One of the things that I learned in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program, along with ‘Attention to Detail’(which I don't always follow) , is the importance of using correct terminology. This was fine with me, and went along hand-in-hand with my desire for somewhat correct grammar.
This last weekend, I had two separate encounters with improper terminology…one of which frustrated me, the other one which was heart-warming.
Since our anniversary dinner is always pizza, I decided to make something special for dinner on Sunday. The ‘most special’ thing I had on hand was deer tenderloins, which are special indeed. Having never worked with whole deer tenderloins before, I did some looking around on the internet machine to locate an appropriate recipe for them. What I encountered was a startling lack of consistency on the part of most people in regards to the use of the terms: Tenderloin, Loin, and Back-Strap. It was frustrating because over 80% of the recipes talking about tenderloin eventually worked the term ‘back-strap’ into them.
Eventually, I just decided to wing it myself. I whipped up a marinade of olive oil, Worchester sauce, soy sauce, a little Bulls-eye, a good amount of brown sugar, and I then made an inspired decision to add a few tablespoons of Huckleberry Cordial that I bought at Black Heron Distillery, just outside of Richland.
After soaking in this mixture for most of the day, I butter-flied the tenderloins length-wise, and seared them in a pan. I then finished them in the over, but not before placing a few slices of bacon and some blue cheese crumbles inside the split open tenderloins.
It came out more than a little okay.
Yesterday morning on facebook, my mother posted something on the order of ‘Wishing my son and daughter a Happy 10th Wedding Anniversary’. It was very sweet of her. Of course, someone felt the need to comment on how strange/weird it was for her son to have married her daughter. Ha Ha.
My mother went on to explain how she had always treated my wife like a daughter, and that she didn’t use the term daughter-in-law very much. She was telling the truth also. One of the things that has always made my life easier is how well my wife and mom got along. This was especially true early on in our marriage, when my wife was getting used to living 2800 miles away from the rest of her family. My mom was her mom…there has never been any use of the in-law terminology, which is nice. Television and movies would like us to believe that there is no way a man’s mother and his wife can get along…
Then again, they would also like us to believe that Smurf’s are 3 Apples Tall
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