They only have one bad day.
They only have one bad day.
  • They only have one bad day.

Lamburger/hamburger on the grill, lots of beer and wine and other treats.

The lambs were raised near a certain small town in Eastern Washington by Bethany’s Uncle Dave, who says of his flock: “They only have one bad day.” (Her people are the ranching kind.) The lambs were cooked and consumed in the same valley where they lived and died. I realize some of you will find that perverse and monstrous. I think it’s kind of sweet.

The recipe:

One package ground lamb, one package ground beef. (Twenty percent fat content!) Knead them together with (all proportions eyeballed):

* an egg
* olive oil
* lots of salt
* a little cumin
* lots of pepper
* a little cayenne
* a little dried thyme
* some chopped garlic
* some chopped onion
* some chopped tomato
* a chopped Serrano pepper
* a little dried Italian spice melange
* whatever else is around and sounds good

Grill and serve with sliced tomato and avocado and toasted buns. Some enjoy ketchup and mustard and mayo, but the properly seasoned and properly fatty lamburger should be flavorful and moist enough to stand without condiments.

Also serve with corn, grilled in the following manner: steamed in the husk for a few minutes, then yanked from the grill and shucked while hot (with much cursing) and thrown back on the grill for charring. I’m usually a slather-the-corn-with-butter kind of guy, but this weekend’s corn was perfectly sweet. Didn’t need a thing.

Finish with some whiskey, a cigar, and a few rounds at your empty beer cans with the air rifle. When it gets too dark to shoot, switch to bottle rockets. If you have the very small, non-finger-compromising kind, launch them by hand instead of from a bottle. They’re more fun when you get to aim.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

16 replies on “What We Ate and Drank to Celebrate Freedom”

  1. Those lamburgers sound yummy, I would think you could substitute pork for the lamb-disinclined. A Tb of soy sauce would be a good addition to the mix, too.

    “The lambs were cooked and consumed in the same valley where they lived and died. Some will find that perverse and monstrous.” Not at all. Lambs are well known for their fear of traveling, everyone knows that!

  2. I can get on board with no condiments too, but you might try a bit of good mayo on one side of the bun, with a few cranks of fresh ground pepper thereon. Then slap your hot burger on top and the heat and juice from the burger mixes with the mayo and pepper to make just the right little sauce, without taking a thing away from the taste of the meat. Man, I’m hungry.

  3. I celebrated the Fourth with a soggy, barely edible roast beef sandwich on an Amtrak train back from Vancouver, BC.

    But earlier in the day I got to eat at Rangoli, the new cafe next door to Vij’s, and operated by him, the best restaurant in the known universe. Rangoli’s not as good, but it’s half the money, too — and very, very cute. Either of these places is 4,000 times better than any Indian restaurant in the greater Seattle area.

  5. I went to my folks’ and consumed most of an overcooked hamburger. My parents like things well done, and don’t understand that the key to doing burgers well done without drying them out is to mix in a bread and milk poultice (one slice of sandwich bread, torn into pieces and mixed with just enough milk to make a pulp, per one lb. hamburger). I think my mom tends to buy the leanest beef she can find, which doesn’t help. (Fnarf, this is probably key to how I grew up eating the occasional tenderloin steak – my mom hates fat.)

  7. @4, no, you most definitely have not, Will. Nor would you be able to tell. You can google all you want to, but you won’t be able to name a single Indian restaurant in either Vancouver or Seattle that doesn’t serve glutenous globs of Bangladeshi glop. A normal person could, but not you.

    Vij’s is world class, full stop. If you don’t think so, you’re just stupid. And I’ll bet a toonie you’ve never been near the place.

    @5, I would be happy eating just the fat trimmed off of steaks with “too much”. I LOVE fat. Also gristle and marrow.

  8. I don’t think your labor intensive corn method is necessary. so long as the temp isn’t too hot, you can cook and char the corn in one step.

  12. That reminds me, have we come up with a replacement word that means what people mean when they say “retarded”, but which isn’t offensive to the organically developmentally delayed?

  13. Fnarf, nice try, but no feeding the woodland slog gnomes, K? I agree with your reply, but we all know the woodland slog gnome’s canned response to everything is “I’ve done better, I’ve had better, I know better, I am better, etc.” with the occasional lame attempt as some kind of humorous content to which one can only respond with an eyeroll, head shake or confused stare. Trust me, no one believes him.

    Some people can’t take a hint on how obnoxious they are and giving them a hint turns into further feeding them.

  14. Is it better to be, to borrow Dan Savage’s PC term, leotarded (Will in Seattle) or boorish (Fnarf)? One SLOG’s eternal questions. Tonight I think I will come down on the side of leotarded.

  15. My god, every time I read a WiS post I just envision him contracting an inoperable, terminal penis cancer some day. It is a coping mechanism.

    @12 That term would be ‘Will in Seattle’ or variant.

  16. @7 – There’s some pretty decent Bangladeshi shite in London’s Brick Lane. But the best Indian I ever had was a lamb curry in Bradford, outside Leeds, UK. Shockingly good stuff.

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