Meat Debacle

I love to cook. I'm not very creative, can't just hop into the kitchen and "make up" a recipe, but I love to dip into one of my eight thousand cookbooks and haul out someone else's recipe to make for Ricky and myself. Right now, I'm working my way through Paula Deen's "The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook." I saw a recipe for Bourbon Beef Tenderloin, which sounded really good, and we haven't had beef in a while, so I decided to try it.

While searching out the ingredients at Publix, I didn't see any beef tenderloin. So I decided, today, we were going to an honest-to-God butcher shop here in town and picking up a beef tenderloin. So Ricky and I set out early this morning and make our way to the friendly neighborhood butcher shop. And I found out why the butcher is so friendly: he's rollin' in the dough! I blithely asked for a beef tenderloin to feed eight to ten people (that's what the recipe calls for), and the butcher grabbed it up, trimmed it, tied it, got it all ready for me. I stepped up to pay and he said, "That'll be ninety-eight dollars." I thought he was kidding at first. Then, when I realized he WASN'T, my jaw dropped. Then I almost went into cardiac arrest.

I felt like an idiot. How could I not have asked the price first? And I felt so bad for making him do all that work for something I simply COULD NOT AFFORD. And I felt so embarrassed, after all my harping at Ricky about saving money and not buying things we don't need, that I was about to spend that kind of money on MEAT. So I meekly asked for half. The butcher told me that wouldn't feed ten, but I said we'd make it work, since I couldn't afford to spend almost a hundred dollars on a fucking piece of beef. It was still fifty-five. Fifty-five dollars on some dead cow. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PAIRS OF SHOES I COULD GET FOR THAT?!?!?!?!

So the golden calf rests in the fridge right now, awaiting its bourbon marinade, which I will mix up in the morning. It will marinate through the morning, through the Dolphins game tomorrow, until the evening when I roast its ass and Ricky and I devour it. Should be enough meat to last us all week, and we WILL eat it all.