Things Fall Apart

As you know, we recently acquired a new gas grill that we are very excited about. Remarkably, until this week, the only items that we have put on the grill are cylindrical meats and vegetables. This week, Laine made some delicious looking beef patties with added diced onion and shredded cheese. We pre-heated the grill, grabbed a beer and strided out to the grill with confident optimism.

We are admittedly a bit green when it comes to grilling burgers but how hard can it be? We're pretty sure we've each done it before and certainly watched others do it (parents, friends, people at Burger King, etc.) so the impending disaster really caught us off guard.

After a few minutes, we tested one burger by sliding the spatula underneath. You would have thought that I slapped at it with a stick - the gorgeous patty crumbled like a house of cards. Whoa, whoa! Maybe we were a bit too eager. We gave the next one another minute or so and tried again. Laine used her steady hand to ease the spatula under the edge of the patty while I applied gentle pressure from the opposite end with the broadside of some grill tongs. More crumbling ensued; large chunks of carefully packed meat fell through the grates and burst into flame.
We kept our spirits up hoping that we could produce at least two, and then just one, cohesive patty on our optimism alone. The Grill Gods were not with us though and we had to face the fact that this was just not going to work out for us this time. We called Great Wall and had our first dinner ever delivered to the house.
(On a side note, Laine put her pragmatic thinking to the situation. She salvaged the burger crumbles and baked them while we waited for our Chinese food. The following night, she made a nice meat sauce to put over spaghetti and it was delicious. I'm looking forward to the leftovers for lunch today.)