Meal: whiskey river barbecue burgers, oven fries
Cost: about $6; more than many of our meals, but less than going out, and we have two meals worth of food
Time: about 40 minutes active prep, plus time for the roll dough to rise and the fries to bake
Leftovers: 2 burgers, and most of the batch of rolls (though those don’t really count as leftovers, since I made a big batch so we’d have rolls for the week); in other words, enough for lunch for the two of us
Local ingredients: beef, cheese, potatoes
Organic ingredients: oil, tomato puree, sugar, Worcestershire sauce

When we do go out to eat, Jeff tends to get the same thing every time. When we go to Red Robin (which isn’t all that often, anymore; I think the last time was when we had a gift card as part of a Christmas present from a generous friend), he gets the Whiskey River Barbecue burger, which, according to Red Robin’s Website, is “Basted with our signature Whiskey River® BBQ Sauce and lasso’d together with Cheddar cheese, crispy onion straws, lettuce, tomatoes & mayo.”

We’d been saying for awhile that we could probably make these at home pretty easily, and yesterday while out on our weekly library and other errand run, we finally remembered to pick up the key ingredient that isn’t going to be had at any farmer’s market or natural foods co-op: French’s french fried onions (the same ones that go on top of the yearly green bean casserole). After that, it was just a matter of starting homemade buns in the bread machine when we got home, making a half batch of homemade barbecue sauce, slicing up some fries to go in the oven to bake, and mixing up the burgers (beef, vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder). I covered them with some sauce while they were cooking, and then we added some more when we assembled the burgers.

These were way, way good. We’ll be doing this again. And, as a bonus, we got to eat in our pajamas watching Star Trek, instead of standing in line at a restaurant. :) We both love going out to eat, but often, it’s nice to be able to make what you’re craving together in the kitchen instead of going out.

Alas, there are no pictures; the batteries on the camera were dead.