food puzzle

Two weeks ago we picked up a beef tenderloin on sale. We cut it into single-serving portions (allegedly mignons), froze most of them, and turned four into single-serving Beef Wellington, a recipe that worked well last year. We cooked two of them for Christmas Eve dinner: mine was reasonably (though not meltingly) tender, but shalmestere's was tough and full of connective tissue. Tonight we cooked the other two, and it was my turn: a third to a half of my chunk of beef was connective tissue, and the rest was chewier than a tenderloin should be. (And no, it wasn't overcooked -- plenty of pink, perhaps red, in the middle).

Did I cut the pieces wrong? Were we sold a "shoulder loin" or something in the guise of a tenderloin? (No, I've never heard of a "shoulder loin"; I'm just thinking of my brother's experience working at a fried-chicken place and being told to sell "wing breasts" when they were out of breasts.) Or are we just being smitten for our manifold sins?

New Year's Eve

shalmestere and I walked to the neighborhood theater to see "The Artist". (We were also thinking of "Tinker, Tailor" in case "The Artist" was sold out, but it was "Tinker, Tailor" that sold out -- although there weren't a lot of empty seats for "The Artist" either). Highly recommended, if you have a theater near you brave enough to show a black-and-white, pseudo-silent, 2-D film in this day and age. I won't bother to review it; there are plenty of reviews on the Web, or you could just take my word and go see it.

Just one thing. It has an inexplicable PG-13 rating: the most offensive things in the movie are one character giving another the finger, and a couple of people smoking. Oh, and an attempted suicide.