Steak Bomb

Do you have this weird phenomenon where you live where some person comes to your door offering frozen steaks? This has happened on a few occasions here at Fort Yalestar. Invariably, it's a person driving some old pickup with a large chest freezer in the back. Also invariably, the guy has some spiel about how he was stiffed on a couple of his deliveries, or couldn't find his intended recipient's house, or some other story that culminates in him being stuck with excess inventory and thus I'm the lucky sum' bitch who gets the opportunity to buy frozen steaks at bargain prices.

I've never bought any of the steaks, mostly because I don't really eat steak, nor do I even understand how steak got to be considered a delicacy. But the befuddling thing is: what's up with the hard-luck angle? Why not just come to the door and say you're selling steaks? The fact that he was unable to offload them sure doesn't make me want to buy them any more. All of this makes me think that I must be missing something. The grift went over my head, apparently.

While we're at it, I've never really understood Americans' fascination with steak, or why it's considered to be such a luxury item. I'd far sooner eat microwave pork rinds or some shit than drop premium coin on some ginormous slab. A relative of mine was recently bragging that he had eaten a steak in Atlanta that cost $42 or something like that. I remember thinking to myself has this fellow recently suffered a head injury that I need to know about? But no, to him that represents having Made It, to have earned a place in the august ranks of those who accept --nay, demand-- nothing less! Fuck man, whatever rings your bell, but I can't imagine what would make a steak merit $42. Do they give the cow a handjob before slaughtering it or something?

Even chicken-fried steak, the entree which has been historically held in very high esteem among me and my compeers (and of course adorned this site's header since about 2002) has started to turn me off as I get older. Until a couple of years ago, nothing quite hit the spot on a hungover Saturday (or drunken Friday at 3am) like a nice greasy CFS. I could tell you the ten best and worst places in metropolitan Denver (for the record, the best CFSes were had at the North Boulder Cafe, the Breakfast King at Santa Fe & Mississippi, and Pete's Kitchen on East Colfax. The worst were found, not surprisingly, at Village Inn*, a sub-Denny's operation that have somehow managed to proliferate in Colorado like goose poop. [Somewhat ironically, the specimen on this site's header was photographed and eaten at the Village Inn at I-70 and Kipling]).

But I can hardly eat that shit anymore. And it sure as hell ain't on account of some new health kick; why, I was recently upbraided by my spouse for eating tacos with mashed potatoes in them at one of those shitty buffet places that the old folks like. No, I think it started a couple of jobs ago, when I worked at a place which had its own built-in cafeteria, and it served CFS as one of its rotating featured lunch specials. My then-colleague Terry, truly a frontier renaissance man with more worldly knowledge than ten of us whelps, would always wince when I rolled up to the table with a CFS plate and tell us all how the core of this signature dish was actually nothing more than cutting board scraps pounded into thin flanks. You know, like the junk meat that the grocers try to sell with the bright orange "Manager's Special!!!" sticker on the packaging. I don't know if Terry was right about that shit or not, but the mo-fo usually seemed to know what he was talking about. (Most people, when the topic arises, will point out that it's typically cube steak. Okay, but what's cube steak?) In any case, ever since then, I've gotten the distinct sensation when eating CFS that I'm really eating an old shoe or something.

Cheesesteaks, though... I'll eat the shit out of a cheesesteak any day of the week.

* Village Inn has recently rebranded itself as "VI," which is no doubt a nod to the classic Unix text editor of the same name. Shrewd move, tapping into that white-hot minimalist-Unix-utilities demographic, no?

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