5th of July Cookout

Last year, we spent Independence Day at Winstar Casino. We rented a spot in their RV park and watched their (darned impressive!) fireworks show from our picnic table. The year before, we spent the Fourth at a riverboat casino in Evansville, Indiana, where they also hosted a large fireworks show. Casinos make a terrific destination for truckers. There's ample free parking, plenty of food options, and even if you don't bet a dime there's plenty of entertainment via people watching. And the majority host large fireworks shows a few times a year. 

This year we were on a direct delivery, so laying over and enjoying a fireworks show was out of the question. We did, however, catch a few large carnation bursts here and there on the horizon.

After delivering the load in Austin Saturday morning, we stocked up on groceries and headed north to the new Landstar yard on the outskirts of Fort Worth. We hadn't grilled anything for months, so we were looking forward to scorching something in the name of sticking it to King George III. We ran through several possibilities - chicken, ribs, sausage - but we never got past the idea of a huge super juicy burger. Just 80/20 ground beef, nothing added, shaped ever so gently into giant round patties and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

Did I mention they were big? Two and a quarter pounds of beef divided into just three burgers. 

Yeah, big.

Hoss knows how to grill a perfect fresh burger. Season the crap out of it. Slap it down on the hot grill. Wait two minutes, then turn them 90 degrees. Don't flip until juices just begin to percolate up to the surface. Flip. Once only. Never flip more than once. And never, ever, press the burger with the spatula. Remove to a plate before it reaches the desired doneness. Serve on a roll with some heft and substance, and add a slice of sharp cheddar on the top and the bottom of the sliced bun. Behold, perfection:

It was so huge and so delicious and so juicy that I added no condiments whatsoever (and I completely ignored the cole slaw on the side). 

We may just have to celebrate Independence Day on the fourth of every month henceforth.