I know). I then hefted the whole thing to my coffee table, sat down on the couch, put in Conversations with (Other) Women—which I highly recommended as a smart chic flick and good reminder that relationships are frightening complicated—and ate every bite.
 
Lessons learned? Pan-frying might actually make a better steak than grilling. And polishing off about a pound worth of red meat can give a girl a glow that an oatmeal mask can’t hold a candle to.