I Ain't Afraid of No Daleks

I had an issue with my new phone, but all fixed now!

Yes, I can wait by the phone, waiting for calls that never come, but safe in the knowledge that my phone actually works, now.

I was eating a frozen pizza I cooked for dinner tonight, when I felt something hard rolling around in my mouth. I have a bad tooth, and the bulk of it broke off whilst I was eating.

It's a wee tender there, but surprisingly not too bad.

My cold is on the mend, tho' the cough will be with me for a while, I suppose. I got lots of rest this weekend, and was a regular slugabed for a couple of days. Which means of course, that I have to hustle tomorrow and clean the flat top to bottom. Not that I didn't do anything, but I confess I did keep things down to a minimum, and mostly either stayed in bed, or sat on the sofa watching tele. Tho', I did go for a couple of brief strolls, both days.

It was a gorgeous weekend here, despite the wet snow on Friday. It's warmer in my new town, than in my former location--but then, I was in the mountains there, and at a slightly higher elevation. Tonight it was more than 15 degrees fahrenheight warmer here, than from where I just moved from. Not too shabby, that.

It's supposed to be what we here in the states call an "Indian summer" for the next few days with spring-like and summer-like temperatures. November can be very much like that, in upstate New York: snow showers or frigid cold one day, summer-like temps a few days later.

As a stable hand, one week in November, I had to wear my insulated ski overalls, hat, gloves, and all the other winter accouterments on a Monday. On Monday, the horses were wearing their heavy canvas New Zealand rugs, and I was banging ice out of water buckets. By Friday, I was working in just jeans and a tee shirt, and got out of work early, cos' I didn't have to rug up the horses or deal with frozen stuff.

I went for a walk today, down the main street of my new town. There's not a lot of shops in comfortable walking distance for me, but a few more than I had availbable in my former city, certainly.

One of the shops is a gourmet burger joint. The burger joint is set up in, ironically, and old White Tower shop--a burger chain from my childhood, that made the best burgers in the US.
Unlike the old White Tower chain, whose burgers cost about 75 cents, back in the 60's and early 70's, this posh shop wants almost $7 per burger, and none of them are just ordinary burgers, oh no!

(Looks around, then whispers conspiritorialy) They're POSH, don'tcha know. (Snif.)

They've got to have all these fancy-shmancy toppings, and set atop some posh roll, no doubt. Yes, for the cost of a package of ground beef (mince), you can buy one gourmet burger.

White Tower was put out of business by McDonald's. They cooked their burgers to order, w/ fried onions. Nom-nom! Never had a better one.

You see, hamburgers are supposed to be greasy. When it comes to steaks & burgers, fat is where all the flavour is! Lean ground beef (mince) is tasteless, like cardboard. That's why posh restaurants have to jazz up their burgers all the time.

Ideally, hamburgers should be 80% lean, not 90 or 95%. Then, you don't need to add feta or asagio cheese, jalpenos, or whatever. Add just a little bit of ice water plus salt and pepper to your taste, to 80% lean ground beef (mince), gently blend it and form your patties, fry or grill it--preferably with minced or chopped onions, slap it on a toasted, grilled, steamed or plain bun, add your favourite condiments...and viola! You have the perfect hamburger.

That's another thing: Ground beef doesn't like being manhandled too much. Too much handling toughens the meat.

I prefer to cook my burgers much like the old White Tower lady used to do. I like to not only fry my burgers with onions, I like to grill the burger rolls--toast them in the pan, as well.

Sometimes I'll do a posh burger. I like BBQ sauce, sliced cheddar and breaded fried onion rings. Or, swiss cheese, lettuce, raw onion and my favourite salad dressing, such as Russian, poppyseed, bleu cheese or ranch.

Mostly, I add ketchup, mayo and fried or raw onions, to one of my homemade burgers.

Last week, at the posh supermarket, meat was really high, so I cut out the fresh beef hamburger patties. Too expesnive! Instead, I found an inexpensive replacement: Greek turkeyburgers (ground turkey patties), w/ spinanch and feta cheese added to them.

I got 2 Greek turkey patties for around $2.50, instead of 4 beef patties for approx. $6. Dunno' if I'll like Greek turkey burgers, but for the price, I'm willing to give it a go. Thought I'd try topping them with some sweet & sour poppyseed salad dressing.