Beef

I love hamburgers.

The best–most memorable, anyway–meal I ever served housemates was way back in 2000, when McDonald’s had Big Macs on sale for ninety-nine cents. We sat down at the table that night, and my housemates looked at the absence of any evidence of kitchen use except for the pot of peas on the table and wondered to themselves, “Is this all?” That’s when I hopped up, opened the oven door, and presented them each with the crown jewel of Mickey-D’s.

For many years I swore by Burger King’s Whopper. Four years before I served my housemates the Big Macs, I learned that the Whopper was on sale for the same ninety-nine cents. At least once I bought a couple on my way to work and had brunch there in the darkroom at the newspaper office.

Much later, I talked my family into celebrating my mom’s sixtieth birthday by all going out to Five Guys, my all-time favorite burger establishment. She may be to blame for my love of ground beef; when we moved back when I was ten to civilization after two years in mountainous hinterlands, she found with glee that we could actually see golden arches from our front porch.

The ongoing availability of quality burgers on dollar menus is thrilling. I surprised M after her most recent choral concert by taking a little stab at some cheeseburgers. She noted my uncanny ability to give her gifts that I know I would most appreciate receiving. To be fair, though, I’ll add that I’d invited some special guests along, so it wasn’t all about the meat.

As much as I love burgers, however, I should be clear that even before being married to my dear M of vegetarian leanings, I was not and still am not a frequent patron of fast food restaurants, or even Five Guys. It wouldn’t be accurate at all to claim for myself the saying on the plaque my principal received as a farewell gift from some of his coworkers: “If you are what you eat, I am fast, easy, and cheap.”

And we buy meat so rarely that I’ve never mastered the art of making burgers.

A few years ago for Christmas my kind sister-in-law G and her husband gave me a “Build a Better Burger” book which I looked at for supper ideas and then promptly did my own thing, ending up with dry, blackened-brown styrofoam-like discs and a kitchen whose windows could’ve given Paul the idea “for now we see in a mirror, dimly.”

This week M and I have been at G’s house taking care of her (and our) kids while she is having reconstructive surgery after having cancer that very well could have come from eating those charred, carcinogenic patties way back then. Before they left, though, as they are generous people, G’s husband M took me on a tour of their freezers: pounds and pounds of bacon, pre-shaped beef patties, steaks…you get the picture.

I dubbed tonight, as the evening before Sunday, “Saturday night,” when it is appropriate to go all out with the grill and bag of potato chips. As I am generally concerned about food safety and specifically, tonight, worried that the raw meat would not be cooked well enough so that ebola and Somalia and other bad things wouldn’t be served to the seething horde, I loaded the grill with enough charcoal to satisfy Satan herself. The resulting leather circles, dry-crunchy weenies, blackened Boca burgers, and charred bacon flakes were, unfortunately, not enough to quiet the tired youngsters in need of an early bedtime, but I dutifully plowed through and ate a minimal portion.

I am not despairing, however, as on our day-long return trip home I’ll be cashing in the coupon M gave me for Father’s Day–for burgers at a joint of my choice.