Consolation Prize

My Beloved's car was stolen. Never mind the shock at finding that it was stolen right out of our carport, not 20 feet from where we were watching TV. So brazen! My Beloved makes his living by driving about 600 miles per week, so it's not just his baby, it's his livelihood. It was there when I walked Cora at 6:30 before starting dinner prep; it was gone by 10:00 when I took her out for her last spin of the day. Of course, our ferocious watchdog slept through the whole event.

The police think we may get the car back, after the bad guys have had their wicked way with it, but in the meantime, we are making lists of all the contents of the car, spending a lot of time on the phone with our insurance company and becoming best friends with young cops in two counties. One of the items in the stolen car was My Beloved's FastTrack transponder so we know the thieves have been to Marin and Contra Costa counties so far. The bastards seem to be having quite a fine joy ride on our dime.

All this as prelude to a nifty discovery. After driving My Beloved to Berkeley to pick up his rental car, I stopped in at the Acme Bakery store just up the street to buy some bread for that evening's dinner and discovered that they make hamburger buns as well as more exalted forms of the baker's art.

I chucked all previous dinner plans and decided to make hamburgers. I bought several of the oven-fresh, fragrant buns and detoured to my favorite grocery store for a top round steak and a huge, ripe, heirloom tomato from Mexico. When one's car has been purloined, to hell with trying to be a locavore; we needed comfort food in the worst way!

I chopped the steak in my food processor, toasted the buttered buns on the Jennair grill, divided that beautiful tomato, sliced our last gorgeous avocado from Jeanne's Mom's garden and some red onion, and caramelized the burgers in a wide frying pan. Steam a few spears of asparagus, stack up those killer ingredients and take a huge bite! The buns were ever so much tastier, heftier and textured than the regular store-bought ones. They were actually functional as well as tasty, too; they didn't fall apart or become soggy. The loss of a wonderful car doesn't seem quite so bad when the juice from a nice, rare burger with all the trimmings is dripping down one's chin.