I may have mentioned this earlier: We love food. We love to cook food. We love to eat food. My husband is the phenomenal one who does all of the cooking while I “assist.” Today is Labor Day, when we all gather for back yard grilling and relishing the last unofficial day of summer and tonight Mike had to work. Harumph. I was faced with feeding the family tonight.
To my delight, my husband did not have to work until late afternoon, and was able to supervise while I prepped. With today being a typical Grill Holiday, I opted for cheeseburgers. Grilling, however, was the challenge. You see, Mike and the grill had a falling out a few weeks back. It got quite heated and resulted in Mike drawing out the secret weapon – the fire extinguisher. Mike won the battle, but not the war. The grill needs some colossal maintenance and cleaning before we use it for cooking again. That meant indoor burgers.
Mike stayed, for the most part, hands-off while I prepped, and just offered tips and helpful hints (read: “supervised”) – though he did cut the onions for me. Much to my chagrin, Mike had to leave well before it was time to actually COOK the burgers which meant, well, I was in it for the long haul now, past the point of no return. I had to cook the burgers. I will be the first to tell you that I either make burgers into extra crispy hockey pucks, or still moo-ing beef patties. There’s never been a middle ground. Dilemma time. Hmmmm. So I poured myself a bit of wine (when in doubt, look to the open bottle of wine for inspiration – in this case a Dona Paula Malbec), and set about cooking the burgers on my griddle.
With the main course under control, I was now stuck trying to decide what to serve with the burgers. There had been teenagers at my house for a sleepover the night before, thus, no potato chips. It was time to call upon the other cooking fiend in my house – when in doubt and Mike’s not around, call on Becky. Thankfully, she was home this afternoon, doing her homework. She grabbed some potatoes and made some home fries seasoned in a mix of white wine vinegar, grapeseed oil, with a bit of mustard powder, cumin, garlic, and salt. Spectacular, if I may brag about the Girl! While those baked, I hovered over the burgers.
Ta Da! A joint Mother-Daughter effort!
I’m not sure how much time elapsed, but the burgers finished – a beautiful medium well – no hockey puck or moo-ing beef patties. Plated, added fries, and fed to the hungry who were clawing at the door (better known as the teenagers). SUCCESS!!!!!
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