Best. Burgers. EVER.

March 5, 2011

Today was so amazing because I got to SLEEP IN! I think I might have slept in a total of 3 or 4 times since I have been here, so I was so happy when I realized last night that I could stay up as late as I wanted because today I had zero plans. When I woke up I worked out for a little while and took a shower and agreed with Marissa to go get pancakes for breakfast! When we went to get fingerprinted this past week we went to this little café where we saw 4 pancakes for 4 euro on the menu and we have been dying to have pancakes ever since we got here. We both got dressed and headed down Via Nazionale to the cute little place. This guy found a seat for us and I ordered the buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup and marmalade with a strawberry smoothie, and Marissa ordered these berry pancakes with a vanilla smoothie. It didn’t take long before the man brought us out the best looking pancakes ever! I dug right in and was really happy with this choice of breakfast…it definitely hit the spot! But their idea of a fruit smoothie was more milky and watery than our idea of smoothie, and my strawberry smoothie ended up tasting like strawberry milk. I actually liked it though and went so well with my pancakes! It didn’t take long before we both devoured our pancakes.

We decided to go to the market today to try and get some veggies and things to make burgers tonight for dinner. I suggested we make mushroom swiss burgers, so at the market we had our eyes open for ground beef, onions, mushrooms, and maybe some type of vegetables or something to go on the side. I really wanted to try and speak only in Italian using the phrases Gloria just recently taught us, but when I said “Vorrei mezzo kilo di fungi” I didn’t realize that half a kilogram of mushrooms would be like 12 mushrooms…wayyy more than I wanted, but I knew we would eat them, so I accepted the bag and only had to pay 1 euro for them…score! And my judgment again was a little off when I asked for due etti di fagioli verdi, and we ended up with this brown sack full of fresh green beans..whoops. Overall we got all of the ingredients we were looking for and went to the grocery store to pick up a few more ingredients for lunches and other dinners. We bought a four pack of really soft and big flat rolls, which we thought would be perfect for the deluxe burgers that we planned on making for dinner.

When we got home I realized it was a little past lunch time and I was hungry, so I decided to make an egg sandwich…a continuation of our fabulous breakfast this morning! Today was our day for cleaning and homework, so after lunch I started research for my European Issues presentation on Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan. After a while I needed a break and started sweeping and mopping the bathroom and hallway, and Marissa and I removed all of the thing from underneath our beds to be able to sweep and mop really good. We found a TON of dust bunnies underneath of our bed…it was disgusting! Everything here gets so dusty so extremely fast. I swear we could sweep our apartment everyday and get a full dust pan every single day. Gross!

After a while of cleaning we realized that it was burger time! I started cubing up some potatoes to fry up and sliced the mushrooms and onions to fry up in a pan. Marissa snapped the ends off of the green beans and was going to fry them in a pan with garlic and oil…I normally don’t like fresh green beans, but she said this is the way her mom and grandma make their beans and I was willing to try it! Once everything was fried up and our hamburgers were cooked we put everything on the table to start building our burgers. On one side of the bun I had my burger, swiss cheese, and MOUND of onions and mushrooms, while on the other side I had two big slices of tomatoes and lettuce. We put some potatoes and beans on our plates and couldn’t wait to dig in! Sometimes I’m so impressed with the ideas we come up with because they usually always succeed and this was definitely one that succeeded! I honestly think this burger could win awards in competitions…it was DYNAMITE! And I really really liked the green beans like that, so good! We both downed everything on our plates and just sat there in delight for a while.

I attempted to do a little more research, but with my belly full I was starting to get real sleepy. We both headed off to bed happy not only because we made the best dinner ever, but also because tomorrow we were going to Venice for Carnival! :D

Look at that mound of toppings!

Such a well balanced, and extremely delicious meal!