The Steak Connoisseur

It's been a long time since my last blog entry, so I thought I'd start bringing things back up to speed with a little story of how my holidays went. It was a good holiday season, but there never seems to be enough time to fit in all the family visits, cooking and eating, gift-wrapping and unwrapping, and some time to recharge.

The Christmas season kicked off for us officially on Saturday, December 23. Although we had houseguests heading in from New York City that day, we were on the road to head to my mom's place for Christmas with her and my dad. We had put together a nice little gift bundle for each of them, but I wanted to get my dad one more item, a little something he'd enjoy but never buy for himself. Before heading out, I went to our local Wegman's grocery and to their fantastic butcher section. I had the butcher wrap up the reddest, juiciest looking sirloin steak in the display case. It was a thick one, and big, weighing in at 1.6 pounds of delicious Angus beef. This is the kind of tender steak that you just quickly sear on the sides to hold in the juices. A little kosher salt and coarsely ground pepper is all you need. It has enough flavor all on its own to make sauces unnecessary. At $14.99 a pound, it came to about $24.00 for just one slab of meat. But hey, my dad would definitely never spring for a taste treat this good, so I was pretty sure it'd be a nice gift.

I took the wrapped steak home and prepared it for the trip. I wrote the internal temperatures for rare, medium, and well-done on the wrapping. With a steak like this, cooking it more than medium is a crime, but I knew that my dad always liked his steaks well-done, so I steeled myself in anticipation of hearing him say something about that. Still though, I thought maybe if I wrote those temps on the package, it might encourage him to try it a little less done so he could enjoy more flavor.

I put the steak into a disposable styrofoam container we had lying around from when we received some frozen items in the mail. I added a couple reusable but disposable freezer packs that came in it as well, and a little red bow on the top. It would stay nice and chilled on the road.

So, fast-forward to evening at my mom's, and the four of us are sitting around her two-foot tall sparkling fiber-optic tree enjoying snacks and exchanging gifts. As my dad was opening his other packages, I brought out the styrofoam container and set it next to his chair.

My dad reached down and pulled off the top of the container. Sue and I sat in anticipation. He pulled out one of the freezer packs.

"Wow. Is this reusable?"

"Um, yeah, Dad."

"These are great. So, you can just put them back in the freezer and use them again later?!"

"Yeah, Dad. You know, the freezer pack isn't the gift. They're just keeping the gift cold."

"Oh." [pulls out wrapped steak] "Oh. Steak. Yeah, thanks. That should be good."

"Dad, I wrote the cooking temperatures on the package for you..."

"Oh, yeah, I see that." [smiling appreciatively] "I always do them well-done."

No problem. I was ready for that. "Well, enjoy!"

Now fast-forward a couple days to Christmas day. We've already returned home to our houseguests, had a big Christmas eve dinner with Sue's family (I think about 89 people were there, give or take 70), and now it's finally Christmas day and Sue and I are enjoying a quiet, lazy, late morning breakfast after sleeping in. I called my dad to wish him a merry Christmas on the actual day.

"Hi Dad. Merry Christmas!"

[some chatting about weather and the DVD player I got him omitted here...]

"Hey, I cooked up that steak! I broiled it in the oven."

"Oh yeah? Great! How was it?"

"Oh, I haven't eaten it yet."

I'm sure that spot above the bridge of my nose furrowed mightily at this point, because I couldn't figure out for the life of me what he meant.

"Er... what?"

"I got some good vegetables and cut up the steak to make a stew."

"Uh huh."

I hung up later and burst out laughing. I told Sue and she said, "Okay, that's it. Next year: McDonald's gift certificates!"

So, we all had a great Christmas. We enjoyed ours, and my dad enjoyed the world's most expensive stew. I love my dad, partly because he's exactly who he is. Paraphrasing Popeye, "He is who he is." He was also incredibly and overly generous with his Christmas gifts to us. When I was little, he gave me food, shelter, and all the flyballs and grounders I wanted out in the front yard, and now he still gives me too much. And by golly, the man likes his steak over-cooked and under water, and that's just the way it is.