Food For Thought

This Saturday we prepared our own hamburgers.

My Spouse and I ate them, looked at one another, and thereafter vowed never to darken a burger establishment again. (The American West Coast's In-N-Out excepted, naturally.)

http://www.in-n-out.com/

Having purchased two packages of minced turkey meat, I heated a teaspoon of oil, added a dash of turmeric and fried a handful of chopped cilantro (coriander), generous finely diced onion and six crushed garlic cloves. The smell is heavenly. Alas, if only they would bottle it.

In a large glass bowl which we fondly refer to as "Julie's Boat," I mingled half a cup of seasoned breadcrumbs with a quarter cup of milk. It isn't any good buying bread and trying to make crumbs out of that—it consumes too much time and isn't at all worth the money.

Once the breadcrumbs were soaked through, I added the two packages of milk and tossed the lot together with my hands, throwing the cilantro, onion and garlic into the bowl midway through.

Once the combination was thoroughly blended together, I spent half an hour and made sixty meatballs and two super-sized hamburgers. Bear in mind that at no point did I add a grain of salt or a hint of egg. I have determined in recent times that a recipe calling for egg might just as easily exclude same. I experiment a lot and am finding more and more that egg is not essential.

The sixty meatballs were placed on a round, non stick pizza tray and put into the oven at 350 degrees to cook for about forty five minutes.

We always try to ensure the oven is used efficiently so my Spouse and I time our cooking to coincide with each other nicely. Spouse made soda bread.

Once the pizza tray was full and the meatballs were safely in the oven, I set to work on the remainder of the meat which emerged as sufficient material for two hamburgers. The meatballs will last for more than a week and are a large part of my Spouse's packed lunch.

I manhandled the leftover meat into round patties about an inch thick. My Spouse subsequently fried them in a 'soupcon' of oil at a medium heat for about fifteen minutes.

We ate them with Frank's Red hot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce.
We both adore food, and as we practice cooking and trying new dishes, it becomes clear that we enjoy what comes from our kitchen much more than from a supermarket shelf. As previously stated with the blueberry recipe, it's important to know what you are eating. We don't have to spend lavish amounts of money to experience the pleasure of a successful, healthy recipe, and dinner at home with a wonderful film.

I drink an awful lot of tea. Sometimes I perform this little trick: I reduce my sugar intake all of a sudden by a spoon. After, say, two weeks of seemingly bland tea consumption have passed, I will try to taste it as I used to, with the original number of sugars. It's impossible. I can't drink it that way anymore. Gradually my sugar portions have become less as my taste changes. Likewise with supermarket food, we're finding it increasingly challenging to partake of something we know we can make better at home.



...Believe me, it goes well with everything,
As love does, as peace does, as summers do
Or any other season, as a lifetime does.
Acquire, then, for yourselves, ingredients;
Prepare this stew of love, and ask for more.
Quick, before it is too late. /Bon appétit!/

Douglas Dunn, “Ratatouille.”