The Price of Meat These Days...

     This weekend's been a busy one for me, Saturday was the lifeguard skills test day, 4 hours of practice saving people, and today we had to pick up our uniforms.  It didn't give me much time to think about dinner, so this morning, after I ate dad's excellent waffles, opened up the gourmet cookbook, put my finger down, and discovered I was going to make a rosemary beef fillet for dinner.   It looked quick, easy, and good, if not seasonal.  The last was fine though, as the weather isn't very seasonal either.
     When we went to the grocery store, we were planning to get the cut of beef the recipe called for--three and a half pounds of center-cut beef tenderloin--but the price threw us off.  Seventy dollars for three and a half pounds felt a little exorbitant.  So we got a much smaller piece for the five of us, and forked over the thirty-five dollars.  It's a good thing that was the only thing we needed to buy for dinner.
     When we got home I cut rosemary from our bush outside, working carefully not to bring in any spit-bugs.  Then I patted the thirty-five-dollar roast dry, and rubbed it with the rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.  Then it was into the oven for the rest of the evening.
 
     The roast is out of the oven and it looks other-worldly, with countless sprigs of rosemary sticking out from it at odd angles. I left it to dad to carve, and he's serving it up too.  It's a great cut of meat, though not worth it's excessive cost.  We had side dishes of a salad, completely grown in our backyard, and asparagus.  While the meat was not worth it's cost, the meal was very much worth the effort that we put into it.  The meat was flavorful, the garlic and rosemary rubbed off nicely, and the outer edges were super salty.  Good, but way to much money for what we got.