Onion Burgers with Avocado Dressing

It's finals week, which for me has meant a lot of campus food and frozen pizza. I have little will or time to cook. This weekend I was craving something homemade; something new. Tom and I flipped through his mom's Every Day with Rachael Ray and decided on abbreviating one of her summer grilling recipes.

I was blown away by how good it was. The burger, although there were no traces of pinkness in the middle, was soft and melted in our mouths. The burger's flavor itself was exquisite. I'm not sure if it was the onion juice or maybe the poultry seasoning that lent to the unique taste that I was to replicate in every other burger I ever make. The avocado sauce was awesome as well. The leftovers could be used for technically anything; I was thinking dip for chips or topping on a cold cut sandwich.

For the burger:
1 lb ground beef
1 small onion
1 tbsp BBQ sauce
1 tsp poultry seasoning (generally made up of ingredients like thyme, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper)
1/2 tsp hot sauce
olive oil

For the dressing:
1 avocado
1 jalapeño pepper
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp chives
1/2 tsp parsley
1 tbsp lemon juice

makes 3-4 servings

In a bowl, combine the beef, sauces and seasoning together. In order to get onion juice for the burger, grate the onion over the bowl to catch the juice. (I used about 1/3 of the small onion per burger.) Combine and shape into patties, then place on heated skillet and drizzle with olive oil so the burger does not stick to the pan. Meanwhile, combine the dressing ingredients in a bowl. (For the jalapeño, we grated it so the dressing would not have chunks, then added some of the seeds to add more of a bite.) If you own a food processor, you can mix it that way, but I just mushed up the avocado and stirred by hand. Cook the burgers until they are no longer pink inside. Eat on buns with a slice of cheese if you would like and top with avocado sauce!

Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Bacon

This autumn day is probably one of the final weekend days of the year where it was in the 60s, perfect in my mind for a final grilling. Today Tom and I decided to combine seasonal foods with summer-style cooking. First up was this incredible recipe I found here for acorn squash. I love acorn squash. I need to find more recipes using it. I guess I never really thought about it before, but I really do love fall produce.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Here's the recipe. I wish I could have gotten a better picture; acorn squash is such an interesting vegetable to look at. But I forgot my camera. This is why I'm getting a little digital camera for Christmas, right? (hint hint)

I apologize for the quality of this photo, this is from a camera phone.

1 acorn squash

2 slices of bacon

1 1/2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

salt and pepper to taste

makes 2 servings

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with tin foil. Halve the acorn squash and scoop out the seeds. (You can salt and cook the seeds along with your squash, that's what we did!) Poke holes in the inside so that the flavor can soak in as much as possible. Melt some of the butter and paint the skin side with it. Add the rest of the butter to the scooped out part of the squash. Place the halves on the baking sheet, and add 1/4 cup of brown sugar and top with a slice of bacon on each side. Bake for 40 minutes. We then threw it on the grill to get the bacon crispy, but you can obviously skip this step. Just cook it until the yellow part is relatively soft. 

If you're health conscious you can always skip the bacon. Then you'd just have a sweet side. This also makes a great appetizer. Or, if you make a whole squash for yourself you can have it as a meal. 

My only problem with this recipe was how to eat it. I wish that recipe instructions also gave eating instructions sometimes. I wasn't sure if I should just chop it up and eat the bacon last, scoop out the inside, or what. I ended up just scooping out the yellow part and forgetting about the skin (though you can definitely eat that too!) and then eating the bacon by itself. The bacon had a nice sweet flavor to it, and the squash was very 

yummy! I totally suggest considering this if you are trying to plan Thanksgiving sides.