At 50, D is in better shape than he has been in his life.  He goes to the gym three times a week and plays tennis another 1-2 times.  Last night was one of his mid-week tennis dates.  I had the grill all fired up when they guys arrived, D put down his racket and picked up his tongs.

There were three of us for dinner and I had three different steak cuts ready to go.  One was an inside round with very little visible fat or marbling.  The grain of the meat was very compact and dense and so that morning I had prepared a marinade to add some flavour and tenderness.  I had found the recipe on the Canada Beef website in the recipe section and picked up all kinds of other suggestions and tips while on the site.

The steaks that I had purchased varied in price per kg according to the cut.  What proved to be interesting, to those of you managing a grocery budget and thinking that a regular steak dinner might be too extravagant for your family, is that the steak that was the least expensive turned out to be the taste hit of the dinner.  With marination the inside round was certainly as tender as the sirloin and almost as flavourful as the rib steak.  Sometimes, when you are standing in front of the meat section at the grocery store, this is a tricky decision to make, so consult the Canadian Beef website.  The site puts steaks into grilling vs marinating vs simmering categories, so no matter what the cut or how little you spend, you will always be serving up a flavourful and tender steak.

D sliced all the steaks into medallions and we placed a platter on the table.  Beef can hold its own against other robust flavours and so I also served brown and wild rice pilaf, roasted beets, sauteed Swiss chard and pine nuts and a tomato, cucumber and feta salad with a precious stash of pungent olives that I had purchased while in Ireland this spring.

So in spite of the guys working a full day and then playing over two hours of tennis, they had been fortified to take on another day.

Kath’s quote: “People who like to cook like to talk about food….without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.”-Laurie Colwin

Love- that is all.

 

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