Steak and...Marvell? Rosetti? Pound?

Disclaimer: If you are a vegetarian, a PETA activist, or a Hindu, please do not read this post.
Tonight I murdered a steak.
I believe that God put cows on earth so that we could enjoy the various delights and nutritional benefits of milk, butter, cream, cheese(oh, cheese!)and beef. Killing a cow really doesn't phase me. Murdering a steak, however, is a horrible, horrible culinary crime. There were several factors involved in the murder of this particular steak, so humor me as I go on a little trip down who's-to-blame-lane.
I went to Vons last night to get a few things, and decided to buy steak for tonight to please the carnivorous husband. The steaks were all on clearance, so I got really excited for about two seconds. Then I noticed that they were all flat as a board. There was a little orange sticker on each package that said "Thin Cut! Feed More!"
Let's take a second to deconstruct the absurdity of that sticker. Just because it's flatter doesn't mean there's more, it just means there's more surface area, which is a bad thing in steak. The sticker also encourages the cook to resort to trickery in order to satisfy the people eating...they see more of their plate covered by steak, therefore they believe that they have a large steak. (Never mind the fact that if they got down level with the table they'd see...nothing, because the edges of their plate would obscure the meager slab of poor, brutalized meat.) Expanding our perspective makes the sticker even more absurd. As our nation's economic waistline has shrunk considerably, our actual waistline is ever increasing. So why in the hell are we being encouraged to "Feed More!"?
That being said, I really am to blame because I was stupid enough to buy the steaks and then not watch them carefully while cooking, resulting in a thin slice of tortured meat that had turned gray out of sheer distress.
However, I was thoughtful enough to foresee this potential disaster with the "Thin Cut! Feed More!" steaks, and paired them with this recipe from epicurious.com. It's a steak with parmesan butter and a balsamic/shallot glaze, served over arugula. And man, those flavors really work well together. The salty and creamy parmesan butter perfectly, perfectly cuts through the sweet, tart glaze, and all of the flavors are pulled into harmony by the mustard-y arugula. It really was a decent dinner, in spite of the murdered steak and the mis-matched side dish. I needed to use some sweet potatoes, so I mashed them with brown sugar, butter and a little half and half. The mash was really, really good, but unfortunately it was just too delicate a flavor to stand up to the assertive flavors in the glaze and butter. The main dish would have been much better served with some simply roasted red or Yukon Gold potatoes, drizzled with a little olive oil, kosher salt and coarse ground pepper. What you need with the strong and harmonious flavors of the steak is a side dish that doesn't actually have much flavor, just a pleasant texture that you can enjoy without having to sort of re-wire your palate with each bite.
Also a little off tonight was the wine we drank (well, I drank.) It was Menage a Trois, a jammy blend of cab, merlot and zinfandel. While the wine has the jam and big flavor I wanted (chocolate, cherry, strawberry), it has a disappointingly thin mouth-feel that doesn't stand up well to a meaty dish like steak. A thick cabernet would have worked much better, if you could find one that still has that big jam smell and flavor. Trader Joe's Coastal Reserve Cabernet might be good; Rendition Zinfandel would probably be even better, provided you opened it or decanted it an hour ahead of time to let the flavors really unfold.
All in all, it was a meal with great yet unrealized potential, mostly due to the mistakes of the chef.
I really wanted to end this post with the pithy comment, "Just like anonymous poet did with this anonymous poem." But now I'm finding that I'm not really sure which anonymous poet wrote a poem that he or she is really much too good for, although I know they're out there. So here's my challenge: fellow poets, UDers, English majors and literature lovers alike, throw some suggestions to me. Help me think of a poet or a poem who is like this meal; limitless and profound potential that somehow isn't realized, due to some flaw, whether it be word choice, limited imagination, excess of philosophy, whatever. This should be fun.