“Can we please go take a walk?”
“Where’s your friend Julia? Why aren’t you playing with her?”
“She’s in my room. She’s not playing babies like I want to.”
“Compromise. Life’s all about compromising.”
“…”
“Take for example, me. Do you think I really enjoy watching cartoon movies about fairies?”
“Yes.”
“…”
“…”
“You’re right. But if I didn’t, I would have to compromise.”
Elise: “Maybe next year Maly will be able to ride the bus with her little friend, Julia to kindergarten.”
Me: “…”
Elise: “You know, after a month or so, after she adjusts.”
Me: “After she adjusts?!? That’s part of her adjustment — you kick her out the front door on day one and say, ‘the bus stop’s that way. Or maybe that way. Go figure it out, kid.'”
Elise: “Okay. Maybe after I adjust.”
On Sunday morning Maly and I walked to the grocery store. Among a variety of things we discussed, here’s one of the conversations that stuck:
“May…”
“Yeah Daddy?”
“What do you think I should do for a job?”
“…”
“I mean, I need to do something where I can be of the utmost service to others. I need to find something where I can give back. Something that’s genuinely fulfilling and that I can be really proud of.”
“Well, you could just be a doctor.”
“…”
For Elise’s and my anniversary last year, we went out for dinner and a movie. Elise wanted to see Julie & Julia, and I was okay with that (to my credit, I wanted to see Inglourious Basterds, but I’m a gentleman, so the lady chooses) because I knew, going into the movie, that we were there to see a “chick flick.” I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew I couldn’t yawn, sigh, fidget or complain an any indirect way because I agreed, fully knowing, that we were going to spend 3 hours watching a movie written for and marketed to females.
A year later, for our anniversary, I got to choose the movie. This year, I chose Catfish. I wanted to see this movie because of this trailer:
Warning: spoiler alert.
To me, the above trailer reeks of spine tingling mystery, suspense, psychological mayhem and horror. And that’s what I wanted to see. In the past few months, Elise and I have rented and watched thrillers such as Shutter Island, Paranormal Activity, Blue Velvet, Chloe, Daybreakers, Funny Games, and The Crazies. I was totally ready for Catfish to jack with our minds.
I purposely avoided reading any and all movie reviews because I wanted to let my imagination run wild and be left in shock and awe. I was preparing myself for an experience in suspenseful filmmaking. I went in knowing that: “The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won’t be able to shake for days.” I wanted to see the movie that might be called the next Blair Witch Project.
What I expected in the final forty minutes: homage to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs. When the boys reached their destination – the home of the Facebook friend – I wanted a woman with her previous victims’ severed body parts duct taped to her face to come out of the barn, capture the boys, shackle and subject them to emotional abuse that would make even me cry. Then I wanted her to maim our protagonists with a hot glue gun over the course of four days. Really, really eerie music is supposed to be playing in these final forty minutes of the movie as well. Then she chops off all of the boys’ phalanx bones, brines the finger- and toe-less victims in huge vats of soured Cap’n Crunch sugar milk, barely leaving their heads above the cereal bowls so we can hear and experience their weakening screams and whimpers.
After a week of torture in this movie, and my wife, who is sitting next to me, has curled in the fetal position and is crying because of the sheer horror of the film, the Facebook Psychopath Killer filets the muscle tissue of the boys while they’re still barely alive and she fries and serves her victims as food at the Rotary Club’s semi-annual silent auction and catfish fry.
What I got in the final forty minutes: My Facebook Psychopath Killer is really just a lonely housewife and stepmom of two mentally handicapped boys in podunk Michigan. She lives vicariously, and sadly, through the handful of Facebook profiles she has made up for herself, her family and limited circle of friends to befriend Nev and his two cohort documentarians from New York City.
Thirty minutes before the movie was over, Elise leaned over to me and whispered, “hhmmpptth boring.” Ordinarily I would completely ignore any kind of conversation during a movie, but I heard “boring.” Just to confirm what she’d said, and to justify us getting up and walking out, I leaned over and asked, “what?”
She said, “It sounds like its pouring rain outside.”
“Oh. Yeah, it does.”
So we sat there and endured the final thirty minutes of the movie. The saving grace and silver lining — we saw the movie at the Alamo Drafthouse, so we shared a huge bowl of popcorn and a Dr Pepper, and they showed this great music video before the movie started:
Catfish wasn’t necessarily a bad movie, it just wasn’t the movie that I expected nor one that I would ordinarily pay to see. I feel like the trailer was false advertising and considering we had to hire a babysitter so Elise and I could see the movie, it stunk like catfish.
Earlier this week Elise brought home a bag of M&M’s from the grocery store. The intent of said bag of M&M’s was for one of her church groups. It was then that I decided that I needed my own bag of M&M’s. The first thing that came to mind was cookies!
If memory serves me correctly, the last time I made cookies was in 1984 with my mom. They were snickerdoodles and they were awesome (because my mom actually made them — I think I was there just to lick the spoon).
I immediately knew that the best place to turn for a good cookie recipe would be Anna’s Cookie Madness. There I found her Jumbo M&M Chip Cookies recipe. I halved the recipe, and since I didn’t have chocolate chips, I just used a cup and a half of M&M’s. They turned out crazy awesome — so much so that I decided I needed to modify, expand upon and create my own Bohemian version (I have no idea what that actually means, other than just making it my own recipe modification).
So I used Anna’s recipe again, except I added macadamia nuts, Heath bar chips and Blue Ribbon maple smoked bacon.
Candied Bacon Bohemian Monster Cookies
2 heaping cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 healthy pinch kosher salt

1.5 sticks cool, unsalted butter, cut up 

3/4 cups granulated sugar 

3/4 heaping cups brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 tablespoon vanilla

1/2 crushed macadamia nuts (roasted & salted)
1/2 cup Heath English Toffee Bits

1/2 cup M&Ms
3 strips candied bacon
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
To candy the bacon, generously coat both sides of bacon strips with brown sugar. Place on baking rack atop a sheet pan (I lined my sheet pan with foil to catch drippings) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Allow bacon to cool and chop into bacon bit sized pieces.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
Cream butter in a mixing bowl using an electric mixer. Beat in the sugar and brown sugar until creamy, then beat in the eggs and vanilla. Continue beating, scraping bowl, until well mixed. By hand or using lowest speed of mixer, gradually adding flour mixture. Stir in macadamia nuts, toffee bits, candied bacon and M&Ms.

Drop dough by 1/4 cupfuls, 2 inches apart, onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until light golden brown. Let stand 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets.
Yields about 14 cookies
One evening a few years ago, Maly and I had dinner in the kitchen while Elise was out for the night. After dinner, Maly just started, out of nowhere, discussing something that was very important to her in her native tongue. I poured a big glass of scotch, got the camera and reveled in her speaking her mind.
(Here’s the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftEuNzfIlQU)
Three years later, some people (~2,600 since yesterday) found the video. Some of those people have asked me, “what’s your daughter talking about these days?” I usually just point them to her own website: www.Maly.TV, or a couple of my favorites, which were when we cooked together when she was 2-years-old, and, more recently, when we dined on $80 Cilantro Spaghetti together on the deck.
A complete stranger and new Facebook friend wrote yesterday and said, “This child […] is going to save the world.” I can only hope that she does.
The other day I was perusing Facebook to see what my friends were up to and I noticed, up in the upper right hand corner of my browser, that my neighbor had sent me a “Personal Message.” I clicked on the text teaser link that read: “I need a printer/scanner for my home use and…” because I thought she might just need to use our printer. Upon reading the message, I realized that she’d sent me that message via Facebook almost a month ago.
Then I went into my Facebook messages “inbox” to find that I had 60 unread messages, all from friends. I took the time to read all of these messages and reply appropriately. Although tempted, I purposely neglected to tell them, “you’re my friend and you have my email address. If you want to send me a message, send me an email!” at the risk of sounding rude.
I’ve had the same email address for going on 10 years. I own this email address because I own the domain (Janicek.com). Before Facebook, if you wanted to send me a message, you’d email me. Nothing’s changed there. You and I don’t “own” what’s on our Facebook walls, photo albums, notes and personal message inboxes — Facebook owns that stuff. If Facebook disappears, so does all of your content and correspondences. Maybe you don’t care, but I do.
Elise and I took a trip to New York City a couple years ago. Ordinarily I’d take a couple hours at the end of each day of a trip and write about our adventures and experiences and post them, along with photos and videos, on Janicek.com. Instead, I decided to micro-document the trip on Facebook because, as you well know, the rest of the world needs to know that we just saw a cardboard box full of geoducks in Chinatown AT THAT VERY MOMENT! A year later, Elise asked me if I recalled the name of the restaurant at which we ate in Little Italy. I told her to look on Facebook. She looked through months of my posts on Facebook and couldn’t find it. She couldn’t find anything about our trip to NYC on Facebook. I couldn’t either. After poking around on Facebook’s help forums, I found that Facebook only (at the time) archived 90 days worth of posts. The rest were thrown into the virtual void, never to be recalled.
And that’s when I decided that Facebook would henceforth only be a repository for inconsequential snippets and witticisms. It boils down to: you get what you pay for with any free social media outlet. Don’t get me wrong, I see the value in the likes of Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, et al., but if it’s my [digital] content, I want it on my property.
Here’s a strong case. Recently some folks have been writing to me and saying, “I just saw that hilarious video of Maly babbling on so-and-so’s Facebook page!” After doing a few searches and reading some friendly and appreciative comments, I pointed folks to the same video on YouTube because if a video is going to go viral (hey, a guy can dream, right?), YouTube would be the medium to employ as it’s YouTube’s bandwidth, not mine. But I don’t own YouTube and I have absolutely no control nor explanation should something go wrong.
Less than a day after pointing people to the YouTube video, I noticed folks commenting that the video wouldn’t play. YouTube says, “An error occurred, please try again later.” So I decide to post a comment on YouTube that would direct people to the original video on the website that I own, that I have control over, and that I can remedy should the video no play for whatever reasons. I get an error when I try to post even a comment on YouTube. And I have absolutely no control over that. I don’t own YouTube and I don’t own even my own content on YouTube.
If I create something — a photo, drawing, video, story, observation, thought, affirmation, anything — I want to own that creation. I want to look back in 1, 5 and 10 years time and re-read and re-experience that creation. A free service like Facebook or YouTube doesn’t afford me the peace of mind that in even as short a timespan of 6 months, that my creation will still be there.
In a similar vein, I’ve witnessed the proliferation of “professional” photographers who market themselves by means of ITakeCuteBabyPhotos.blogspot.com. If I was to hire a photographer, I would immediately weed out those who use a free Blogger (or other) account. To me, a photographer who uses the digital medium must equally understand and master both the art and the technology. The photographer has invested thousands of dollars in photography equipment and countless hours in training or self-taught methods to achieve an aesthetic balance of technology and vision. If you expose and advertise your personal brand and your investment in yourself via a vehicle that you don’t own and have little or no control of its fate thereof, then I know what I’m going to be paying for.
If you create great things, own them. In the end, they only matter to you, right?
My parents and I moved to Cat Spring in 1987. Prior to that, my entire 11-year childhood consisted of a suburban life in Houston — the fourth largest city in the United States. In 1987 I was plunked into a rural sprawl and a township that consisted of a post office, a gas station/beer saloon called Crossroads and a population of 38 and a ‘coon dog. At the time, I hated it. I hated moving away from my friends, my neighborhood, the big city where everything was at my fingertips. What used to be a quick trip to the movie theatre was now an all-day event. Going to the grocery store with my mom was an outing, not an errand.
Cat Spring is an hour west of Houston. It’s close enough to Houston so you can go there if you needed to, but not close enough to go if you wanted to. At 11-years-old, I had no other choice but to acclimate myself. And my parents had to acclimate as well to our new community. Part of my family’s acclimation was understanding “the wave.” Most of Austin County is veined by farm market roads on which the locals travel to and fro. And the locals, without fail, always waved to oncoming vehicles. The men, while leaving their left hand at 12 o’clock on the steering wheel would lift their single index finger to say “howdy” with a single digit salute. The women usually wave with all four fingers while keeping their thumb on the steering wheel, as if they almost would prefer to pick their entire hand up, show you their full palm and jiggle the entire hand in full and excited waving motion.
It only takes a few times where you, as the driver, are compelled to reciprocate the gesture. It’s like you’ve been bitten by a zombie and have now become one of them. You’re now a tribesman (or woman). As a city dweller, the first time you return a wave, it feels silly, almost childish. You’ve grown accustomed to hostility among seas of strangers on interstates and the notion of waving to someone on the road means you’re either in need of help, or you actually know the person that you’re waving to. Your brain cannot comprehend the idea of a friendly hand gesture while driving.
After traveling for a few days on a farm market road in Austin County, waving becomes a habit. It’s now second nature. Now you’re the instigator of the wave, instead of waiting for the oncoming traveler to wave. Gone is the thought that perhaps this waving business was just a fad that you happened upon. You moved to their county and they waved to you to simply say “howdy” — to remind you that people are inherently nice and good and might actually care that you have a decent day, doing whatever it is that you’re going to do.
At first, for me, as a pre-teen, the farm market wave was laughable. But I quickly learned to appreciate and expect the wave. When I turned 15, and against state law, I started driving. And I immediately started waving at the folks that I passed on my commute to school, football or track practice, Tae Kwon Do, or an outing to visit with friends. It always felt good to give a wave and to receive a wave. The wave meant community.
Not really conscious of it, I waved goodbye to the wave when I moved to Austin in 1994 for college. Like any college kid, I made many a trip back to my parents’ house for weekends, and was always comforted by the farm market road waves when I returned. It reminded me of that widely adopted notion of a community that just doesn’t exist in urban settings.
Just this past weekend my daughter and I drove the 10 miles to Shultz’s general store in New Ulm for fishing worms. I waved to the 7 vehicles that we passed. One gentlemen, in a pickup truck, hesitantly waved back. In my mind, as that guy drove on past me, he probably thought, “That was nice, but I guess that guy just doesn’t know that we don’t do that around here anymore.”
People on the farm market roads in Austin County (and surrounding counties) don’t instinctively wave to oncoming vehicles anymore. And it’s been that way for at least 5 years, as far as I can recollect. I think too many people from larger cities have since moved “out to the country” and didn’t allow themselves to actually become part of the community. Instead, they kept their hands at 10 & 2, with NPR on the radio to remind them of the “real” outside world, while they kept their eyes focused on the country road, in a hurry so they can get to the antique store to procure “authentic” country goods with which to furnish their quaint country cottage.
Country folk have a saying: “Don’t be a stranger.” When my wife, daughter and I go back to visit my mom out in Cat Spring, it feels like we’re strangers once we exit Hwy 71 and make our way down the farm market roads. It might take me passing a few cars before I remember to instigate the wave. I just hope that one day they start waving back again.
“Do you know what stars really are?”
“No.”
“They’re actually big balls of fire in the sky.”
“Really?!”
“Yep.”
“You mean, like God took little pieces of the sun and… and… and… and…”
“…”
“…”
“Rolled ’em up like boogers and flicked ’em off into the sky”
“Nuh uh!”
“Seriously.”
“….”
“‘Night, Sugar.”
First day of school today:
First day of school last year:
First day of school 2 years ago:
We’re sitting there on the coffee shop’s patio and I ask my friend why he thinks that I abhor and resent my former employer so much. I interrupt before he starts in and instead ask, “what did I do wrong?”
Without overanalyzing, sugar-coating or trying to appeal to any kind of emotion that he thought I might be having at the time, he hit the nail on the head. And it wasn’t as painful as I thought it was going to be. He said, “At some point, conscious of it or not at the time, you realized that there was a game being played. And this game’s rules far from aligned with your core values. And, again, conscious of it or not, you decided to play in that game for whatever reason or reasons. So, it sounds to me that you went wrong when you didn’t get out soon enough. You played in the game with the expectation that you were going to win, or that things would just wind up being okay for you.”
And after he said that, I knew, almost to the exact hour a year and a half ago when that game began. And that’s when I should have quit that job. That last sentence was painful and hard as hell to write because I’m the farthest thing from a quitter, but that’s the way “the game” is played these days.
I wish my dad were still here so we could talk for hours about integrity and loyalty. He raised me to be a hard worker, to be loyal, faithful and to provide for my family. Assuming I live to be 10 years older than my dad was when he died, I’ll probably still have never worked as hard as he did. In my mind, there’s still a part of me that thinks I would have to explain to my dad how the working world is “these days,” but then I have to remember that he was subjected to demotions laid out by self-entitled middle management, the concept of loyalty being squashed and eventually being downsized after 30+ years or undying faithfulness. It wasn’t a game to my dad – it was the only way he’d known how to live and to provide for his family for his entire adult life. The job world had become a game after my dad reached the age of 66 and, although it wasn’t his plan, he was able to retire and be comfortably done, albeit sick at heart after the game ended.
Last week Elise and I were in our lawyer’s very ornate conference room complete with a library, expensive paintings and dark, oak paneled walls. It’s a rich and intimidating room. Sitting in this conference room reminded me of the few occasions where I found myself sitting outside the principal’s office when I was in the 7th grade. Whatever was about to transpire in the next hour would be temporarily life changing.
I would have never yelled across the table, “This is fucking bullshit!” to my junior high principal. But I did to my lawyer. That’s when, in my mind, the game had changed. That’s when I resolved to the fact that I would be a free agent. I wasn’t mad at our lawyer. I was mad at the reason why my wife and I were sitting in a lawyer’s conference room in the first place. I was mad because I had decided to fight fire with fire in a game that was based exclusively on corporate lack of loyalty. I was mad because after having only worked for this employer for a little over 3 years, I was having to subject my wife and myself to so much angst and unneeded stress. You see, the first couple years at this job were great for the company and me, however those last 15 months tainted the entire job for me. With the help of Elise, I’ve maintained my faith and some semblance of a positive attitude, but I left the lawyer’s office saying, “this just makes me sick at heart. There is no loyalty.”
Over the past six months I’ve read a lot of books, more than I can remember having read in a over a decade. Last night I picked up an unread book that’s been sitting on the bookshelf since 1997. My parents bought this book for me when I was in college. A book titled “Die Broke” wasn’t going to do this college student much good when my job at the Olive Garden afforded me barely enough money for rent and booze.
I try to put more fiction and classics between any self-help, financial or any other kind of non-fiction books as I’ve grown accustomed to my reading in the evenings as an opportunity for my mind to interpret, wander and paint pretty pictures. Last night I hesitantly cracked open to page 1 of the never-opened book and quickly found myself excitedly turning each page until I’d devoured the first 3 chapters when I finally needed (not wanted) to put it down so I could go to sleep at 1 a.m.
I highlighted these paragraphs from Chapter 1:
When you were growing up you were always told that if you got a good education you’d get a good job; if you did what was asked of you in that job you’d be secure; and if you did your job well you’d get raises and promotions. Under such circumstances it became easy for your job to represent yourself; somehow what you did for a living reflected on your value as a human being and the values you held. “Job” became an old-fashioned, blue-collar kind of word, a term used by your grandmother, which you replaced with more abstract terms like “career” and “work.”
This made a lot of sense at a time when government was subsidizing higher education through low-interest loans and when corporations were expanding the ranks of middle management. As a nation, our attitudes toward work had shifted from it being for God’s glory or our own individual comfort to it being a way to judge our status in society or to achieve personal growth. With such a work ethic in place, organizational loyalty and identification with our jobs made perfect sense.
But in a new world, a world in which there’s no such thing as corporate loyalty, a world where young people graduating from good colleges can land positions only as temps, a world where raises are rare and barely keep pace with the cost of living, viewing yourself and your job as one is dangerous psychologically and financially.
The answer is to quit today: mentally separate yourself from your employer and realize that you’re on your own. Abandon any remaining tinges of loyalty to your employer (who long ago abandoned any sense of obligation to you) and instead think of your job and yourself the same way free-agent athletes do: They retain their integrity by doing their best and being part of the team, but they’re also focused on getting the best financial deal they can. You should do the same. Once you’ve quit in your head, being fired is no longer a real threat: You’re already a free agent on the lookout for your next opportunity.
I also think most of us are making far too many demands on our jobs. It’s rare today for a job to be secure and rewarding both emotionally and financially. I suggest you instead adopt a mercantile approach: focus on what you’re doing as a job — that word your grandmother used — not necessarily a career, and view your job as primarily an income-generating device; any other benefits are purely secondary. Having a mercantile approach doesn’t mean obsessing over money. It simply means using your job to generate the money you need to pursue your personal goals, rather than looking to the job itself to fulfill those goals. A career is simply a series of such jobs viewed from above and placed in some kind of context. And life’s work need not be what is done on the job.
That, for me, is a tough pill to swallow, but it’s true. I’ve always made it known to friends and family that it irks me anytime someone immediately asks, upon meeting me for the first time, “so, what do you do for a living?” Although they might be pretty close, my personal values and goals aren’t the exact same as those of a “job” or an employer, therefore I don’t allow a job to define who I am as a person, and that’s generally how I interpret the “what do you do for a living?” question, although the person asking may just be genuinely interested in how I exchange my time for money.
As far as loyalty goes, I’ve been burned. It’s like an emotionally brutal breakup or divorce where I’d swear that I’ll never love again. From what I’ve read in the book thus far, I’ve seen in words what had only been underdeveloped notions in the far reaches of my psyche, notions that I’d subconsciously hoped I’d never have to allow to surface and massage. But it makes sense — in 1997 and today.
I’ve finally been to enough backyard “barbecues” where burger patties the size of half dollars are served up and I have to take six bites of bun and condiments to ever get to the beefy goodness of the burger. If you’re going to press and grill your own hamburgers, there are some fundamentals you should have permanently engrained in your grill master repertoire. I’ve been guilty of assuming that most of these would be common knowledge, and I have been proven wrong time and time again.
The beef
Fatty ground beef makes the best burger. If you want a good burger, get ground beef (sirloin, chuck, what-have-you) with 15-20% fat content. Fat is the binder and provides all of that juicy, flavorful burger goodness. Fat is what allows you to form your burger patties so they don’t fall apart when you put them on the grill. If you find yourself with only the extra lean stuff in your fridge, you’ll need to add some kind of binder. In the past I’ve used bacon fat, butter or an egg.
I’ve found that the pre-wrapped, long shelf life “tubes” of ground beef just aren’t good for much beyond dehydrating for beef jerky or for tacos where the seasoning is going to mask most, if not all of the flavor anyhow. I buy the stuff that the grocer’s butcher grinds in the store. For you Austinites, Newflower Market has the most flavorful ground beef in my opinion. Even better: get to know the folks at your local meat market (I’m guilty of not doing this).
Preparation
You know those 1/4 lb. 100% Certified Black Angus (you could probably omit the “g”) burgers on the menus at TGIFridays, Chili’s, Applebee’s, etc? Look at the fine print: “Weight before cooking”. A burger is going to lose a lot of its weight in the cooking process in the form of water in the meat protein and the fat that drips off. You probably lose 10-25% of the weight and size of your burger patty by the time you pull it off the grill. Compensate for that when forming your raw patties. When I press burgers, I make a 1/2 lb. raw beef patty.
Pressing
When forming your burger patties, make them BIG. One of my culinary pet peeves is getting an itty bitty burger patty lost in a bunch of bun and lettuce. By the time I’m done chowing through hamburger buns to get to the patty, I don’t even want the meaty burger anymore. Form your patties 10-20% larger than your buns. I usually press them down to about 3/4″
Much like the gravitational pull of the earth, when a hamburger patty loses weight in the form of moisture, the patty gravitates toward its own center; meaning that the patty gets smaller in circumference. When you’re done cooking your burger patty, it should be the same size (if not slightly larger) than the circumference of the hamburger bun on which it’s going to sit.
Grilling
If you can, grill on wood or coal. If you have a gas grill, get a little smoker box to infuse some smokey flavors. And don’t pay for wood if you don’t have to. Go out into your yard (or go for a walk) and snap off a couple twigs from an oak or hickory tree. You’re not wanting to smoke your burgers, just hit them with a little flavor. It makes a big difference if you only have a gas grill.
Throw your burgers on the grill, directly over high heat and remember the order on which you put them on the grill. I always use the left to right, top to bottom method (start at the far left of the grill and move to the right and then down a row repeating left to right — like reading a book). Let the burgers get kissed by the flames. Close the lid. Let them smoke up a bit, but keep close so you don’t start a grease fire or scorch your burgers. Let them sit on one side until you see the moisture pooling up on the top sides of the patties and you see that the undersides have a good sear. Flip your patties. This is when you should start getting some good flames licking up. The fat will now be healthily dripping off of your patties and onto the burners below. That white smoke that’s billowing up is what the American Dream smells like. It’s what makes your neighbors stop in their tracks, take a deep breath and say, “Awww man, that smells goooood! Somebody’s grillin’!”
If there’s not grease popping off your burgers and flames shooting up around the patties, firmly press down on the patties with your spatula. That will release lots of grease from the burgers and down onto the burners. Then you’ll see the flames and smoke and the smell that can only mean that you’re doing some serious burger grilling!
Doneness
I won’t turn down a pink burger, but in my book, the only burger is a done burger. If your patties have a 15-20% fat content, they’ll be plenty juicy if they’re grey in the middle after being cooked. The easiest way to tell if a burger’s done is to take your index finger and gently but firmly press it into the center of the patty. Use your face (and your clean finger) as a gauge:
Cheek: raw
Nose: medium rare
Chin: medium
Forehead: done
When the center of the burger has the same “give” as my chin does when I press on it, I start pulling burgers off the grill. Keep in mind that meat continues to cook after you take it off the grill. Meat should also rest for a few minutes after being cooked. Remember that gravitation pull thing? While the meat is being subjected to extremely high temperatures, a lot of the moisture is being pulled into the center of the patty. As the meat begins to cool, the proteins begin to relax and the moisture is released and distributed throughout the patty again.
Raw or undercooked ground beef is a breeding ground for bacteria. Ground beef is just that – ground up beef. That means that the surface areas of the beef (that have been exposed to bacteria) are mixed in with the rest of the meat, so bacteria lives in and among the center parts of the patties. A steak, on the otherhand, is a cut of beef where only the outsides of the steak have been exposed to surface areas and bacteria, hence it being okay to eat a rare cut of beef so long as the edges have been seared to kill off the bacteria.
Eating
I like my burgers on a toasted sesame seed bun with mayonnaise, mustard, onion, sliced dill pickles, lettuce and jalapenos. How you eat yours is up to you. And I’m always open for an invite for a good burger!
