As with all good stories, this one begins with gravy. There’s just something about gravy that makes me happy. When I was growing up, my mother would cook flour gravy, meal gravy and even chocolate gravy on occasion. Since I’m no spring chicken anymore, I try not to eat like an unemployed college student anymore so gravy is something I don’t often have.

Recently as I was eating my broccoli I thought how delicious it would be if it were drowning in gravy. That started a craving that I fought for almost a full two weeks. Finally I decided if I was going to have gravy then I was eating a steak to go with it. My wife suggested that we try the new French steakhouse. I normally shy away from food that isn’t American but figured steak is steak. That was my first mistake.

Once I began to scan the menu, I realized that I always order the same thing every time so I thought I would try to order something different. When the waiter came I ordered steak tartare because it said it came smothered in gravy. My wife tried to talk me out of it but I insisted I wanted to try something new. It was steak, how bad could it be right? I had no idea that tartare meant raw steak but I found out soon enough. When the food arrived, I looked at my plate and told the waiter that someone forgot to turn on the stove when they cooked my steak. He rolled his eyes when I sent it back and ordered a fried bologna sandwich and I specified that I wanted the bologna cooked.

On the drive home, with hunger pains in my stomach, I couldn’t help but think that the waiter must have thought that we were the Clampets that had come out of the hills to eat in a restaurant for the first time. All I know is that when I go to Cracker Barrel you don’t have to order your steak cooked. They just do that all on their own. I began to think that you can really tell a lot about a person according to the way they eat their steak. In fact, I’ve been part of conversations where men with more testosterone than brains nearly came to blows on what the proper way to eat a steak is.

You have those people who insist  that steak be eaten so  rare that when they cut into it they hear a moo and it makes them feel manly I suppose. On the other end of the spectrum are the people who cook their steak well done and are basically eating a piece of charcoal. Perfection for me is somewhere in the middle as is the case with most things in life. I learned two lessons that night. For one, I learned that what one person enjoys another may find disgusting. However, to each their own and if it makes them happy to eat raw steak then by all means go for it. Second, I learned that we can’t take things for granted. I assumed they would cook the steak but I was very wrong.

After I arrived home fifty bucks poorer and still hungry, my wife whipped up some eggs and asked how I would like them. I answered, cooked my dear. You can never be too sure you know.