Buffalo Chicken OS Burgers- RECIPE!

This is NOT a foodie blog. BUT I like to cook. Mostly I like to cook because I like to eat. Mom taught us all pretty early on and we were making whole dinners by age nine. We each had a night to cook, had to make sure the ingredients were on the shopping list the week before, and we made dinner before Mom and Dad came home.

At nine.

Very true.

I'm teaching my kids to cook, but the one who is taking to it the best is Luke. Probably because he likes to eat. Yeah, DNA rocks.

The other night, while the rest of the fam had turkey burgers, I experimented with these for me and Luke. I have to say, they were FANTASTIC!

The sauce I am using, Party Fowl Wing Sauce, is new to the market. Beckett, my podcasting partner, is blessed with a chef for a husband. Chris, Beckett's husband, created this sauce and gave me a couple bottles to try.

The first thing Luke and I did was host a taste test with three different sauces: the one we usually use, a home-made version, and Party Fowl. My folks were in town and we had a mess o' wings one night. All of us (save one hold out who doesn't like his favorite sauce messed with) preferred the Party Fowl sauce. It has an extra kick of spices, but not heat.Since then, I have made Buffalo Wing Dip with it, and Luke and I prefer it over our old favorite sauce.

My dear friend, Other Susan (OS), shared her burger recipe and forming technique. It works with all kinds of meat and it's how I always start to make burgers. You get juicy, tasty burgers with minimal shrinkage even when you use cheap meat. (For Beef or Turkey Burgers, use milk instead of wing sauce, and add a splash of liquid smoke and your fav spices. Yes,  I said milk.)

The other day I found ground chicken at the grocery store, and had a DING! moment. This is what I dinged:

Buffalo Chicken OS Burgers

1 lb ground chicken
1/2 bottle wing sauce (two uses, as needed)
2 pieces of white bread
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Hamburger buns ( I used potato rolls)
Garnishes: blue cheese crumbles, shredded carrots, mayo/sauce spread,avacado slices-whatever.
Makes 4 whopper burgers, 8 sliders

Break up the bread and pour sauce over it, mushing it with a fork to look like this, or a little drier if you don't have panko crumbs, but they add a little something that bread never can:

 Add meat and breadcumbs and smoosh it all together. I use my hands.

I sprayed the pan with Pam, pretty much because it's a habit. Form burgers and cook over Medium LOW heat. There are some sugars in the sauce that will burn over higher heat, but will give a nice crust on the burger. Cover pan with a sheet of aluminum foil to help cook burgers, and fold back to release steam.

While those cooked- 10 minutes on first side, 5 on second- I made up patties for the freezer. The dent in the middle is what keeps the burgers from shrinking up (it's on the underside of the ones in the pan). Yet another use for Press'n seal wrap! 

For condiment sauce: 2 tablespoons each of mayo and wing sauce, and give it a shot of pepper. You can use Miracle Whip, I guess, but it will taste like crap.(Ok, clearly I am a Mayoist.)

Touch the thickest part of the burger, when it's firm, it's done. Err on the side of well done--it will still be tender. You can burn these, so keep an eye on them.

Top however you want, I went with a slice of creamy mexican cheese, avacodo and the saucy mayo- but blue cheese dressing and sliced carrots will be rocking my plate the next time!

And Luke and I agreed- there WILL be a next time!

What the Neighbors See

I cleaned the garage.

Now I am sitting on my laurels.

I didn't take a BEFORE picture, because, quite frankly- it was embarrassing. Here is the AFTER.

Yes, this is much cleaner, hush.

He did help. 

This is actually one something we do that I like--Kid art goes in the art gallery garage. And it never comes down. I think some of those are Bex from Kindergarten 9 years ago.

I spent the morning cleaning up all the debris from storms. Someone explain this to me--I have these trees in the yard that have some dead branches. We get 60-70 mph straight line winds that topple healthy trees, and yet my dead limbs remain attached? 

My dead branches

And the neighbors formerly living tree.

And just so I can leave you with a completely disgusting image. I mowed my mother-in-laws lawn yesterday. This is my feet afterward. Gross. And I was wearing gardening clogs. Even grosser. I know. But totally helps the Laurel resting argument.

Happy Sunday!

The 13 Year Old Boy Dinner

Inhaled snack ( it went so fast I had to recreate it.)

I pick the lad up at football practice at 5:15. Dinner at our house is at 6:00. He is a teenage boy and eats. A lot. Kids of this age are notorious eaters, boys especially. And Luke is no exception.

Obviously, football has whipped up an appetite, so he eats a snack package of Nutter Butters and two Swiss Rolls within minutes of getting home.

This is not enough to tide him over for the remaining half our until dinner is ready, so he makes himself a salad- with cheese, because he likes to add stuff to his salads. And drench them in dressing.

Salad number one

This is gone within 3 minutes, but he has to go take a shower, my larder is spared for the time being.

6:00: Dinner time. The first salad is a distant memory, what with it sliding down his gullet back in the good 'ol 25 minutes agos. This is what he sits down to. The first time.

That's about 2 cups of pasta, and a second salad. I would be puking at this point.

A bowl of Barilla Plus (it has added fiber and protein, not *just* pasta), meat sauce, and another salad. Before the rest of us are done with our (smaller) dinners, he is finished and is STILL hungry. The rule in this house states that if you are hungry for something other than what I fixed, get it yourself. So he makes this. And takes a bite out of it before I can grab the camera.

Bread, mayo, turkey, cheese, turkey cheese, mayo, bread.

He tells me that he has had enough, clears his plate and brings it to the sink. I walk into the kitchen mere moments later to this sight:

Ahh, man! That was going to be my lunch tomorrow!

He is finishing off the never-to-become-leftovers that were still in the pan. He was kind enough to wait until after I had cleaned the kitchen to head to the pantry for round two.

I found something more productive to do than follow him around with a camera.... Ok,truth: he got sick of it and I have a bunch of pic that look like this:

Nice.

I can write notes, too

I'm one of those moms that leaves notes in my kids lunchboxes. Well, on the first week of school, and maybe a couple other times during the school year. I'm not neurotic. I think they should be an act of love, not an obligation.

So, on the third day of school, I thought it would be cute to cut a number 3 out of paper and write a note to tuck into Noah's lunchbox. I imagined the number and snipped at paper and got this:

Sharpies to the rescue, I thought:

 I still see it.

This is the note that he got on the third day of school:

The heart is a way more lunchroom appropriate organ, don't you think?

Looking At The Big Picture

Sometimes when I read blogs or facebook commentary-ok, or even talk to other parents- I feel kinda crappy.

People really have a gift for showing only the good parts of things. Part of me wants to think that this is them being optimistic, sharing things that they are proud of, or wanting others to see why they love their lives and families so much and bring us in to that joy. This part of me thinks they have a lot of good in their lives, and they worked hard to get it- they should be able to flaunt it. Enjoy your life, I think, love and spread the cheer!

And another part of me calls bullshit.

Well, I whisper it. I appreciate the positive spin, admire the accomplishment, but know that there is more to the picture.

No one is that perfect, we all have a bigger picture. Cropped properly, everyone's lives and kids and work look fantastic. But when you zoom out to look at the bigger picture, you see that they are just as messed up and whacked as your family.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be proud of our kids, or show them in the best light...we should. But not exclusively.

Conversely we probably shouldn't be negative all the time either. It's a thin line--be upbeat to show that your family is great...but not so much that people sit around waiting for you to fall off your pedestal. Show the flaws, but not so many that you scare people away.

To illustrate this, here is a pictorial garden tour. First the carefully cropped  and perfectly posed shot---then the big picture of where that plant is growing. Pretty blooms that should be admired, but with a knowledge of what is going on around them may not be the most perfect. Just like life.

( Overly Apologetic Disclaimer: If you are a gardener, please know that we have had a really hot summer...plants fried. Literally! And I tried to conserve water--but I was also lazy and didn't maintain my beds like I could have.)

Lovely naked ladies and zinnias

Not so lovely weeds and dead foliage

oooh, pretty Rose of Sharon bloom...

...the only bloom on the plant surrounded by seedlings that need to be cleaned up.

Perky salvia and vinca entwined with soft cypress vine...

..in a bed of hot mess.

ooh, phlox! So fresh, so lovely...

..so the only thing still alive !

Cute summer grouping...

..next to the black sheep of the porch.

Supercool red sunflower...

...that lives here. 

Enjoy your blooms today, admire them, show them off--but find a way to love the rest of the garden, too.

Note THIS!

Most mornings, when I walk into the kitchen, I am greeted with an island full of notes. Brian gets up waaaay before me, and jots these notes as a form of communication. His argument is that he writes stuff down when he thinks of it, then he doesn't have to remember to talk to me about it. And of course, the man digs a paper trail so he has proof he told me something.

Normally they are about things he spots that I can take care of during the day. Basically, To-Do lists. For me. Since I am " home all day".

I despise these notes, not only because I can't stand being told what and when to do something--it also shows that he is not entirely on board with my game plan of working from home.

See, I am at the pay my dues,learn, and build a body of work portion of the game. I do not get paid cash money for 95% of what I do right now. I will down the road (God willing and the creek don't rise), but now, no.

Brian is very old school, and believes that it's not a job if there is not an immediate payout to the family- in money or in household/child rearing benefits. Period.

This is only part of why I have a SAHM complex. The other part comes from me. I sold myself on being a SAHM so hard, that I feel like I should still be doing all the stuff I have always done for the family. 

It's really a lesson in dysfunction on several levels. I realize that.

But back to the notes. This morning, a day where I had a long list of my work related items to do, Brian decided that he would fill the slow parts of me day. I have SIX HOURS between dropping kids off at school, and their return home. I easily have five hours of my own work, a large stack of papers to go through that the kids brought home form the first day of school (my homework..nice) and then another 2-3 hours after the kids go to bed tonight. This does not include the errand I am going to run for my Mother-in-law, the laundry, dishes, dinner, etc. And it's Wednesday. I usually dust on Tuesday but was so full of solo-bliss yesterday, I didn't.

Uh -huh. 

This is what I walked into this morning:

ONE is instructions telling me exactly how to clean out the garage. Sweep the floor, organize the workbench, organize the shelves, etc. I have been ignoring this directive for several days now. And, oh hey, lookie there..I will again today. 

TWO is a list of dinners he would like next week. On one hand it makes meal planning easier and I am making things he likes; on the other hand I only like one of the meals. You want to know, right? Snoops. Frozen fried shrimp and peas; Turkey burgers; frozen Chinese; Manwiches/ tots and corn; BBQ beef tub (already made, just heat). 

Bachelor menu, right? 

I only like the turkey burgers because those I make myself.

THREE is instructions on how to clean the house. No lie. 

FOUR is a notification that he discovered the carpets upstairs are looking a little in need of a vacuuming.

FIVE is...someone is about to blow a gasket so I won't even tell you exactly what it says, but I should rearrange the refrigerator and put leftovers in appropriately sized containers.

SIX is a reminder that he likes his freshly laundered shirts left unbuttoned when I fold them.

The pen he wrote these notes with is his favorite type of pen. Can't really fault the guy for that, I personally hoard my favorite type of pens, too. But do not use his pens! Even if he leaves them on the kitchen table. 

The man does do a lot around the house and also makes his and Luke's lunch in the morning. (He gets up REEEEALLY early) Those are not condoms, they are handiwipes from that project. Probably left on the table so that I wouldn't forget to put some in Noah's lunchbox. Thankfully, there is no note telling me this, because I may have invented a new use for handi-wipes. 

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some things to do. Anyone got a match?