Dressing Up Cheeseburgers

Weekends are made for grilling, and this weekend, we decided to use charcoal instead of gas.  Gas works great for the week night grilling because it's much quicker than charcoal.  Rick loves the whole process of using charcoal on the weekend, and it makes me happy to see his face light up the way it does when he's putting food on a charcoal grill.  For dinner last night, we decided to do cheeseburgers.  Ground sirloin had been on sale at Publix so we use that.  As usual, I wanted to dress up our burgers a bit.  During a recent visit to myrecipes.com, I found a recipe for cheeseburgers with a red onion jam.  The recipe was originally in Cooking Light.  It sounded really good, and I had most of the ingredients on hand at home so I asked Rick to pick up a red onion when he went to Publix for buns.  He came back with a small one so I made a couple of adjustments to the jam. 

When it came time to add the onions the burgers, Rick was a little apprehensive.  He's not a huge onion fan, but after he saw what I did, he realized that they weren't raw, had a little sample, and wanted some.  The onions ended up being a nice addition to the cheeseburgers and complemented them really well.  

Here's what we did...

Red Onion Jam
Ingredients
Olive oil
1 small red onion, halved and sliced
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme


Directions
Heat oil over medium-high heat in a skillet.  Add onions and saute for 5 minutes.  Reduce heat to medium-low.  Add vinegar, sugar, and thyme to the onions.  Saute until the onions have softened (around 10 minutes).  Remove from heat and serve.


Enjoy!

Caramelized Onion Tartlets

I've been trying to get into the habit of having some sort of hors d'oeurve for Rick and I to snack on while I'm preparing dinner so that by the time dinner is ready we aren't starving which leads to overeating.  For tonight's treat, I found this recipe on epicurious.com for caramelized onion tartlets.  I changed it up a little bit, and I ended up with a delicious snack.  My only complaint with the tartlets is that it takes FOREVER (or so it seems) for the onions to caramelize.  Because I knew that this would be an issue, I started on them prior to Rick's arrival. 

Here's what I did.

Caramelized Onion Tartlets

Ingredients

• 2 onions, thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons, extra virgin olive oil
• 3/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 4 oz soft light cream cheese
• 1 tablespoon  finely sliced green onion
• 1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped
• 1 package of mini-phyllo shells (around 15 per package)

Directions

Cook onion, butter, water, salt, and pepper, covered, in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderately low heat, 10 minutes. Remove lid and cook, stirring frequently, until onion is deep golden brown and very tender, about 30 minutes.

Heat shells on a baking pan for 5 minutes.

Stir together cream cheese, sage, and green onion and divide among shells, then top with caramelized onions.

Enjoy!

The Much Anticipated Pork Tenderloin

I think I've been talking about this pork tenderloin recipe for at least a week now.  It was one of the first recipes that caught my eye when I purchased Vera Bradley's Cooking with Friends Cookbook.  We were going to do it earlier, but it requires 24 hours of marinating time which means that I must think about it ahead of time...something that doesn't always happen when I'm trying to juggle nursing school and working part time.  Then we were going to do it over the weekend, but a sale on baby back ribs distracted us. Finally, the time has come for us to do the pork tenderloin!!!