Growing up, I was not a fan of cheese. My mom couldn’t get me to eat anything with cheese on it for a long time, with the exceptions of grilled cheese and mac and cheese. As an adult, I’ve gotten to explore all kinds of cheese and have realized there is nothing quite as satisfying as a burger filled with cheese. This week my husband cooked, and I took pictures because school is exhausting. Cooking burgers also meant he got to fire up the grill, which is his favorite thing other than his Lego space sets. I love balsamic red onions on my burgers, so I made those and steak fries to go with out burgers. For a veggie, I simply roasted some broccoli because it’s what we had in the fridge. I was going to top it with arugula, but we used it in a salad earlier in the week and I forgot to get more. Oh well.

Lucy Juicy Burgers

• 1 lb ground beef, high fat
• 1 pack of Jimmy Dean sausage, original (this time we used an Italian sausage from Trader Joes)
• shredded cheese
• 1 package bacon, cooked
• 1 red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• buns
• baking potato
• olive oil
• chili powder

For the burgers, mix the meats together with a little salt and let it rest while you shred the cheese, slice the onion, and cook the bacon. You wont use all of the bacon for this, but you can reheat it and eat it later. Yes, I know it’s not as good but you’ll be fine.

We used a burger press to make the burgers, to make sure they were even in size. It wound up not mattering, because Sean flattened them out even more to put the cheese and chopped bacon in the middle and then pressed another patty on top of it and sealed the edges. They made HUGE burgers, and I ate the other half of mine for lunch the next day. He cooked them on the grill until they were cooked through.

The onions go into a skillet with a little olive oil, and cook down for about 5 minutes. Add a tbsp of balsamic vinegar and a little sugar and continue to cook until the balsamic is reduced into the onions. I got this balsamic at the same specialty store I get my olive oil at. You can go in and try all kinds of different oils and vinegars on little pieces of bread. It’s totally one of my favorite places.

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Steak potatoes are my favorite, because I love a good carb. I cut the potato in half, lengthwise, and then sliced it again lengthwise. This creates 2 middle pieces with the flat sides being potato, and 2 end pieces with potato inside, and curved skin on the outside. Then I cut each of those pieces into 3 or 4 depending. They tossed in a bowl with olive oil, salt, and chili powder. We spread them out evenly on a baking dish and cooked for about 10 minutes on 400? I’m really not sure how long I cooked them. Just check them with a fork.

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Blaufrankisch

Monterey went through a heat wave earlier this week, and the inside of our house was 88. I was NOT in the mood for red wine and decided to use whisky cubes in it to chill it down a little bit. I normally don’t like my reds chilled, but I was surprised at how good this was chilled! It was a little spicy/peppery, and really brought out the Italian sausage we used in the burgers. Drinking it without that burger was lackluster, but it was Bachelorette night and I’m not picky about what wine I drink through that. It did need to be decanted, so we let it sit around in our glasses for a little bit. This did give me quite the headache, but the stress from school probably didn’t help.