Lesson Learned

Learn from my mistake: do NOT buy steak from two guys on the street in a pickup truck. Seriously, I know it sounds like a no-brainer but if you would’ve heard this sales pitch you would’ve bought the five New York strips too. Apparently, they “deliver meat to the restaurants in town and had some left over.” Well, I got suckered into buying the frozen steaks for $35 (I talked them down from $50 – yeah negotiating skills). I think the money-back guarantee really won me over - ha. Pretty much all I got out of the deal was honed negotiating skills, although now that I think about it I only had $35 cash on me at the time so that is how the deal came to be. For every steak, we got about 3-5 okay bites; the rest was fat and gristle. And I marinated them all for at least 6 hours! (Obviously that did not help.) Not one to waste anything, I made the last two this evening. This is where having good side dishes comes in. I served the steak with spinach/parmesan risotto and baby portabella mushrooms with truffle oil to give us a "Plan B" to fill us up and to make everything somewhat okay. And in having only 2-3 bites of the steak, we had room for dessert – there was a bright side after all! I have learned my lesson (the hard way as usual) and will be a sucker no more.