Let the Nerdiness Begin

This was an unexpected burger, which is often the best kind. Actually, I am not sure why I said that, because it's not true. I would estimate that unexpected burgers have exactly the same percentage chance of being delicious as a planned burger. So really, this entire opening paragraph is kind of pointless. Time to get down to business.

Alex and I embraced our inner nerd (which I openly do on a daily or bi-daily basis since I teach math and have to be a nerd by default) and hit up PAX East 2010 to see what all the fuss is about.* In my opinion, we had actually set our nerd bars far too high. While we did see many silly things (we had joked about making BINGO cards with things like "a person carrying a plastic sword" or "an article of clothing containing a Triforce"), there appeared to be many people that are normal. Well, as normal as it gets when you are at a convention put on by people dedicated to video games and attended by similar people.

We stayed there for a few hours, checking out some upcoming games, playing some demos, and rocking some old school Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. Remember that game? It was pretty much the (2nd) greatest thing about owning an SNES, behind Chrono Trigger. I am probably going to go home and buy that from the Wii Shop.

I am very easily distracted lately.

After we had gotten our fill of nerdy activities for the day, we walked around the corner to a little place called Bukowski's Tavern. It was really little. As in about 15 feet wide. It was also packed. We got the last 2 spots at the bar, which was good because we were both starving. I chose the BBQ Bacon Burger, because I can't resist a bacon topped burger.

It was delicious! Almost as good as the burger from the night before. The only thing that I would have liked a little more would have been if the BBQ sauce hadn't been so sweet. It was like a weird combination of meat and sweetness. It also was nice that the burger was pretty close to rare, just into medium-rare territory. That is definitely a key factor in burger enjoyment.

Their fries are also good, and they don't give you like 3 lbs of them which makes you feel like a failure at the end when you can't eat them all. Way to ruin my self-esteem, other restaurants!

-Jon

* - There is a very good chance that this link will be dead at some point in the very near future. In that case, I don't know what to tell you.

This Is Not a Surprising Revelation

I did a lot of things today. I went to PD. I drew 4 more panels for the Cupcake Saga (which means people need to get off my back for a couple days). I made 3 ridiculous mini-books, one of which would probably get me fired. I officiated a volleyball game. I went candlepin bowling. And all of that means nothing because this is a blog completely dedicated to cheeseburgers, which means all of these stories are not related to our main focus.

All of that was just some distraction stuff because I ate a Blackjack Burger tonight, and it's widely known (by all 4 of my readers) that the Blackjack Burger is the ultimate burger at this point in time. Basically that means that I don't really have anything to say about it, unless you want me to start a new blog exclusively about Blackjack Burgers. Is the world really ready for Mmmm, Blackjack Burgers? You know what, don't even answer. It's not happening. That's just as ridiculous of a suggestion as Mmmm, Burritos. Which I have also already considered today. I am going to pimp the shit out of this Mmmm, [Plural Noun] idea. Maybe one of them will pay off and end my working career.

The short version of this post is that today's Blackjack Burger was excellent, but not as excellent as previous Blackjack Burgers. There was also the opportunity to meet RF himself (he's called Sully by the employees). Except apparently he's a creeper, so maybe it's a good thing that we didn't meet him and end up as lampshades in some guy's creepy apartment.

This is what the Greatest Burger So Far looks like. Notice the sauce, which is made of 95% deliciousness and 5% spiciness. Also, those aren't fries. They are like gigantic potato wedges masquerading as fries. You can see them behind the onion rings that I didn't order but got anyways.

I also drank way more beer than I am currently capable of drinking at the present, so that may explain the rambling in this post. That, or I am trying to keep the post length up. I am not even sure.

-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

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

A Poor Business Plan

After an extended burger break, I get 2 burgers in 2 days! When it rains, it pours, or whatever that silly expression is.

The original plan for today was to go out to lunch with Mom, Chuck and Chris somewhere in Northampton. Admittedly, that's not much of a plan, but that's how we roll here. Things got more detailed with the real plan becoming to go to lunch at Paradise City Tavern. And then I got super psyched because I was going to eat that giant burger with the pulled pork.

As we were on our way to meet them, I got a call that Paradise City was closed. I thought that 1:00pm was kind of a strange time to be closed if you want to sell food to people, but I guess not. The really strange part is that according to the website, the place should have been open. However, according to the fact that all the tables had the chairs on top of them, it seems like Paradise City is operating on a new business plan where you don't let customers eat.

I have a sinking feeling that maybe things are not going great for them.

We ended up going to Fitzwilly's instead, because it's pretty much across the street. I pretty much decided not to get the Jack and Meunster Burger, because that would have been super embarrassing to write a third post about it. I ended up choosing the Mushroom Cheddar Burger, because it sounded like a winning plan. And then I had it with the red onion, lettuce and tomato, because those seem like normal toppings for a burger. It was really big.

I still can't figure out why this place can't seem to cook a burger right. When it's not pink anymore, you have cooked it too long. So stop cooking it while it's still pink. Problem solved.

It's still pretty huge, right? I think I dislocated my jaw eating it.

-Jon

Time to Switch Things Up

After over a year of burger eating, it's time to make a minor alteration to the way we (well, I) do business here. Yup, that's right. It's time to throw some photos of these burgers into the mix. Also, it will make it easier to imagine the burgers themselves, as the imagination factor is no longer necessary. Finally, these things are huge. Like absurdly huge.

I should probably give credit where credit is due. The picture idea has been put into play at the suggestion of Kathryn's friends Gina and Kristin. So you can either thank them if you like the pictures, or blame them if you find them creepy.

The four of us went a place in Greenfield called Hope and Olive. Now, at first you would think that this place is a pub, because that is how pubs are often named: 2 random objects mixed together. However, the name actually comes from the fact that the restaurant is on the corner of Hope St. and Olive St. Ok, so no points for creativity.

On the other hand, they do get points for having Cabin Fever on tap. See the other blog for a more in depth opinion on that. Any place that has Cabin Fever has to be doing something right. I am not sure about this next part though. They had a guy going around and doing magic tricks for the customers waiting for a table. I guess I will leave the decision of whether or not that is a good thing up to you. It did impress Kristin though, so it would appear that it did the trick of taking our minds off the waiting.

So eventually we did get a table, although it was much later than our intended dinner time. Kathryn and I split possibly the weirdest appetizer I have ever experienced. It was honeydew melon with parmesan cheese over a slice of prosciutto. I guess they just randomly picked a fruit, a cheese and a meat and made it into an appetizer. It was actually pretty good, but I am not sure it was worth the price tag to get one weird fruit/cheese/meat thing each.

Ok, on to the important part. The Hope and Olive only has one burger, but don't let that deceive you. There are a huge number of options, so let's see how many I can remember. Lettuce, tomato, raw onion, sauteed onions, mushrooms, bacon, avocado, and various cheeses. I decided to go with sauteed onions, tomatoes (which were not slices, they were like tomato sections, which was neat), mushroom (which was a portobella, and ended up being like a hat for the burger instead of little mushrooms that always fall off), bacon and cheddar cheese. That combination ends up like this:

It was fantastic. Also, those french fries were good. If you ever figure out a reason to be in Greenfield, I would give it a try.

Possibly in the future, I will try to put something in the picture that will give you a sense of scale for these monstrosities. Give me a break though, as I am taking these photos with my phone.

-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

Second Verse, Same As the First

It would appear that even though I write down a detailed description and story about all of my cheeseburgers, it is still not enough to remember which ones I have tried when I revisit restaurants. Maybe I should start reading my own posts.

Nah.

Kathryn and I went to Fitz Willy's for a late lunch after her day of clinical instruction and my day of pug-filled shenanigans. More on that later. It pretty much doesn't matter what they do to my meal, as they have gorgonzola & garlic bread, which is probably the world's greatest appetizer. Also, I would have to guess that it has somewhere around 15,000 calories, so it is definitely a meal for bulimics. Additionally, I got a parking space at a meter with an hour and 10 minutes already on it! Score!!

I went for the Jack & Meunster Burger, and then sadly realized that I have already eaten it. So pretty much everything I said last time still applies, except that this time they overcooked it. Why is it so hard to get a medium-rare burger these days?

Now, I told you that story so I could tell you this one; it has less burgers, but more of me getting locked out of a house.

While Kathryn went to clinical, I went to Dunkin' Donuts, lay on the couch with pugs, read, and basically was a bum. The thing about pugs is that they tend to, like other dogs, need to be let out from time to time to do various digestive system related things. The thing about Kathryn's house is that I don't have a key to it, so when I go out to get a Vanilla Chai, bagel and coffee roll, I may forget to put the spare key back.

I suspect you can tell where this is going.

Sometime around noon, Chloe started whining, so she, Odin, Angelo and I went outside to take care of our respective businesses. No, I did not break any public urination laws. My business was making sure that pugs did not get hit by cars. Unfortunately, it would seem that I did not unlock the door, so when Giles jumped up at it all angrily since I didn't let him out, he actually pushed it shut and locked us out. For like 45 minutes. Now, pugs do not deal well with cold as it is, so the fact that Chloe romped through the yards of pretty much every house within 100 feet of Kathryn's meant that she was freezing. At the same time, Odin was jumping around like a mad-man, which meant that I couldn't even think. Also, Angelo just kept meowing at me. How is that helpful, Angelo!?

Finally I scooped up the pups and put them in a recycling bin, found a window whose latch looked different from the rest of the windows, and basically made a mess while breaking into the house. Go me! And yes, I let the pugs out of the recycling bin. I should have taken a picture though, because they looked so ridiculous.

I now owe Kathryn a new screen.

-Jon

A Brilliant Switch

After finding out that pretty much everyone I know thinks that Chili's has excellent food, and that there is now a Chili's just up the road basically, I figured I would peer pressure people into going to Chili's next time an opportunity presented itself. And after a long afternoon of enjoying some Coffeehouse Porter and #9 and watching the Olympics while listening to Nicky talk about Apolo Ohno and laughing at Odin relentlessly harassing Remy, this opportunity arrived.

Now, I have been to Chili's once before and thoroughly enjoyed their fajitas. However, I have been craving burgers lately, even though I just had one on Thursday. Thus, after about 10 minutes of looking at the menu and not really reading any of the foods, I decided to go with the Jalapeño Smokehouse Bacon Burger. However, I was not especially excited about the jalapeño-ranch sauce that was scheduled to come on said burger. The more I am exposed to it, the less I like ranch flavoring. I don't even eat those Doritos any more, and they used to be my favorite! Thus, I came up with a brilliant plan!

I asked the waitress to bring me the ancho-chile BBQ sauce from the Southern Smokehouse Bacon Burger instead. And, as Melissa will attest, that sauce was fantastic. It was delicious on the burger AND on the french fries. I am pretty pleased with the decision.

As for the burger itself, I have mixed reviews. Everything on the burger was really good, but they just did not manage to cook the burger appropriately. I have a very general expectation for a medium rare burger: it should be a little bit pink. This burger was not pink at all! Luckily, the bacon was about a quarter inch thick, and there were just enough jalapeños to make it a little spicy. I will give them another chance at some point in the future. But they better not overcook my burger again! I have very little patience for that nonsense.

-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

Getting Lost is Funny

Let this be a lesson for the future. If you are going to try a new place, you may want to either check the directions before you leave, or let the people in your car know where you are going ahead of time. Otherwise, you may end up driving 4 or 5 miles past the restaurant and having to stop behind a bank to pee. Check with Steve for more details.

We did eventually make it to Buffalo Wild Wings, and thought we were in for a long wait when we saw about 20 people standing out front. Turns out they were all together, so there was no problem. The next problem was that the guy told us there would be a wait, even though as we walked in to the bar area we saw at least 7 completely open tables. Turns out the wait was about 2 minutes. We hadn't even gotten our beers before the little buzzer went off telling us we could be seated. Why even bother with the buzzer? We stayed at the bar instead.

Now for the real dilemma. We were at a place that had "wings" in the title, but I have made a promise to eat more new burgers. What to do? I ate a burger with a ridiculous name, strictly because of said name. I hadn't even read the description, which made it even more awesome when the burger arrived and had pulled pork on it. Two animals had to die for me to eat last night. Take that, vegetarians!

The burger itself was the Big Jack Daddy Burger. Besides the pulled pork, it also had onion rings on it with some kind of sweet BBQ sauce. Maybe honey BBQ? I could probably just look it up, but meh. Throw some lettuce and tomatoes on there, and you've got a burger that pretty much stacks up to the Paradise City burger with pulled pork. Why do these places have to be so far away?

Also, their fries were good. Mmmm.

I also tried another new beer (which is another resolution I have made): BBC Cabin Fever. Apparently it's some kind of seasonal beer, because I had never heard of it before. Luckily, it's a good one. It tastes pretty similar to some other kind of beer that I can't quite put my finger on. I will have to consider this in the future.

-Jon

I Think That's All of Them

Unless there is a secret menu page with more choices, I have now eaten all of the non-standard burgers at Paradise City. This is not that impressive when you look at the menu and see that there are only 3 other burgers. But it is still a minor accomplishment since there are many places where trying all the burgers is impossible. For example, Ruby Tuesday changes their menu every week. And R.F. O'Sullivan has a bunch of weird burgers for weirdos, so clearly I won't be eating them.

The last burger on the list was the Wild Blu Burger, which comes with blue cheese and mushrooms and a lack of spelling fundamentals. It also had some tomato, lettuce and red onion for added deliciousness (onion and tomato) and green coloring (lettuce). The burger was huge, and also delicious. However, it was not nearly as big as their giant burger with pulled pork on it.

It's very strange. I think that I avoided mushrooms for the majority of my young life at my own loss. It is also very sad. At least now I am making up for it.

Kathryn also got a burger, so it seems I am having a positive influence on her. Now if I can just get her to finish her fries and stop using mayonnaise. . .

-Jon

A Momentous Occasion

More burgers already! This year is off to a good start.

The occasion mentioned in the title would be that I helped fry the sweet potato fries in super hot oil without burning myself at all. For most people, that would not be a major accomplishment. For me, it is great because it's probably the first time it's ever happened.

We went with bacon cheeseburgers with sauteed mushrooms and onions. This is fast becoming the standard of the Mom & Chuck burger cooking experience. Although in the future, we should probably make sure that there is plenty of propane first and start the mushroom and onions second, because we almost had a dinner of bacon topped with onions and mushrooms. Maybe winter grilling is not the way to go. Haha, just kidding. What a ridiculously outrageous idea.

I should probably have made a resolution to eat more burgers from more places, since I seem to have fallen off in the new burger department as of late. I will do what I can to remedy this. Maybe I'll even try something new next time I get to hit R.F. O'Sullivan. That would be a big step.

-Jon

A Shameless Plug

The new blog is now live. Head over to Mmmm, opinions to listen to my brothers and I ramble on about all sorts of ridiculous things. And I mean everything: people, games, movies, beers, abstract concepts. . . this blog's got it all.

-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