Motor Mounts and Grilled Steak

Hello and welcome to DA PIT

I decided, after seeing Chicky's blog and wanting to blog in a long time and not finding the right platform, to give this place a try. I hope they don't allow friends here because in my estimation, "blog friends" eventually lead to "blog failure", at least for me they do. We can go into that later. For now, WELCOME !

Today I want to talk about Life's Long Journey and the learning experience. You might not know that based on the title of my blog.

When you're 13, you think you know everything.

When you're 16 you think you know everything.

When you're 21, you DO know everything, in fact, you're convinced of it.

At some point after 25 you realize you never knew everything and you never will, but if you keep learning, you might be alright. At the ripe old age of 38, I learned a couple of things in the past week.

I had recently seen an article on Yahoo for tips for grilling steak. Now I am not a fan of eating steak, but my husband is. I made a mental note to tell him about it so he could read it. Of course by the time I remember to tell him, I can no longer find the article that was so interesting to me. A search for grilling tips brought a lot of different articles and videos so we decided to read a few and watch a few videos and see what we could learn. Taking some of the most common threads from everything we took in, we decided on a plan of action.

Dave had selected his favorite cut of steak, a nice T-bone about 1" thick. Contrary to his natural inclinations of dousing his meat in a marinade or rub, we decided to follow the simplest of paths. First, allow your steak to come to room temperature. Once it is, we prepared with a coating of olive oil and a healthy smattering of salt and pepper. 

The charcoal had been heating up and we waited until the coals were completely ashed over and super hot. About 400-500 degrees is where you want your grill. They say if you cant hold your hand over the flame for more than a second or two, it's the right temperature. We did not try to do this at home. When the grill was ready, the steak went on. Now I will be the first to admit, I do not know all the details of how long to cook what cut if you want it medium, or well, etc. We decided 4 minutes on a side would be sufficient for Dave's steak to be somewhere in the medium rare to medium area. You want to turn your steak as little as possible and use tongs, do not use forks.

For presentation purposes only, mid way through cooking the first side of the steak, move it at a 45 degree angle to get the cross hatch grill marks. We did not do this either. After 4 minutes, the steak was turned over. As we watched it continue to cook, we decided that 4 more minutes might be too much so we took it off after the 3 minute marker and took it inside to allow the steak to rest for 5-10 minutes. The meat continues to cook by the heat already contained on the exterior.

Dave said it was the best steak he ever made. I don't doubt it for a second either. Every bite he took, a noise of pure delight was produced. He now even feels confidant enough to grill steaks for family and friends. I took great enjoyment in trying this new endeavor even though steak will never be one of those things that I crave, the learning experience was a pleasant one and I'm glad I added it to my collection of knowledge. 

For the second part of my learning experience for the week was about motor mounts aka engine mounts. When my car decided it did not want to start (because I paid it off the previous month you see), I had it towed into my favorite mechanics place. As they dug into my problem and discovered my bad starter had started blowing relays, they also discovered that one of my motor mounts was going to "imminently fail". Now I have heard of motor mounts before and could guess by their name what they are for. But it took a little more research to fully understand what was going on here. First of all, getting the mount replaced while they were already this deep into the car would keep me from having to pay twice for the labor. Before I gave the okay, it was back to the internet for more research.

I still don't know how many motor mounts I have, but I got a good look at a variety of them online. Prices ranged from $10 to $150. Apparently they are unique for each location on the vehicle. I asked my mechanic why they were charging me $160. Their reply - it's the one we could get today. What else could I do ? Research informed me that if I am an aggressive driver (which I am), this could wear them out quicker due to their function. What is their function ? Apparently, beside what you can gleam from it's name, it does more than just mount the motor. It keeps the motor tethered to the rest of your car frame. I guess this is one of the reasons why it is so important. If your motor mounts fail, and your engine is jumping around, it could damage any number of other components. This is the only thing I have heard in favor of actually bringing down the aggressiveness of my driving. It all makes sense now !