Keep It Simple Weekend

This weekend, I helped my sister with the kids and home chores while she and her mother-in-law stripped the ugliest wallpaper you have ever seen off her kitchen walls. Needless to say, this home improvement project made a huge mess in the kitchen so I had to keep the meals fairly simple.

The kids and I went to the downtown farmers market early to give the "decorators" some space. We picked up some Grouper and Amberjack from San Miguel seafoods, some beautiful asparagus from Bikurrin Farms (yea, asparagus at the market!), lettuce, onions 2 lbs of hamburger and 2 pints of strawberries. Oh, and of course a loaf of rosemary ciabbata bread from Texas French Bread. (Do you think TFB has a detox program for that stuff?)

For dinner Saturday night, I marinated the fish in a Baja Lime marinade that I picked up at HEB (Anne's organic). To keep from getting underfoot, I grilled the fish and the asparagus (used the same preparation as Ginger's birthday dinner) and tossed an easy salad. I had never grilled Grouper before, but it was great. It was about twice as thick as the Amberjack so I had to cook it longer, but it came out tender and flaky. We drizzled a little TacoDeli green sauce on top and it was delicious.

A note about grilling fish: If you don't have a grill plate, get one before you tackle grilling fish. It keeps the fish from sticking to the grill and you have some hope of getting the fish off the grill in one piece. You can buy a grill plate any where they sell grilling supplies.

For Sunday, we grilled house burgers for lunch. Ginger and I love house burgers, but her husband isn't a fan, so we took advantage of his absence and grilled up some delicious hamburgers. The quality of the meat makes an enormous difference, but I like to think the Willis family twist on prepping beef (Worcestershire & Greek seasoning) for the grill helped a little too.

Kristi's House Burgers
This made 5 decent-sized patties.

2 lbs ground hamburger - the meat I got at the farmers market was so fresh and such high quality that it almost look like ground sirloin
1 egg
worcestershire sauce
Cavender's Greek seasoning (this contains salt, pepper and garlic so you shouldn't need to add those separately)
1/3 yellow onion, diced

Combine the hamburger, egg and onion in a bowl. Add Worcestershire sauce and Greek seasoning to taste. Mix the meat with your hands - no cheating and using a spoon. Form the mixture into patties.

Grill the patties on a medium-high heat grill flipping once about 10-15 minutes depending on thickness and desired doneness. Top with cheese if desired during the last 2 minutes of cooking.

Enjoy!