Be Careful Not to Bite Off More

Pardon me. I am almost too pooped to post. Worn out. Weak. Limp as a noodle. Shaky as Jello.

The reason for my malaise is my supper. Last night I cooked up a delicious roast. Full of onions, baby carrots, and Klondike Rose potatoes. Mmm...steeped in a tasty pot liquor of meat juices, Worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, and powdered Hidden Valley ranch mix. The boys eat it up. Because I live in a house full of carnivorous menfolk, running out of meat is not an option. So I always cook two roasts. We eat on it for several meals.

Save A Lot is my store of choice for meat. They have their own butcher. They don't add water to their products in order to charge you for nothing. The taste is fantastic. And there is not a Product of Canada sticker on the package. Not that there's anything wrong with Canada. I don't go in for fancy high-end cuts. A rump roast or an arm roast is okay with my live-in beef-eaters. All were pleased as punch with their sumptuous repast.

Tonight, I warmed the remains slowly in the oven. I carved off a hunk for The Pony. Sliced it into bite-sized pieces for him, because I baby him. Filled his plate with carrots and potatoes, no onions. He added ketchup and two biscuits. And pronounced it good. Genius was away at a friend's house, having snuck out without taking the trash dumpster to the end of the driveway for tomorrow morning's pickup. Hick was called back to work by the security company within thirty minutes of his home arrival. So I hacked off a hunk of roast, dredged up some tasty onions, carrots, and potatoes, and settled down to sup.

Au contraire. I can barely type, what with the cramp in my right elbow from sawing at that fibrous flesh like a madwoman. I now have a forearm like Popeye. My jaws are too weak to chew warm butter. I need to chew it, you know, because according to many, it won't melt in my mouth. My roast could serve as a training table item for competitive eaters. I'm surprised I have not come down with TMJ.

I declare! That roast could not have come from a run-of-the-mill, everyday steer. No way, Jose! That's a fact, Jack! The way those muscle fibers wove and twisted, I'm suspecting my roast beast was actually a cut from the abdominal muscles of a Tasmanian Devil. Not the actual bad-natured but cute-looking real animal. The cartoon, spinning, twisting, tornado-shaped Tasmanian Devil.

Food Network chef Robert Irvine, with his phenomenal biceps and knowledge of tenderizing techniques, could not have made my cut palatable. It could have been wedged under the saddle of Attila the Hun, and ridden, at a trot, across eastern AND western Europe, and still not been made chewable by any human, even one in possession of the entire Osmond family's teeth and Jay Leno's jaw.

The more I chewed, the bigger each bite of meat grew. I could have marketed it as beef-flavored gum. Like a Willie Wonka product. Not because it was three courses. But because it was never-ending. Like an Everlasting Gobstopper. Only gum.

Because hope springs eternal in the Val Thevictorian breast, I kept trying. Again. And again. Don't think I was swallowing that chunk whole. I'm a lady, dagnabbit! I spit it out. Nobody was there to see me. No need to be polite and hawk it into a cloth napkin. I had a little bowl that I'd put my biscuit in to protect it from the pot liquor. So it served as a rejected meat receptacle.

Funny how when I finished eating, I had a bowl full of meat. And a pronounced case of exhaustion.