Erin Ruffin’s Weblog

Apparently the tenderloins in New York City are reserved for Manhattanites. I looked in all of my supermarkets in Astoria/Long Island City for tenderloins and I came up empty-handed. I did find plenty of curry mixes, kebab meat, and tzatziki but no tenderloins. I was starting to get really nervous.

A couple of weeks ago I declared I was going to practice cooking meat because I don’t really cook and when I do I almost never venture into waters deeper than vegetables, chicken or fish. I’m embarrassed to say it because I come from a family of amazing cooks but I just never got on the boat. The other thing that works against me when it comes to meat cooking are my gag reflexes. They come full force when I peel that white butcher paper off of any kind of slimy raw meat. I mean were we honestly meant to be eating this?

To hold myself accountable to my meat cooking declaration, I invited some friends to a dinner party and ignorantly (I mean that VERY literally) declared that I would be cooking Beef Tenderloins with Blue Cheese Stuffing. At the time, I really didn’t know what a tenderloin was, and after hunting all over Queens and not finding one, I thought maybe tenderloins just weren’t in season.

Wrong.

On the day of the dinner party, I was so nervous I left work early to go meat shopping. I figured if anyone was eating tenderloins it would have to be those Manhattanites and sure enough I found some at Whole Foods on 14th Street. Phew. I picked up the other ingredients and pranced up to the checkout line SO very proud of my cute Whole Foods basket of groceries (which included tenderloins) on my arm.

So I’m standing in the mile-long checkout line, hands full with meat cooking supplies, blackberry buzzing and ringing like crazy in my bag, and what do I see in the line next to me? As if my nerves weren’t already twisty enough. It was a kid, maybe 16 years old, with two white rats crawling around his neck and across his shoulders. Their disgusting ropey, mangy tails were sticking out of the kid’s long greasy hair. I felt faint. I thought someone had increased the wattage in the Whole Foods lighting because suddenly everything seemed glaring white. I tried to play a game with myself to avoid freaking the freak out, so I acted like I was on that show where you’re subject to gross and scary things and you have to keep your heart rate down? It didn’t work. There was a kid with two rats crawling all over him. In Whole Foods. I mean I’m in the Barney’s of supermarkets and I have to put up with this? I have tenderloins in my basket for goodness’ sake and I’m standing next to a kid with a live rat scarf on.

Finally it was my turn and I walked up to Register #19 where Kamerah was waiting to check me out. I was pale (even more than normal) and I just stood in front of her holding my basket with glazed-over eyes.
“Ma’am could you put the basket up here where I can reach your groceries?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Here I’ll unload them for you. It’s just…I’m really distracted. I mean there’s a kid in the store RIGHT NOW that has two white rats crawling around on him.”
“THERE’S WHAT? RATS? WHERE? WHERE? IS HE CLOSE TA US?”
“Yeah, he was standing right next to me! I’m so freaked out.”
“OH MA GAWD. WHERE IS HE? I don’ know what I’m going ta do if he comes ta muh line. I couldn’t even check him out. I’d just scream an’ scream an’ don’t make me pull mah gat.”

Gat? I had to google it, too. It’s a “gangster’s pistol.”

As if buying my first tenderloin wasn’t traumatizing enough.

Thank you, Astoria/Long Island City for your sweet, Mom and Pop supermarkets that don’t have kids with live rat accessories, gats, or tenderloins.

*Note: Unless I have really polite, non-confrontational friends, my tenderloins were apparently a success. The one low point was when blood leaked out on the counter from the paper the meat was in and I cried a little as I wiped it up.