So, Moving Kind of Sucks

I don't dislike the idea of moving. I hate the actual process of having to pack things, transport them, and then unpack them. At this point I am mostly moved. Although I suppose if you look at both my old residence and new residence you might decide that I am not actually moved, but rather am living in 2 places at once. And that's valid. It turns out that I have an awful lot of stuff.

At any rate, I was back in Ludlow on Tuesday in an attempt to transport more of my things, specifically the kitchen related ones. And a load of laundry. It's always good to have clean clothes. I also got a chance to stop by Dad and Kelly's for dinner, which just happened to be cheeseburgers!

I don't know if there was a sale on grinder rolls or if there was a shortage of hamburger rolls, but either way, we had the burgers cut in half on grinder rolls. It was kind of cool, and it was actually easier to eat them without the burger trying to slide out the back of the bun. Kelly might be on to something there.

I am supposed to be going to Boston this weekend, so perhaps more burger-related shenanigans will soon follow.

-Jon

Happy Father's Day. . . One More Time

I apparently already have 2 posts with Happy Father's Day in the title. It would seem that burgers are now the official sponsor of this holiday.

As a special treat for Dad, Matt volunteered me to cook the burgers for Father's Day. Now, you may know that I have a special hatred for grilling because every time I try to grill something on my grill, it gets cooked unevenly, or overcooked, or undercooked (as in still raw in places). I was under the impression that this was because I was not really a man since men can grill. Turns out it was just that my grill hates performing its job.

Using Dad and Kelly's grill, I was able to pull off an amazing feat of deliciousness. My trick? Preseasoning the meat with a little garlic salt and Montreal steak seasoning, and then to stuff cheese inside the burgers. I ended up with 4 cheese combo choices: American inside and on top, American inside with provolone on top, provolone inside and on top and obviously provolone inside with American on top. Is this my best idea ever? Probably.

And with a working grill, everyone's burgers came out cooked correctly. Even Kelly's, which is impressive since she eats hers well done to the point where I figured that leaving it on the grill any longer would be a fire hazard. It was not, and she enjoyed it, somehow...

Alright grilling, it's on now! You're attempts to undermine me with a shoddy performing piece of equipment have failed! Much meat shall be eaten to atone for your crimes!

-Jon

I Used to Eat More Burgers...

I don't eat nearly enough of them these days.

But I did eat one today! And that is cause for celebration. Or at least cause for a post.

After a long day of being a PE substitute and telling pugs to stop barking at dogs/cats/people/birds/things-in-their-minds-that-aren't-really-there-but-they-bark-at-anyways, a burger seemed like just the thing for dinner. Especially after I saw them in the fridge and predicted that they would be cooked soon thereafter.

This one was cooked perfectly! It was pink like a salmon, and I think there might have been two slices of cheese. And there was bacon! And BBQ sauce. Oh man, I wish I was eating another one right now. There was also some fries on the side along with potato chips and some delicious cheddar and bacon dip. What a delightful dinner!

-Jon

Twice the Cheese, Twice the Fun

After what was, for me, a relatively long and exhausting day, it was exciting to find out that dinner was going to be cheeseburgers. And there were 2 choices of cheese! Since I couldn't choose between provolone and American, I decided to go with both. This turned out to be a delicious decision, and was seconded by Dad.

This time around, the grill was more cooperative than it was for the last round of burgers. Everything was grilled to burger perfection, except for Kelly's well done mess. But since that's how she likes them, I guess that counts as perfection still, no matter how painful it is to see.

In other news, BBQ sauce is rapidly ascending the list of top condiments. Not that there's really a lot of competition considering that I don't really use any other condiments not named ketchup. But BBQ sauce is clearly better than ketchup since they both have tomato bases (sort of), but BBQ sauce takes things in a much more awesome direction.

I wasn't really very focused while I was writing this, so let's sum things up real quick at the end. Multiple kinds of cheese are better than just one, it's nice when the grill does what it's supposed to, and BBQ sauce is delicious. Write that down.

-Jon

The Burger Before the Storm

Since there's already a ton of snow outside and we're projected to get more tonight, tonight might end up being the only chance at getting a grill out of the garage. Which is precisely what Dad did tonight.

Assuming we get anything close to the snow they're expecting overnight, today might have been the only full school day of the week. And of course I worked it, because I am terrible at being unemployed properly. Who would have thought it would be so tough. After that, it was time to finish birthday shopping (hey, if my brothers wanted their gift on their actual birthday, maybe they should have been born in a month without 2+ feet of snow), then continue to feed my addiction to launching birds at towers of pigs. Stupid pigs. Stop being so smug!

Today was also the day we learned that Dad's grill is now one of those temperamental grills that decides to cook different parts of the grill at different temperatures. Like mine! Four burgers went on and came off at the same time, and they ended up as one rare, one mostly rare, one 2/3 medium-rare and 1/3 medium (which was mine), and, unfortunately for Dad, one pretty well done. Come on grill, that ain't right.

We also had some sauteed mushrooms and onions, which were delightful. And also the standard Ruffles with jalapeño cheese dip. And a pickle! All around a delicious meal.

-Jon

Burgers Were the Bright Spot

Today started off ok, except that a certain pair of pugs wanted to get up earlier than I did. I was going to be subbing for a half day, and it was the second half, which meant I didn't have to get up at 6. Then I had a productive morning. I did some laundry, washed some dishes, neatened up my Pau Gasol-esque neckbeard, ate a breakfast sandwich and bacon. . . things were looking up. And then I went outside, and found yet another flat tire. How is this even possible!?

But luckily, dinner ended up being a cheeseburger and waffle fries. On a sidenote, what's the deal with waffle fries? How are they like a waffle? Waffles don't have holes in them, and waffle fries do. Case closed. Time to rename those bad boys. Since I did most of the work of coming up with the difficult idea to change the name, you're responsible for the easy part of deciding on what that name will be. I'll be expecting it by 2011. Thanks.

Back to the burger. Nice and rare, American cheese, lettuce and tomato. And barbecue sauce! Yeah, I threw a curveball in there today. And it was a pretty delicious one. If you've never substituted BBQ sauce for ketchup, give it a try sometime. It may rock your world.

Now I'm off to set up a webcam since someone is obviously sabotaging my precious automobile.

-Jon

Another Burger Already

It looks like November is also off to a fast start for burgers. We'll see if it lasts.

After burgers for dinner last night, there was a rapid turnaround resulting in more burgers tonight! This time they were at Dad and Kelly's house, and there were different burger decorations. We had lettuce, tomato and sautéed onions for them. Sadly, I don't have any interesting stories or pictures to add, so this post is quickly heading for its conclusion.

The burgers were good, but they were overcooked by Dad's standards. It wasn't really a big deal though, because they were still juicy. And they were gigantic, which made them look silly on a small bun. Bill somehow managed to eat all of one piece of the bun before he had finished his burger, which I just don't understand. It's a mystery!

-Jon

A Missed Opportunity

I'll be kicking myself for this later.

Also, this will not be a long story.

We had burgers and chouriça for dinner at Dad and Kelly's tonight, and I didn't think of making a chouriça burger until after I had already eaten. That would have been a crazy burger! It would have also been huge, which people seem to like nowadays in their burgers. I was somewhere (maybe HCC?) and they had a poster showing the average size of a meal at a restaurant next to what would actually be considered a serving size, and the "real" serving size was like half of what you'd expect. That is probably not good for the health of America. It could also explain why I'm fat.

Sadly, the chouriça burger will have to wait until some mysterious future date. Someone will probably have to remind me about this idea next time it becomes an option, because there is a 99.99% chance that I'm going to forget. Kind of like I continually forget to take pictures of my burgers. Tonight's burger was good though. It deserved a picture just because it was cooked nicely. I really need to start writing myself little notes, since apparently I am already suffering from the symptoms of old age.

What was I saying?

-Jon

That's a Lot of Spying

I would say that today probably falls into the "not-very-productive" category. I think that possibly the only productive thing I did was to take a shower. So yeah, hooray showers.

USA was showing the entire season of Burn Notice, which seems to be a very popular show with my family. My brothers were watching it here, and then it was also on for the majority of the time when we went over to Dad and Kelly's. At one point I did manage to switch over and watch Harrison Ford abuse some Irish terrorists in Patriot Games, but that was short lived and the spy antics of Michael Westen soon returned. Also, the midseason finale was pretty good. Do you think Michael will survive? (Haha, spoilers are funny.)

Oh, I also ate a steak from Longhorn Steakhouse. Is that place under some kind of renovations? Hasn't it been there for a while? At any rate, it smelled like paint in there. But the steak was tasty, and the baked potato had a perfect amount of butter and sour cream. Maybe not quite as good as Texas Roadhouse, but there also wasn't a 3-hour wait.

And with lunch out of the way, it was back to Burn Notice and then time for burgers! Nothing too fancy, but there was bacon. Burger + Bacon > Burger. Always. That is an incontrovertible fact of burgers. And this burger was also delicious, since it was nice and medium rare. I always say, you need to have someone who understands that burgers shouldn't look like charcoal briquets manning the grill. Only weirdos like well done burgers, and you don't want weirdos at your house.

-Jon

Happy Father's Day. . . Again

It turns out that I named last year's post the same thing, so I had to fake a little creativity. Plan on this being a recurring trend if I happen to eat burgers on holidays every year. Maybe I could get a Thanksgiving burger. . .

I could pretty much just repeat the exact same post and have most of it be true. But I wouldn't do that because that is just some lazy writing. I have a reputation to uphold. Instead, I'll add some extra stories in which I embarrass myself!

Ok, the burgers were the same ones as last year. Well, not literally because the meat would have gone bad long before today, but they were the same Big Y patties. This year I believe Dad did the grilling, but they were still nicely cooked and there was still tomato (exciting) and lettuce (not so exciting). This year also featured cantaloupe and a wide variety of mayonnaise-based salads such as macaroni salad, potato salad, and a salad I couldn't be bothered to identify since there was no chance I was eating any of them as mayonnaise is gross. They were good burgers and I was actually successful in eating both of the ones I attempted. This sort of makes up for yesterday's embarrassment. There was also Summer Ale, so I knocked a few of those back as a matter of course. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately for my liver), I am 89 behind last year's pace. Still easily going to reach a ridiculously high total though, so don't worry yourself about that.

On to the funny stories!!

So yesterday I lost my cheese privileges after slicing my finger open cutting some cheddar for a pre-burger snack. It was still oozing a little this morning, which can't be good. And yes, I realize the irony of writing about food and then immediately following it up with blood. The good news is that Kathryn finished up the cutting and the cheese was delicious, so the only downside was the amount of Band-Aids I'm currently going through.

You ever play FIFA video games? I haven't since 2002, and I now suck at them. Terribly. It's just sad. I can tell you, however, the number of red cards you can get before you forfeit the game. Four is ok, but the fifth one crosses the line. Also, apparently you are not allowed to slide tackle people from behind when they don't have the ball. Sissies.

We also played some basketball in the driveway. Well, my brothers played and I wandered around the court occasionally grabbing a rebound or poking the ball away for a steal. And any time I was on offense, you better believe I was shooting the ball every time I got it. I was like George "Chucker" Costanza. And every single shot, I yelled out "Hand down, man down" like Mark Jackson when he announces the NBA games. It turns out that yelling things is not an effective way to get the ball into the hoop. I learned a lot today.

-Jon

A Nice Day for Burgers

Tuesday was a terrible day. I don't know what my students' problem was, but they were absolutely awful. Wednesday was a slight improvement, but still not great. Then somehow, today turned out to be fine, even though it was basically a Friday in the kids' minds. Oh well. Life is funny sometimes.

Then the day turned even better! Burgers for dinner!! And we also had Kelly's tomato salad, which only makes things even more awesome. In addition, Dad was doing the grilling, so you know you're actually getting a medium rare burger instead of whatever foolishness is currently passing for medium rare at your local establishments.

After school, I made yet another attempt to mow the disaster I currently call a lawn. I managed to do the majority of it before I lost my patience (and will finish the stupid project tomorrow so I can return the lawnmower to its proper owner), but I still dumped the extra clippings all over the place because 1) I am lazy and 2) I don't know what else to do with them. My lawn looks like a grass genocide took place.

After that, Kathryn and I walked over to Dad & Kelly's with Chloe and MonstrO to hopefully wear that little black beast out a bit before bed time. It turns out that all he needs is to run around like a nut for 2+ hours to turn him from a tiny black demon into a normal, calm puppy. He still makes it very difficult to type on a laptop when he decides you are a pug-bed though. For example, he is attempting to sleep on me right now, but can't find a comfortable place. Silly pup.

The burgers were obviously awesome, and the tomato salad was also awesome. And the chocolate milk I drank with it was awesome too. Hopefully tomorrow's prosciutto-wrapped pork can live up to my currently raised expectations.

Ewwww! There are pug boogers on my shorts! Dammit, Odin!

-Jon

Back to Business

Wow, what a great week in the world of cheeseburger consumption. Three burgers in a single week? That sort of thing hasn't happened since. . . well, since whenever it happened last. It's got to have been at some point, considering I've eaten 4 in a single day before.

Another positive note is that I got a burger cooked correctly. Possibly because Dad was the one in charge of cooking them. We don't take kindly to overcooked burgers. It is slightly ironic because I got the one that was cooked the best. Well, best by my standards. Kelly would probably not have appreciated the rare-ness of it because she's more of a fan of charcoal burgers, which I believe has been discussed previously.

There isn't really much of a story for this one. It's Thursday, I had dinner with Dad and Kelly, it was cheeseburgers, and there were chips and the jalapeño cheese dip. I feel like I've heard this one before. Maybe next time I will just copy-paste a previous post and see if anyone notices.

On the plus side, Evan and I got all the Star Coins in World 2, so the second level of World 9 is unlocked. That's kind of neat.

-Jon

That's Better

Today I went bowling, got my tires rotated and watched curling! For me, that feels like a productive day, but I like to set my standards pretty low. Then after all that, dinner was a cheeseburger with the secret Dias Baked Beans. What a day!

After yesterday's lockout fiasco, there is not really anything that I could say about today that would be more hilarious. I would like to make the following points though:

-USA Curling is just awful. I wish I could like, trade everyone for players from other countries.

-CNBC's coverage of curling is also awful. This will be discussed on the other blog.

-How come my Dad, who is not a professional burger cooker, can cook me a medium rare burger without any problems but a restaurant can not?

I am now going to write a post about how much CNBC sucks and watch these American snowboarders fall down a lot.

-Jon

Not a Normal Thursday

Another Thursday, another dinner with Dad, Kelly and Evan. With a twist. Although we did have burgers (a Dias staple), we had them at Red Robin. That makes 2 weeks in a row that Thursday night dinner was out at a restaurant.

After a bunch of trips to Red Robin, I have eaten almost all the "real" burgers on the menu. Obviously that does not include the ones that are turkey or chicken or not real burgers. I still am afraid to give the Banzai Burger a try, because I am not sure that fruit belongs on my burger. I am also not sure if I have previously tried the Santa Fe Burger, but as of now that is moot.

Also, if someone can go back and find out if I have eaten that burger, I'll give you one of the the Raison d'Etre beers that are still crowding my fridge.

What a delightful burger! It had some kind of peppers, and some pepperjack cheese, and onions and some kind of sort of spicy sauce! Oh, and guacamole. I don't understand why I didn't eat guacamole before. I think maybe because it was green and has a funny name. Or because I wasn't really sure what an avocado was. Actually, I am still not sure what they are. Why do they have fake wooden testicles inside them?

The strange thing was, we ordered onion rings as an appetizer, but definitely did not receive any onion rings. Although in the end, that is probably a good thing, because I may have exploded afterwards. That would have been messy, and you would have missed out on a new post. That would have been very disappointing for you.

-Jon

Hello 2010

After a whole year of burger-eating, I should probably reflect on all the burgers I've had and announce the current champion. But I won't, because I am lazy and I don't want any of the burgers to feel bad. Unless I already said they sucked, in which case screw 'em.

As previously mentioned, there is not really any grilling season in the family. This means that any Thursday could end up being a surprise burger day, which is exactly what happened today. Double-cheese burger with a side of baked beans. Don't be confused. It was a double-cheese burger because I got one of the ones with 2 slices of cheese. Also, the beans were great. Secret family recipe containing hobo spices. Or is that just a lie to throw you off the scent?

I would like to go eat that pulled-pork monster burger at Paradise City again. That isn't really related to anything though.

-Jon

One of Them Was Slightly Better

Days where 2 of the meals are cheeseburgers are generally good days. Today was no exception to this rule.

The first burger was Wendy's for lunch after a hard day of Christmas shopping. It actually was quite hard because of back pain from shoveling the day before. Kathryn and I utilized many a Holyoke Mall bench for frequent breaks, which I have to assume added about half an hour to our trip. Also, what is the deal with the Borders at that mall? It's nearly impossible to find what you are looking for if you are looking for a specific book.

I went with the. . . I don't know, whatever they replaced the Big Bacon Classic with. It's the exact same thing. And still delicious. And the Frosty (not Joe, the milkshake thing) is always a nice replacement for a soda. Too bad they went a little overboard with the salt on my French fries. I still ate them all though, because I am a champion.

Later, dinner ended up being cheeseburgers again! This time they were grilled in foolish sub-freezing temperatures over at Dad and Kelly's. Two of us had burgers, and two of us had charcoal briquets. Apparently these silly ladies think that well done is an appropriate way to cook a piece of meat. I shed a tear.

In an unrelated side (dish) note, we had tortellini salad along with the burgers. I would estimate that I ate about a pound. That is good stuff.

-Jon

November is Grilling Weather

So October was a little slow for eating burgers, but November is off to a quick start. Thursday night was another trip to Dad and Kelly's, and burgers were on the menu. There were also fancy French fries. I am not exactly sure what they were, but there was definitely some sort of garlic seasoning going on there. They were also really hot when they came out of the oven, which I experienced firsthand.

The sad part of the story is that of the 3 burgers that were not well done, Dad and I got the ones that were the most done, and Zannah got the rarest one. That is really unfair. She's a dog! Ours were only slightly past medium rare though, so nothing too serious.

We'll see if grilling continues once the snow starts. That's the real test.

-Jon

Open House is Scary

Thursdays are exciting days because they are the days that I eat dinner with Dad and Kelly, and it's always a surprise what dinner is going to be. This particular Thursday was also Open House at work, which meant that after whatever surprise meal I ate, there was a minor chance that it would later be vomited up due to massive nervousness in front of a bunch of parents. Boy, that would make a great story.

It didn't happen though.

Dinner was bacon cheeseburgers, which is always a great addition to cheeseburgers. Also some baked beans were involved, and they also contained bacon. Really, bacon is a great addition to everything. Maybe I could make a blog about that. . .

Just kidding; I can barely keep this one updated. And I eat much more bacon than I eat cheeseburgers.

Open House also went smoothly. At least it did from my perspective. Who knows what those poor parents were thinking. If I had to guess, I would say that some of the thoughts were "why does he keep looking at the side wall there?" or possibly "wow, [their kid's name] was right about this guy. He's crazy."

Oh well, there's always next year to try to do it correctly.

-Jon

PS - Is anyone else as baffled by the fact that I don't have a tag for bacon as I am?

PPS - Why is each post's font size different? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!!!

A Pre-Dinner Burger

After several days (or probably months) of mocking Melissa for not having seen The Big Lebowski (technically she saw part of it but made the unforgivable mistake of falling asleep during it), we finally scheduled a Lebowski-viewing and White Russian-drinking event at our house. Also, since some people can't order pizzas correctly, James took care of the ordering, meaning we actually got a buffalo chicken pizza from Palermo's as opposed to some weird chicken club pizza from Pinocchio's.

And I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Since the Lebowski showing wasn't occurring until around 8, I still decided that I could use a free dinner at Dad & Kelly's, which just happened to be cheeseburgers. Nice rare cheeseburgers. Sadly, there were no tomatoes, but that is not quite a deal breaker.

Of course the movie was again fantastic, just like the first 36 times* I've seen it. Also, I seem to go a little heavy on the Kahlua in my White Russians. We finished off the Kahlua bottle before the vodka even though there are supposed to be equal parts of each. Oops.

-Jon

*I have no idea how many times I've actually seen that movie. I would put the total well over 25 though.

Happy Father's Day

Nothing fancy here, just a couple burgers over at Dad & Kelly's for Father's Day. I think they were the usual ones they get from Big Y, kept a little bit rare. Even though Kelly eats charcoal burgers, she still grills good ones for the rest of us. What a nice lady.

There were also tomatoes to put on them, because as everyone knows, burgers are much better when tomato is included. Don't ask Melissa though, because she is silly and thinks that tomatoes are bad. There was lettuce too, but who gets excited about lettuce?

I think that Wednesday night might have to be a burger night to celebrate the end of school for the year and the temporary suspension of my oppressive math regime. Also to celebrate the passing of the 200 mark for this summer's challenge. Now that is something to get excited about.

-Jon