Happy Memorial Day

Well, technically Happy Day Before Memorial Day. That just doesn't have the same ring to it though.

And what shows your patriotism better than eating a cheeseburger? Probably a lot of things, but I chose to express myself through the consumption of a pair of burgers. Actually they were twins, and will be described in all their glory momentarily.

Chris and Lindsay were around for the weekend, and Kate and the pugs were invited as well, so there was a whole lot of wackiness going on. Specifically as a result of Odin and Patches. Those two are crazy! Odin will probably be exhausted for the next 48 hours. The menu was burgers and hot dogs, along with Bill's baked beans, some pasta salad and I believe regular salad, although there wasn't nearly enough room on my plate for everything. I decided to focus on burgers and beans.

My burgers were both made with onions inside, and topped with bacon under cheddar and American cheese and served on a bun with sauteed mushrooms and onions. That is a hefty burger, and I easily could have been more than satisfied with just one of them. I decided to eat 2 though, which meant that by the end, my stomach was approximately 40% larger than its normal size and if you had poked me with anything sharp, I would have flown around the room like a cartoon. Luckily that did not happen.

That was a nice day.

-Jon

Inside the Burger?

Onions are a delicious topping for a cheeseburger, because onions are great. To make things even easier to eat, you can get the onions inside the ground beef so that they won't try to escape from the bun, as onions are frequently apt to do. They're very sneaky that way.

So obviously I told you that lovely onion info because that's what kind of burger I got to eat for dinner. Chuck also whipped up some of the now famous garlic mushrooms, along with some sauteed onions. Basically it was a heaping pile of the most aromatic foods you can get, turned into a delicious burger. It's also the last thing you should ever eat if you happen to be out on a first date. It would probably be ok after like 10 dates, because at that point you can generally stop trying to impress the other person. For the record, I stop trying on date #1. Isn't Kate lucky to have me?

That burger was quite delicious, and I think it was helped by the fact that it was accompanied by tater tots cooked to crispy perfection. And also salad, which made me feel like less of a fat slob. What a delightful meal.

-Jon

That Was a Fun Day

Since we got the tickets way back in November, I have been pretty excited about the Mark Knopfler concert for a much longer time than is probably safe. Finally, the big day arrived, roughly 6 months after Kathryn got the tickets and we got our free copy of Get Lucky.

The concert was over at the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods, so we decided that it would be even more fun if we met up with Scott & Amy and Alex & Erica beforehand. This turned into a barbecue that I was unaware of ahead of time, and that turned into surprise burgers!

Scott came up with some kind of crazy concoction for the meat that started with a bunch of diced up vegetables (mushrooms, green peppers and onions), the huge hunks of burger, and then "Burger Seasoning." I believe this may be the same seasoning that was previously documented at a different cookout hosted by Scott and Amy. Those beasts looked something like this:

I am not sure if you can pick up on the enormity of them from the pictures, but they were massive. Maybe this one will give you a better idea of what was going on.

And yes, I ate 2 of them.

After that, it was time to lock up the pups in pug jail and head over to Foxwoods. Side note - I am not a fan of the new road system around Foxwoods, which causes me to freak out unnecessarily and frequently end up going in the wrong direction. Stupid Foxwoods.

Did you know that the MGM Grand and the normal Foxwoods are not connected to each other by any kind of walkway and are actually quite far apart? I know that now. It is a good thing that we arrived with ample time before the show and are excellent Foxwoods navigators, because we got the shuttle and arrived at the MGM way before concert time. In fact, there was plenty of time for us to wander the slot machines and find out that the one Kathryn likes is apparently very popular.

The show was awesome. Not so much the girl who opened, because she kept using the word beautiful over and over and played music that was a little too country for me. I may be imagining the second part though, as the guy who accompanied her had a cowboy hat on, which means I was going to hear country music no matter what he played. However, the Mark Knopfler part was fantastic. The only negative was that he did not wear a headband or wrist bands or a sports coat with weird pants, but his voice was exactly the same as I remember it from those old CDs. It was kind of weird, but it really crushed my memories of 1980s Dire Straits. I hope that Tom Petty doesn't do the same thing in August.

-Jon

That's a Lot of Possibilities

This post is long overdue, but since I am lazy all I have to say is "tough luck."

Also, it contains math.

At some point in the last 2 weeks (I believe it was a Sunday), we had burger night at Mom & Chuck's before the bros headed back to Boston. I am not sure what the original plan was, but somehow it exploded into so many burger options that it would take months to try them all. The various options included: onions in the burger, blue cheese in the burger, blue cheese on the burger, American cheese on the burger, pepper jack cheese on the burger, sauteed onions and sauteed mushrooms. I also prepped some red onions with olive oil and grilled those up. Admittedly, we may have gone a bit overboard on the onions, but to be fair, onions are delicious. And there was the option of a toasted bun, which is just a classy choice. Offhand, I think this ends up with 256 burger options based on the way I am doing the calculations. That's a lot of burgers.

After loading up with both sauteed. . . vegetables (not sure if onions or mushrooms count in that department), I decided on the grilled onion and American cheese option with onions and blue cheese inside the burger. This resulted in a burger that was about 2.5 inches tall. Also, there were two of them. I am fairly certain that was enough food to last me through the next day. But it was delicious, and I would eat another one right now if I wasn't full of pizza.

Oh yeah, the French fries were also fantastic. No such luck with the ketchup though. Really, why does any company besides Heinz even bother making ketchup?

-Jon

PS - If Kathryn says anything, this has been up for days.

Here Comes a New Challenger!!

All Street Fighter II references aside, James has stepped up to the burger challenge (which has apparently started, although I am not sure when) and definitely ended up in the top 2. I think it may be between James' burgers and Nicky's stuffed bleu cheese burgers at this point. Although, Nicky says she's got something else planned for the future. I am excited.

I am not exactly sure what the name of the night was, but it was something along the lines of the Best Burger Challenge, or close enough anyways. I am not sure of all the ingredients in these burgers, but we confirmed quite a few: onions, rosemary, garlic powder, Sweet Baby Ray's and I want to say Tabasco (?). There was also bacon and pepper jack cheese, widely regarded as one of the premier cheeses for burgers. James also did some kind of crazy thing with a red onion where he put some butter and beer inside it and then grilled it whole. Next time we'll have to start that process sooner, because apparently onions take a lot longer to grill than burgers.

These were some big burgers, but that didn't stop Bill, Joe or me from having 2. Or stop Dave from somehow hijacking Nicole's burger. We also had a tomato and mozzarella salad that I whipped up while rocking out to the musical stylings of Dexys Midnight Runners (Come On Eileen, while a great song, is probably not a course of action Eileen would appreciate) and Dropkick Murphys (I would say Tessie is probably the best song written about being a fan of the Red Sox (and possibly the only one?)). That's right, you just experienced the nested parentheses. Only found here. Back on topic though, of course there were ample Summer Ales, because this whole thing happened at our house.

I think there may be more uncooked burgers in the fridge. If that is the case, I am pretty sure what dinner will be on Sunday.

-Jon

As Promised

After a cheeseburger for lunch and some wings for a snack, we headed over to the SWC party to celebrate our workout successes slash bemoan our failures.  Since the penalty for failure is $20, and I am quite cheap, I was in the celebration group.  The money from all the failures goes toward the food and beer for the party, which makes the beer even more delicious.*

Shortly after arriving (we were on beer #2), the party coordinator, Shakes, brought down a bunch of hamburgers and threw them on the grill with a request to me to keep an eye on them.  Then, perhaps because he heard about my difficulties Tuesday, he asked Alex to keep an eye on my keeping an eye.  Then he realized his foolishness and asked 2 other people to watch us and make sure we didn't forget.  Eventually this ridiculous chain-of-command broke down into Alex watching the burgers with me supervising (a fancy word for doing nothing).

The burgers ended up being quite delicious.  There was some kind of seasoning that we could not identify, as well as onions being chopped up inside.  There were also some tomatoes chopped up in there as well!  That was quite a pleasant surprise.

From there the night got a little wacky, and somehow I ended up wearing a toga.  It's not quite as strange as it sounds, since the party was a toga party, but I am not positive of the order of events that resulted in me not wearing pants and instead wearing a bed sheet.  Life is funny sometimes.

-Jon

*Since the beer was some kind of domestic keg beer, the level of deliciousness is debatable.  

Back-to-back Burgers

Side note: I ate a salmon burger at some point in the past week, but that is definitely not going to count as a burger.  Salmon isn't even meat.  The burger was pretty good though, and, unlike its shellfish friends, didn't result in a night of vomit.

Apparently today was burger day, because I got different invitations to eat burgers.  And of course I accepted both.  The first one was at Melissa's, and the second was at Mom's.

While watching what ended up being a Celtics loss, Melissa, Nicky and I made up some enormous burgers with gorgonzola cheese inside the meat along with some minced red onion.  There was also some chipotle peppers and smoked paprika in there somewhere, and we had grilled onions on top.  That burger was fantastic.  I am starting to think that the Black & Blue Burger is highly underrated.  In addition, I was also able to continue the Sam Adams Summer Ale Challenge II, and that is always a good thing.

About 10 minutes after finishing the monstrous chipotle Black & Blue burger, I was on my way to eat yet another burger.  This one was a little less elaborate, and pretty much just consisted of a regular burger with American cheese and sauteed onions.  I would have to guess that at this point, my body contains about 5/8 of a pound of grilled ground beef.  And that is the sign of a successful day.

-Jon

Real Men Grill in January

More January grilling!  Of course, I was still not in charge of grilling based on my lack of 0 degree tolerance, but I still got to have 2 burgers!  AND the burger episode of How I Met Your Mother was on!!  It was like a sign or something.  I am not really sure what I'm saying, mostly because I have a beef hangover right now.

I didn't make it in time to try some sneaky burger ideas, but Mom has learned that throwing some onions into the beef before you grill it makes good burgers great.  And Chuck has officially decided that there is no weather that is not grilling weather (we had steaks the other day, but that doesn't really fit into the theme here).  I recommend the stealth onion technique.  Unless you don't like onions, in which case I am not sure we can be friends.

-Jon