Ok guys I have a moral dilemma. Nothing major, and really a first world problem, but I could use your help.

Backstory: My in-laws have been in town all week. My wife and I have been working all week, and I knew going into it that my week was going to be particularly hectic and a bit gruelling based on a couple of big, tight, contract bid deadlines with lots of estimating across thousands of square miles of countryside. Long days with little free time after work, which has been filled with prepping the garden and seedlings to get everything planted over the next few weeks as we wait for overnight temperatures to be guaranteed to be above freezing.

The culmination of the in-laws’ visit, and the thing I have been looking forward to throughout my shitty work week was to be a glorious steak dinner tonight. I’ve been dreaming all week about sinking my teeth into a perfectly grilled and prepared, marinated slab of Alberta beef, drinks, and good company.

Knowing that my wife and I were going to be busy this week, and wanting to treat us, my in-laws offered to pick up the steaks yesterday and drop them off so I could marinate and pre-season them to throw on the Traeger tonight.

My father in law is no slouch, and knowing from past experience that treating us on these rare visits is usually a spare-no-expense type proposition, I was confident enough that he and my mother in law would deliver my vision of 4 of the most beautifully marbled twenty-four ouncers, that I agreed to let them pick up the meat and we would get the rest of the fixings.

I arrived home from work last night to find out that my father in law had gone golfing, so he was absent when the girls went to the grocery and the butcher.

What greeted me when I got home are no doubt some of the puniest, leanest bargain basement sirloins that were in the store that day. The whole lot was the same price as what one single primo steak should have cost.

Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate the gesture, and the fact that I get to eat steak at all. We are very blessed and we eat well every day on a primarily protein diet. I am sure I can work with these steaks to make them the best they can be.

Here is my question. Do I:

a) honor the gift by making these steaks the best they can be and forego the dream of a real treat that has sustained me through this shitty week,

b) pretend to drop the tray of steaks on the ground near the dog when I pull them out to marinate them this morning, forcing me to go to the butcher myself to buy some worthy replacements (and forever endearing myself to the hound) or,

c) go buy myself the prime slab I’ve been dreaming about all week, add it to the mix, and risk offending my mother in law when she sees it sizzling in it’s marbled glory next to the tiny pieces of shoe leather she bought.

It’s a real dilemma. Thanks for your assistance in this time of crisis. Lol.

#asknostr