Nothing Too Fancy

I feel like I've written this post before. So I'll keep it short and sweet. And I'm going to be lazy and combine 2 different burger events into a single post.

Burger #1 was a bacon cheeseburger grilled by Chuck with the bacon under the cheese in order to keep it from escaping. There were also some sauteed mushrooms and onions (as per usual) and BBQ sauce as a condiment. Throw that together with a side of baked beans and you've got yourself a good meal.

Burger #2 was one of those pre-made frozen burgers as Sam and Ashleigh's cookout. Usually those burgers are difficult to cook correctly, so the key is in the available toppings. I decided to do with avocado (for deliciousness and health purposes), ketchup (to keep things from getting dry) and that buffalo chicken dip that people make for cookouts (because I figured it would be good). Seriously, how delicious is buffalo chicken dip? Pretty delicious if you ask me, which you didn't. I would eat that as a meal, which would probably end up going badly.

Both burgers were good. Next time you're at a cookout, give the buffalo chicken dip a chance on your burger. It will be delightful!

-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

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

The Burger Triplets

Now, eating 3 burgers sounds like a lot, but they were sliders so it's not really as much as it would originally seem. Still probably more than I needed to eat though. I will have to skip a meal tomorrow.

Chuck got a bunch of mini-burgers (aka "sliders," although I am not sure I understand the name) to grill up tonight, so I signed on for 3 of them. I think a better idea would have been to have 2 of them, especially since I also ate an absurd amount of baked beans. Obviously that part of my brain that recognizes when my stomach is full was on break for dinner tonight.

There were also mini-buns, which made me feel sort of like a giant. And we had some sweet toppings, like garlic mushrooms, sauteed onions and cheese. There was BBQ sauce too, but somehow I failed to notice it until my third burger, at which point I threw it on there anyway. When you're going overboard, you might as well go all the way. Don't half-ass it.

The burgers were good, and I learned a valuable lesson: just because they're little, don't try to eat three of them. This isn't Man vs. Food.

-Jon

Twins!

After such a promising start, it ended up that October had the fewest burgers consumed of all the months so far this year. It also looks like I'm going to be eating fewer burgers this year than last year. Does that mean this trend will continue until I don't eat any burgers and then start eating negative burgers? Only time will tell. I certainly hope not, as those negative burgers sound scary.

Chuck wanted to grill up some burgers, so that sounded like a delightful plan to me. I added my extensive talents to the mix and chopped up a couple onions and tomatoes while he sautéed some mushrooms and got bacon in the microwave. The end result was this:

It's like a burger and its clone! I tried out my developing theory that putting all the toppings underneath the burger makes the whole thing easier to eat, so there are 3 slices of bacon at the bottom, with tomato slices, onions and mushrooms on top of that base. I think that I had fewer escaped toppings with this method, so more research is going to be needed for confirmation. Also, I need to account for variables such as burger juiciness and bun type. I guess I'm going to have to eat a lot more burgers in the future.

Oh, and they came out delicious.

-Jon

Get Right Back on the Horse

You'd think that getting sick would stop me from grabbing another burger for lunch immediately the next day. You'd be wrong. I think this falls into the category of "if at first you don't succeed, try again." I needed to have a good burger this weekend to undo the mental effects of that Red Robin debacle.

We were going to Boston for Matt's bachelor party, so I took the responsibility for picking a place since no one else knew too many places in the city. We were staying right by the Garden, so I figured people would enjoy The Fours, the place that Kathryn and I went to on Easter. It's got good food and lots of different beers, so you can't really go wrong. I decided to get a little silly, so I got a Guinness and made my own burger. Not literally, because it would be weird if they just let random people into the kitchen, but in the sense that I picked my own toppings instead of getting a predetermined meal. I went with bacon, American cheese and avocado in addition to the standard lettuce and tomato. They had a lot more options, including chili (which I almost did just for the experience), but I decided not to overdo it. After all, we were going to be doing a lot of beer drinking in the coming hours, so I needed the stomach space.

That burger was delightful! It was cooked right, the avocado went nicely with the bacon, and there wasn't too much lettuce. The fries were also good, and we got the buffalo chicken nachos which were awesome again. All around it was a good time.

After that, things started to get silly.

We went from The Fours to Boston Beer Works right down the street to kick off our pub crawl. That's a nice little place. I tried something called "Tell-Tale Lager," which was good. I'd drink it again. They had the Uruguay-Germany match on TV, so people were getting all into that. We decided to participate as well, and just yelled really loudly every time anyone else yelled. It was a good time.

Next up was this tiny place called the Corner Cafe in the Italian district. It was about the size of my kitchen. Steve struggled with the claw machine (which ended up eating his coins without offering him a chance at a crappy prize), we lost on all our scratch tickets, and then we played Keno for a while. Not the real Keno, but the fake one that Dave played in college. It's a lot more fun, and involves a lot more yelling at the Keno TV. It turns out that yesterday was Steve G's lucky day, because his number 6 came up in probably 10 games in a row. We used that to our advantage to win $100 playing actual Keno, and walked out of there with beer money.

On the way back, we grabbed a 24-pack for the hotel room, which would quickly become a 23-pack due to gravity. Steve decided he was lazy, so he carried the beers for a little and then dumped them off on Dave. He did not warn Dave that the handle on the box was not exactly intact. Shortly after that, the handle ripped off completely and the beers went everywhere on the sidewalk. Sadly, one of them exploded on impact, leaving us with one less beer and one more story.

We ran mostly through that box o' beer and got pretty for the night out. After walking the wrong way to Park St (since me saying several times "we need to be on the other side of this building and you guys are going the wrong way" wasn't enough to get them to turn around), we ended up deciding to hit Faneuil Hall for a meal at Dick's Last Resort. That was an experience. Steve had been there before, and possible a few of the other guys, but it was new to me. The main thing there is that the employees treat all the customers like crap, and also make embarrassing hats for them. They also serve 40 oz Bud Lights, so that's a win. My ribs were cooked to rib perfection (the first bone came out clean with almost no effort, which is what is supposed to happen), and the buffalo wings were spicy enough without being weird tasting. I'd go back.

We finished off the night at Ned Devine's, which may be the longest bar/club I've ever seen. You could just keep walking and walking. It was also incredibly crowded, which made it a good thing that we had been drinking all day. I can't handle those kind of places without being properly lubricated.

All in all, it was a good night. And it probably was an indicator of future wackiness that will happen at the wedding.

-Jon

Blame It On Jet Lag

I should probably warn you that this entire post may be incredibly rambling and incoherent. I'm pretty sleepy, and it's really hot out which isn't helping things. I'm also watching the Red Sox, so at most only 50% of my attention is focused on what I'm writing. Sometimes I am not even looking at the computer screen or keyboard while I type. That could result in some interesting typos.

My options for dinner tonight were: Frosted Mini-Wheats (Cinnamon Strudel or Blueberry Muffin), going to get take-out (probably not going to happen, due to my current lack of motivation to do anything) or burgers at Mom and Chuck's. Since you're reading this, you can probably guess that I went with option 3. It was a compromise between not having to get myself dinner and having to leave the air-conditioning in my living room.

I'm going to cut this thing short. Two burgers, American cheese, tomato, red onion, some baked beans, some pasta salad and a pair of Summer Ales. It was a good time. Hopefully the next time I eat burgers it will be a more manageable temperature and I will be able to think a bit more clearly. Or maybe not. If I could tell the future, do you really think I'd be spending my time writing so terribly?

-Jon

Now We're Getting Somewhere

I have heard rumours that today was the summer solstice, which I think makes it fitting that dinner tonight was burgers. Everyone associates burgers with summer. Well, a lot of people do. I obviously associate burgers with all the time. The only bad time for a cheeseburger is right after you've eaten cheeseburgers, because you don't want to ruin your enjoyment of the next burger by being full.

We had some Randall's Summer Sliders, although again, I am fairly certain you could eat them at any point in the year and still have a nice meal. Stop trying to pigeonhole my burgers!! I decided to keep it low-key and only had 3. A burger, some good American cheese, a couple slices of tomato and some sauteed onions makes a nice meal. We also had some baked beans which were leftover from some dinner Mom helped out at. It was probably volunteer work, but it would seem that they decided to pay her in beans because her fridge has somewhere around 20-25 servings of beans at this point. It was pretty crazy.

The burgers were nicely cooked and quite delicious. The beans were so-so, and I attribute that to the fact that they have probably been reheated multiple times now. Eventually that has to take a toll on the flavor and quality. These are some good lessons for Future Jon to learn.

Another good lesson is that if you are going to chop up onions and also slice watermelon, it's a good idea to either do the watermelon first or use a different cutting board. Otherwise you end up with what I did today and get an onion-flavored slice of watermelon. A watermelonion if you will. And those are not two great tastes that taste great together.

Actually, I guess that a watermelonion would be an onion that tasted like watermelon. Perhaps I will have to come up with a better name. That's a lot of creativity for one day though. . .

-Jon

Let's Try Something New

It's actually not really that new, but it's the first time that I've tried it here. Frank's Red Hot Burgers!! It's time to kick things up a little.

We decided to have a little cookout here, so the menu was going to be burgers, hot dogs, baked beans and fries. But not just boring, pre-formed burgers. That would be disgraceful to all the people eating AND the people reading. We got some quality 80/20 meat and made burgers out of that. I also seasoned them with a little salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. Hey, if you're going to do burgers, you might as well do them right. Then I formed some lovely burgers and put the little divots in the top to make sure they cook right.

Now for the spice. Kathryn and Matt didn't want any, but Bill and I went with a little Frank's & bleu cheese combination to top the burgers. Then we all used some pepperjack cheese for a little extra zip. Plus we had lettuce and tomato to make everything all fancy. I probably could have taken the burgers off the grill a couple minutes earlier, but all it did was make the cheese melt too much instead of overdoing the meat. I can live with that.

The burgers came out pretty well. And the beans were good as always. The fries were ok, but I guess our oven takes a lot longer to cook them than the package would suggest. It's probably because the oven is lazy. There was actually too much food, so I ended up not finishing the second burger. That makes me a little sad.

I also managed to drop a hot dog on my foot. It turns out that they come off the grill a little hot, which was unpleasant. Apparently I have the only grill that slopes forward. Probably not the greatest design. I need one of those super grills they have on the cooking shows.

-Jon

That Was a Rainy Day

A lot of things happened today, so hopefully I don't forget any of them.

I woke up at a ridiculously early time (for a normal person), so I figured I might as well go for a little run. Good thing I did, because other than that run and a quick trip to the gym, I spent the rest of the day eating in a terribly unhealthy fashion. Actually, I ate a little fruit, but I am not sure that it counteracts everything else I did. Sorry, stomach.

I started off the day by going over to Kathryn's cousin's graduation party. This party had the interesting characteristic of being both BYOB (understandable due to it being a high school graduation party) and BYOC(hair). That 2nd one is just strange. Luckily for me, Kathryn knows all about chair acquisition, so I took care of the B and she took care of the C. Even the rain wasn't able to ruin the party due to the presence of a nice tent. And also of cheeseburgers, which I know is the only reason you're here.

I decided to try something new and exciting, so I took my burger and topped it with the BBQ baked beans. I also filled my plate up with them. Those were some quality beans! The BBQ Baked Bean Burger may have to may an appearance on the menu at Burger Bros, because it was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that it made up for the fact that the burger was pretty much as well done as it could be while still being called a burger. I should have asked for the recipe to add to our bean & chili menu. Besides the burger and beans, I also had a plate of fruit, some sweet & sour kielbasa, two of those little brownies with the white chocolate chips you can get a Big Y in the brownie platter, and 3 Magic Hat Wackos. Can you handle that?

After that, I may or may not have gone with Kathryn over to the mall to buy candles. My memory is fuzzy on this topic.

And what day is complete with only one party? Not this one, because it was then time to head over to Steve's surprise 28th party, where the shenanigans and beer were plentiful. And also the burgers. And hot dogs. And taco dip. And Doritos. And a handful of Summer Ales. Ok, so there was a lot of food here too. I ate another burger along with about infinity tortilla chips. My goal was to eat all of the taco dip, but other people were eating it too and I had to settle for as much as possible. I will have to make myself a plate of it some day and just go to town.

Both burgers were ok by burger standards, but there was nothing spectacular. Well, nothing other than my baked bean idea for the future. That is a good plan.

However, there were lots of hilarious stories to relate. Here they are, in no particular order.

• Dave threw at least 18 empty beer bottles into the pool. If you don't know why that's funny, then you probably don't know that most beer bottles will get mostly filled with water, then turn vertical and bob around the pool.
• I found golf clubs and attempted to chip a ping-pong ball into a beer cup. So close, and yet so far. I guess I should have stuck to golf.
• Jen had a bucket of small rubber duckies. No, I don't know why. Nicole and I took a bunch of them and hid them around her house. I think she still hasn't found the last 4.
• After Jen recovered the majority of the ducks, someone took the entire bucket of them and put them all over her car. Ok, it was me. I may refer to her car as the Duckmobile for the foreseeable future.
• Geoff "iced" Steve. This is the first time I've seen this in person.

So it turns out that even though we are all 28 or turning 28, we still haven't grown up. Well, most of us haven't. Growing up is highly overrated.

-Jon

Now We're Talking

It probably be seems like Mmmm, Burgers is off to a slower start in 2010 than it was in 2009, but that is only if you look at the numbers and see that I am only on pace for 60 burger stories this year compared to the 73 from last year. However, you may also realize that I have posted 5 times in the past 2 weeks, which extrapolates to 130 stories in a year as well as a dangerously increased level of cholesterol and, presumably, some serious extra poundage.

Oh well, I do it for the readers.

Tonight was burgers at Mom & Chuck's newly updated kitchen, which has been several months in the making. They have a crazy new stove that scares me because it apparently gets super hot and will probably injure me severely at some point in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned for that story, either here or at Mmmm, Opinions.

We had regular burgers (with cheese added later due to a slight oversight on Chuck's part) with the options of bacon, stealth onions or mushrooms. I passed on the stealth onions because I thought that onions would be an option later. I turned out to be wrong there. I also put the mushrooms on the side, as I have had some troubles recently with those sneaky fungi escaping from my burger. So pretty much my burger was a standard bacon cheeseburger. Hey, not everything needs to be an elaborate creation!

Aw crap! I forgot to take a picture again. I am really a disappointment, both to myself and my family.*

The burger was pretty good. A bit overcooked for my liking, but not to the charcoal briquet level. I only had one because it turns out that I am actually very fat and need to lose 15-50 lbs. The doctor suggested the first amount, but that sounds pretty half-assed to me. Now obviously, I will fail in this endeavor, but at least I have an excuse not to eat food I don't like.

-Jon

* - I am not sure that my family is disappointed in me, but I have to assume they are.

Happy Memorial Day

Ok, I keep forgetting to take pictures of my burgers, and this time it is really unfortunate. Kathryn and I went to her mother's house for a Memorial Day cookout, and there were some burgers and hot dogs since I think it might be the law that you have to serve them at any Memorial Day activity. Unfortunately, Chloe and Odin were not invited, even though Odin would have loved the yard there. It was completely fenced in and probably close to 3/4 of an acre. Plus there are some snakes that live in part of the wall. I feel like those would have entertained him for hours. Then I would have either a story about Odin running around carrying a snake, or a story about us taking Odin to the vet to treat some snakebites. Win-win really.

Back to the burgers. These were not your everyday, run-of-the-mill burgers though. Due to whatever combination of factors caused it, the burgers ended up being super tiny once they were cooked. We're talking like maybe and inch and a half across. They were like sliders! That means I ended up eating 4 burgers, but I am not counting it as a tie for the record due to the minimum size requirements. That title still goes to Amy and Scott's cookout from last June. In addition to the burger medallions, we also had fruit salad, baked beans, some salmon and beers. I imagine my stomach is going to be upset with me within the next 12 hours.

So the short version is that I really dropped the ball on the picture taking today. I apologize profusely. And also about the length of this story. I used up all my words yesterday typing about the beer tasting. Go read that if you need more Jon-based journalism.

-Jon

Earth Day is also Jen's Birthday

If you are friends with Jen, you will probably be familiar with the phrase "Earth Day is my birthday!" Especially if you were on that trip to San Diego a couple years ago. I am surprised that no one punched her in the nose after the 32nd time. I guess you aren't allowed to punch the birthday girl. Also, I am just teasing Jen, so hopefully no one gets mad. The blog for infuriating people is the other one.

Melissa organized the mini-celebration for Jen, and decided that it would include burgers and Summer Ale, which was a wise decision. A less wise decision was my decision to have 2 burgers, because they looked like this:

Holy crap! That beast contains a giant burger, pepperjack or Monterey cheddar (each burger got one of them), a tomato slice, bacon and red onion. There was absolutely no reason that I needed to eat 2 of them other than to prove my manhood for reasons to be explained shortly. You can also see the pot of baked beans back there. They sucked. They were some kind of crummy canned crap, and even adding some bacon to them couldn't save the day. I will expect better results in the future!

The burgers themselves were good, although I think they increased the volume of my stomach by about 50%. I feel like a pregnant woman must feel, but without the kicking. Those burgers are have definitely claimed some of the valuable real estate formerly occupied by my liver and kidneys.

Now for the story about why I needed to prove my manhood.

I had my regular appointment with New England Dermatology, except that instead of going where I normally go, I had to go to the Longmeadow office. Not really a big deal as it's right near where I used to work and easily reached without much difficulty. I have also heard that there is a store called Home Goods (which I thought was supposed to be a section of a store) that has a lot of good stuff for someone whose roommates own all the kitchenware but are moving out and thus that someone will be without kitchenware. I decided that I would take a little trip there after my appointment and see what I could find.

Wow, do I not belong in that store alone.

While I was there, I counted a total of 3 males. One guy I am pretty sure was lost, because he just kept walking laps around the store and occasionally stopping at the rugs. The second guy was with his wife, and both of them were old. He'd obviously just given up on arguing. And the third guy was me, who was completely overwhelmed and then lost his cart. Don't worry though, I found it a few minutes later. Or I found the cart of someone who was buying similar items to the ones I wanted, so it's close enough. I even bought a picture, which is the first thing I've ever bought that is 100% decorative and serves no other purpose than to look nice. Don't worry; I will be pointing it out to every person that comes to my house for the first 2 months it is up. You will be very sick of it.

Once I left the store, I realized than I needed to make up for this HGTV bullshit that I am currently involved in by doing something manly. You know, like eating dead animals, drinking beer, looking at boobs, punching a hobo, yelling at the athletes on the television. . . man stuff! It was actually very lucky that Melissa was making burgers, there was beer in her fridge, and the Sox were playing. I guess the other stuff will have to wait until tomorrow.

Now come over to look at my new picture!

-Jon

The Celtics Almost Kill Me

In case you didn't watch it, the Celtics beat the Cavaliers today in a game that had both a terrific performance by the C's as well as a completely horrendous performance by the C's. It also had a whole bunch of technical fouls, a guy dressed in a bunny suit dancing to "Livin' On a Prayer," and an insane 4th quarter performance by LeBron James, which I can only assume will greatly aggravate Bill and Dad.

The day also included 2 fun trips on the T (which are actually not fun), an annoying experience with some stupid bitch who (whom?) I wanted to punch in the teeth, Kathryn and I looking like lost tourists, and lunch/dinner at a place called The Four's.

We parked at Riverside and rode the Green Line in because: a) I suck at driving in cities and it terrifies me to have to do it, and b) we are stupid and wanted to participate in the massive social experiment that is public transportation. Since the Garden is at North Station and the train only went as far as Government Center, we had the choice of either waiting for the next train to ride 2 stops or walking it ourselves. Well, it was nice out, so, armed with 2 cell phones equipped with GPS, we headed out into the sunshine. I have got to assume that seeing us was hilarious to anyone else. Picture us both with our phones held out, slowly spinning in circles trying to figure out which direction is northeast. What am I, Magellan? Give me directions I can use!

Eventually we decided on the correct direction and arrived during the 1st quarter. The Celtics proceeded to build a 22 point lead, which had fallen slightly to 17 at the start of the 4th. Then, things went terribly wrong for an extended period of time. They missed pretty much every shot they took while LeBron must have turned on some cheat code and hit the turbo button to run by everyone on the court several times. Eventually, Ray Allen remembered that basketball games are 4 quarters and not 3, sunk a huge shot and the C's hung on for the win. I am pretty sure that I almost had a nervous breakdown during the game. Thanks guys.

Now, Kathryn and I didn't eat lunch before the game, so by the time it was over we definitely needed some food. According to her iPhone, The Four's was close to our location and only in the $$ range, so we walked over and hoped for a table. Hooray! We beat the rush. Seriously. By the time our burgers came, the place that was empty when we sat down was completely full.

I got something called The Frenchie, which had some crazy garlic sauce and brie cheese with onion straws. Important advice for the future: brie is not a good cheese for burgers. Most of mine had melted off and ended up in my pile of fries. Plus they overcooked it. It would appear that the good folks at The Four's attended the same culinary school as those at Fitzwilly's. Anyway, the whole thing looked like this. You can see the cheese in between the burger and the fries, where it does not belong.

On the plus side, that little pot there was filled with delicious baked beans that could give the Dias Baked Beans a run for their money if The Four's ever figures out to throw some bacon in there. Also, those fries were pretty good as well. Not pictured are the Buffalo Chicken Nachos, which may be one of the top 10 appetizers of all time.

I would give the meal overall a positive review, because the whole was more than the sum of its parts. Some day I'll find that perfect burger, but today was definitely not that day.

-Jon

In Which I Get Unnecessarily Aggravated

I like burgers, as you may have guessed. I like people cooking burgers for me. I enjoy trying to come up with delicious ideas for burgers. I even enjoy cooking them myself on occasion.

I do not enjoy grills with uneven heat. Especially when I am not aware of this fact ahead of time.

Dinner went from being 3 other people to being just Mom, and since I was put in charge of picking the meal, I chose burgers. Yeah, I'm a real mystery. I decided to try and be crazy and also to put some new knowledge to use, so I went for the blue cheese stuffed burger with bacon. And also with blue cheese on top, because there really isn't any such thing as too much cheese.

So I take the block of raw hamburger, which is already gross (ironically I hate having to touch raw meat, but still have aspirations of owning a restaurant; it's quite the catch-22), and separate it into 3 parts to make 3 burgers. Then I took each sub-block and made 2 mini-burgers out of it so that I could put the cheese in the middle and seal that good stuff in. And that part of the plan worked out wonderfully, minus the dry skin resulting from washing my hands 6 times. Then things took a turn for the worse.

So there was plenty of propane (which I should have checked ahead of time but didn't because I am a daredevil like that), but apparently the grill there only heats certain parts of the grill top at certain times. That is annoying. And even though both of my burgers came out perfect (give me a call, Fitzwilly's, if you need a refresher course on what "rare" means), Mom's was a little bit rare. Or you might call it raw. Let's not split hairs here. How many factors do you really need to consider when constructing a grill? 1) How many dead animals can I have cooking here at once? 2) Does this grill correctly cook all the dead animals? 3) See #1 and #2. Really, that's it. If you miss any of these things, your grill blows, and eventually you may annoy an anonymous internet loudmouth to the point where he will write a long-winded post about it. Thanks a lot, jerks.

There were also some sweet side dishes. Some kind of canned baked beans, which were not really even close to as good as the secret family baked beans, and tater tots, which made me feel like I was back in 5th grade. Also, they weren't officially tater tots, because they were Big Y brand and had some weird name like "Tot-Shaped Potato Snacks" or something equally ridiculous. And yes, I realize that "sentence" up there was a sentence fragment, and I don't care because I love sentence fragments. It would be much easier to go up there and throw a colon in place of that first period, but I would rather just make this post really long and maybe teach all (both?) the readers of this site about grammar. I am a teacher after all.

Oh. My burgers were delicious. Even though the bacon was a little crisper than it should have been, a mistake that will not be committed again. It's all about learning in the burger world.

-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

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

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!!!