And the world by fire
This is a picture of an oatmeal container full of flaming charcoal before it disintegrated and spilled its charcoally guts. A friend and I wanted to use this charcoal grill that was left at the house he recently bought, but neither of us had ever used one. Spraying lighter fluid on a flat bed of charcoal and lighting it didn't really work, the fire just went out. I had vague memories of seeing people use some kind cylinder-looking thing for starting charcoal fires, and the oatmeal container was a cylinder, and extra kindling at that. I still don't know what the cylinders I'm thinking of do, but our oatmeal container actually did work, bolstered as you can see by extra bulletins.
After we had consistently burning charcoal, we threw our steaks on the grill and put the lid on, and then realized there were instructions on the charcoal bag which we could have read. It told us we should have let the charcoal burn down 15 mins first. Oops. It turned out fine. Or fine-ish; I overcooked it, if you ask me; barely any pink. But it was my first steak in months, so I wasn't all that picky. The seasoning we had impulse-bought at the store was pretty good, too. My biggest grill regret was not having brown bits in a pan for a sauce.
My grill-owning friend and I improvised this meal at the grocery store after leaving the long and beautiful Holy Thursday ceremonies full of prayers that ended with "...Christ our Lord, who is to come to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire." I hadn't had steak in what seemed like ages. It was funny, standing in the grocery store, in this situation where I could "buy" (I wasn't paying... thank you, friend!) almost anything, all the mild creativity I've had to exercise over the last month really took a backseat, and all I could think to make and eat was meat, wheat, and dairy. So that's what we got, and of course I loved it to the last bite, but it does go to show that deprivation is far more conducive to innovation than plenty it.
But you can't say today was totally innovation free. I ate my Biscoff cookies from yesterday dipped in peanut butter this morning. SO GOOD! Wow! MUST do again!