LOVELY MEAL

Last night we had a wonderful dinner: lightly breaded pork tenderloin cutlets with a caper gravy; baked apples; rice; zucchini with Parmesan, tomatoes, and pickled onions. It tasted wonderful and it looked beautiful. Where did we eat you ask? In our kitchen.

Marty cut and pounded out the cutlets. We had lots of them. We had unknowingly frozen two tenderloins together. The apples were from our tree. The tomatoes were from our garden and I had made the pickled onions. We planned to use all the leftover pork for sandwiches this week.

Marty cleaned up the kitchen. It was garbage night and I collected the trash and took up the first can. He took the green waste and recyclables up to the street. And then we watched TV.

This morning when I got out the OJ, I didn't see the pork in the frig. I then checked the freezer, not there. I went out to the garage to check the big freezer, no cooked pork cutlets. Where the hell did they go? Well, I found them, still sitting in the oven. We had put them in there to keep warm while he made the caper gravy. We left the extra cutlets in there while we ate. And then we both forgot them. They sat there overnight at room temperature. Growing bacteria.

I threw them out this morning when I found them. I took all that lovely meat up to the green waste can and dumped them. I threw out one and one half tenderloins. Not cheap to throw away that much meat. They looked so good, golden brown crust. They screamed eat me.

Those cutlets we ate last night were probably the most expensive ones we have ever cooked. But they were damn good.