Get cooking

I have my weekend planned. Broskey and Alphagal are Michigan bound so I'll be at lose ends and to fill those sad, empty hours I am going to cook dinner for myself, yeah, that's right, I'm planning my Saturday night dinner all ready.

And not just any Saturday dinner, I'm talking as-seen-on-TV dinner. I'm talking boeuf en croute. Oh yeah, I watched a cooking show about French food. Complicated food made by the most obnoxious woman on television - No, Nancy Grace doesn't have cooking show, the second most obnoxious woman on television. I hate her and her wrap dresses.

But. The last episode featured food that not only did I recognize but food that was made with ingredients sold at regulation grocery stores! I was shocked, because from my experience with what is prepared on that show, normally, everything shown on that show can only be prepared by cooks in the greater Manhattan area or in Lyon.

In reality, boeuf en croute is really a frenchified Beef Wellington. So its not really all that out there or hard to make. I went to the store and went though my shopping list

- Shallots? bang
- Mushrooms? done
-fresh thyme? on it
-puff pastry?mine
-beef tenderloin Um...

Insert screeching halt

I live in North Carolina. We don't do beef. We do pigs. You can raise pigs in a yard, for cattle you need acreage and the entire state doesn't have acreage to properly raise cattle.  I'm pretty sure you can buy beef tenderloin at my grocery but a quick perusal of what they did have out made me I'm think that tenderloin might be by appointment only. I don't have time to make appointments with food. I decided to think on my feet. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, when life gives you pigs, use pork. Pork tenderloin it is . I called my Mom asked if it was advisable and she thought it was. I came home and asked  Google  how it felt about the substitution and  the people of Google were also down with it.

Pork in, beef out. Cool. Next on my list is the Madeira. I don't know what that is, other than I know its a wine. My question would be do I have to use it specifically? I don't drink wine and I don't really want to spend the money for an entire bottle of wine so I can use a cup of it. Its wasteful. So I asked Google again about it.  Good news! substitutions are okay! Red wine is red wine is red wine. Some are sweeter than others and the recipe wants something fairly dry but I can look that up myself. I thought about blowing it off and just saying whatever,  one red is as good as another, but it might be a good idea for the first run through to make the recipe as written. I think it might end up being easier to just buy the cheapest, smallest bottle of it I can find and  figure out ways to use up the rest.Worst case scenario, I'll bring it with me on vacation and make the dish again there .