I had a goal in 2018. I had a lot of goals, actually, but one specifically. That goal was to make my way through as many of the recipes in The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book as I possibly could.
In 2011, I began my tradition of baking an original-recipe Bundt cake in observance of National Bundt Day, which is November 15th.
In March 2017, I wrote up the post for the cake I baked in November 2015. I wasn’t planning on that tardiness becoming part of my tradition, but here we are today, in July 2019, and I’m writing up the cake I baked in November 2018.
If you’ve been following along on IG, none of this will be news to you. But I want to post a recap of our Round 1 Symbolic Ritual Cannibalism Playoff Dinners, and explain why it worked.
In pursuit of my wild dream of feeling like a full-fledged adult maybe sometime before my 50th birthday, I’ve been purchasing tools to help me do adult things like plan meals more than 20 minutes in advance of eating them. Like this nifty fridge magnet. Some weeks, it looks like this
but then there are other better weeks when I plan 7 entire meals with lots of veggies and then actually cook them all and feel terrifyingly mature and know it can’t possibly be sustainable but I try to enjoy the moment.
It hasn’t actually been 3 months since our last Bob’s Burgers night. I just never told you about the Hatch Me If You Can burger. Or The Cauliflower’s Cumin From Inside the House and OMG It’s Fischoeder. And that is not at all because I don’t like you and don’t feel you deserve to know about these things. It’s because… life. Life has been considerably more lifelike since this little man became a part of it.
I’d be lying if I said I know where the month of June went. I have vague recollections of a few things. My dogs both had dental work done. My husband went on his annual two-week writing retreat. Nobody died, and at some point I must have done laundry. Other than that, your guess is really as good as mine as to what happened during that 30 day span of my life.
I did not get a photo of the cooktop catching fire as it was happening because, you know, fire.
Instead, I very calmly reached into the baking cabinet, took out a sheetpan large enough to cover the flaming surface, slapped it down, turned on the hood fan, opened the kitchen window, and reflected briefly on how little energy I had to react to something like the sudden appearance of an open blaze in my kitchen and how it wasn’t even the worst or most surprising thing that happened that day.
The other night, I wanted a burger for dinner. A big, sloppy, extra-napkins-at-the-ready kind of burger. And a turkey burger because I had a Costco four-pack of ground turkey taking up half my freezer. It was a cardio day for me, and a bike-to-work day for The Guy, so I knew a large evening meal would be welcome. And in 2018, burgers for dinner means a Bob’s Burgers Night. Among the produce that needed to be consumed before the next Imperfect delivery were a yellow onion and a bunch of green onions, so I grabbed my handy Bob’s Burgers Burger Book to see what I could find.
What I found was a recipe for a burger called Onion-tended Consequences. Which sounded delicious, but also required a bunch of things I didn’t have around. So I decided to make a tribute burger.
When I set my 2018 goal of working through as much of The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book as I possibly could, I went in knowing not every burger I made would be beef. We have a tradition in this house called Round Thing On A Bun Nights, and by “tradition” I mean “open acknowledgement that there will be nights I am too tired/busy/not-at-all-in-the-mood to cook”. So in the freezer are kept brioche buns that can be simultaneously thawed & toasted in about 4 minutes, and a selection of pre-formed patties of various proteins, meat-based and otherwise, that can go from freezer to pan to table in the time it takes to prep the toppings and thaw & toast the buns. Cheaper, easier, and less terrible for us than ordering pizza, with the added advantage of not requiring the putting on of pants to open the door for the delivery person.
On Thursday mornings, my mom and I go shopping together, first to Grocery Outlet and then to Costco. Aside from the practical advantages of one fewer car on the road and me not having to buy my own Costco membership, it’s a chance for us to spend a couple of hours together hanging out, catching up, bitching whatever bitchery may be needed as a result of the past week’s events, and reaffirming our mutual belief that very few people in California know how to drive like not completely oblivious fucking morons.
My mom is awesome.
One of my goals for 2018 is to work my way through as much of The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book as I possibly can. But since another of my goals for 2018 is to not die a horrible cholesterol-laden death, I’m trying to limit my Bob’s burger intake to 2 or 3 a month. I made my first Bob’s burger on January 4, so I was definitely due for another.
