Last week, our local grocery store (well, the one most local to us) ran a special on their meat - almost everything was "buy one, get one free." I loaded up on 2 of everything: pork tenderloins, packs of boneless chicken breasts, pork chops, steaks. Unfortunately the ground beef was not included in this sale, but I guess we don't really need ground beef (and if we really need some, I could probably pull out my Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment for my mixer - the same grinder Nathan got me for Christmas several years ago and I have yet to use it, because I'm intimidated by it - and grind some of the steaks?? Anyway -)

I saved almost $60, brought the meat home, packaged it in freezer bags & threw it all in the freezer.

As I've mentioned before on my blog, I am notorious for letting stuff rot in the freezer (well, at the very least, get freezer-burned). I forget to set it out and a lot of meat ends up going bad before we use it.

So we have come up with a solution to combat this problem. A weekly menu plan! I've done weekly menus in the past, but have never been consistent with them. Since we are also making a HUGE effort to eat out very little, Nathan has become pretty involved in the menu making process sitting me down every weekend to write out a plan for the following week.

My menus are simple. Mostly, because I work and the last thing I want to do is come home in the evening after working all day, and focus on cooking - when I could be focusing on my boys. I like to think of myself as a simple gourmet (ha, who am I fooling?) but it puts food on the table...and given my obsession with losing weight, the food is typically healthy. (no cooking with heavy cream or butter or...well, it's been so long since I've used a lot of the higher fat/calorie ingredients, I can't even think of anymore right now).

But why did I come in here to post tonight?

Ohhh yes, the pork tenderloin.

I've cooked it in the crockpot before (once, maybe, in our 10 years together) but I really wanted to try grilling it. I found a great We!ght W@tchers recipe for grilled tenderloin. Unfortunately too late, I realized that I did not have at least 2 of the required ingredients for the marinade, so I "made do." I pulled out the light Italian dressing and marinated the tenderloin all day in that.

Long story short (is that possible?), Nathan put it on the grill tonight and one of three things happened - #1, the grill was not hot enough - or - #2, the pork was not on the grill long enough - or #3, all of the above. (and no, we do not have a meat thermometer. I need one, but never think to buy one. I don't even know how much they cost)

Nathan brought in this lovely smelling (and looking) tenderloin, fresh off the grill. We decided to let it sit before cutting into it, so that the juices could redistribute (who said I wasn't a gourmet at heart?)

I sliced into it and the middle was not done.

Yuck.

My first thought was to toss it and find something else to eat, but then I thought better of that idea. For starters, what else were we going to have? Not to mention, it was perfectly good pork that just needed to cook a little longer.

Which gave me an idea.

I pulled out my skillet, heated up a little oil, sliced the tenderloin into medallions and finished cooking it. And amazingly, it was delicious! (Not really sure why I was amazed, but I was nonetheless)

And that's where the story ends. Are you so disappointed that there was no cool surprise ending?

Perhaps to ease the disappointment, I will tell you that we had green beans and corn to go along with our pork. Iliya was so excited that with every bite, he would proclaim, "chicken!" And he could've cared less about the veggies. He ate 3 decent-sized pork medallions before deciding to call it quits. Recently, he has started taking bites out of crackers, in order to "shape them" into something - and he did this with his pork tonight. He made a cow, a chicken, an apple, a sheep, a dog.

And if you know about my ongoing flirtation with being a vegetarian, I'm awfully glad that he didn't "shape" any of his bites into a pig and start oinking at the table.

That might've done it for me tonight.