A Burger

This is a story of a burger...a big juicy burger. This might not seem like something that is worth writing about but I am living proof that it is worthy. Especially when this burger is the most delicious thing that I have eaten in a long, long time.

Most of you may know my wife. Some of you know her pretty well. If you fall into the category of people who know her pretty well, you know that she eats healthy. She doesn't eat red meat (bummer), no bacon or anything that comes from a bacon producing animal (double bummer), not too many sweet treats (triple bummer), and it's a big yes please to fruits and veggies. She will have poultry and fish on occasion but really she is a veggie kind of girl. She does have a couple of weaknesses that were a huge shock to me when I first learned about them many years ago.

The first thing is french fries. These usually come into play when she has either had a rough day and she needs comfort or when she has hiked/walked enough that a mere mortal would have collapsed miles ago. Generally if we go 12 plus miles on a hike in a day, there will a craving for french fries. Her weary body can't survive on just dried fruits and nuts and needs something that actually tastes good. She won't settle for some wimpy little fries...nope, she has to have the big daddy steak fries. You know the kind...the ones that are about the size of a 2-by-4 and can soak up an easy gallon of ketchup.

The second thing that is even more shocking is the nacho cheese that comes in a can. It has to be neon orange with jalapenos and with no resemblance of any kind of cheese products. She can power through a can of this stuff and a bag of corn chips in record time. And don't get your fingers in the way because she won't stop chomping just because of a little foreign finger. This stuff only comes out on rare occasions and no one can be looking. This will generally be out on either an incredibly bad day where french fries won't quite comfort her soul or if we have been hiking up around the 15 plus mile mark.

Some days she has a craving for a “burger”. Today is one of those days. We just went through an incredible slot canyon. This little canyon took us a few miles out in the desert hiking through fine sand to get to the head of the canyon, we had to rappel down a series of 7 different dry waterfalls, squeeze through itty-bitty-twisting-and-turning passageways, and then hike a handful of miles back through the desert to get up and out of the canyon, all while carrying about 40 pounds of food, water, and gear on each of our backs. It was great. After this little endeavor we were beat. I'm talking exhausted. So exhausted that french fries alone wouldn't do. So completely exhausted that even cheese-in-a-can wouldn't cut it. My wife wanted a “burger” AND fries. This is a really big deal.

You may be thinking “but she doesn't eat red meat!” You are right my friend. When Brenda says she wants a “burger” AND fries, she is completely and utterly exhausted and (this is the important part) she isn't talking about anything that resembles a burger. That is actually a bit of a lie. It resembles a burger in the fact that there is a bun and in between the bun there is the usual fare of ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomato, and onions. The rest of the garbage that is in there has no business being called a burger.

There are many different variations of Brenda's “burger”. Sometimes it's a veggie burger, other times it's turkey, maybe chicken or fish, but today it was a black bean and quinoa “burger”. Brenda is an amazing cook. It's always fresh and homemade. It's never from a can or a box or from a guy at a drive through window. But black bean and quinoa just really shouldn't be called a burger. On another day it would have worked for me but today was different. I was just as exhausted as Brenda was and when she said she wanted a burger and fries, I though to myself “yeah...a burger and fries sounds great!”

I'm sure you can envision the burger and fries that I was thinking of...a big, huge, greasy mess. The kind of burger that takes two hands to eat. The kind of burger that is so messy that you have to change your clothes after you are finished eating it because that mess is all over everything. It's on the front of your shirt, running down your hands and into your sleeves, all over your face, there is probably some in your hair even though you can't figure out how it got there. So when Brenda said a black bean and quinoa burger, all I could say was “crap!”

Off to the store we go to get the needed garbage to make one of Brenda's “burgers”. These things actually taste pretty good but when I had mistakenly envisioned a real-live-juicy-beef-burger (I should have known better), I just couldn't put up with a fake one. When Brenda was looking for her needed garbage at the store, some red meat actually made it undetected into our shopping cart. This is such a big deal that I am telling you about it. We have been together for as long as I can remember now, and I can't ever remember purchasing beef for a real burger. Brenda says that it has happened before, but I can't remember it happening so if it has happened, it was a really long time ago.

I'm sure that Brenda has extended my life span by at least 10 years because of all the healthy eating, but I am also sure that sometimes a big huge juicy beef burger is just what the doctor ordered. All the grease made my heart feel alive. It could have been the excitement of a delicious burger that made my heart beat a little bit faster, or it could have been that my cholesterol just shot up by 30% an my heart had to work a bit harder to push all that grease through my pristine veins, or it could have been that we just survived another big adventure in the wild and the burger was just the icing on the cake. Whatever it was, that was the best burger I can ever remember having. It was so good that I am going to have another one tomorrow...and I may write about that one too.