I guess the good news is, no matter how many different ways the start of school gets deflated by random start dates and a lack of crisp fall air, I’m as pumped as ever, and more this year than last as D ventures into the land of the sixth grade and I look down the long cold barrel of perhaps my last ever year of school… but I’m sure I’ll find a way to keep that from happening. An addict always gets her fix, right?

This morning’s “The Minimalist Column” in the NY Times threatens to undo all of this balance. Why? Well, just go read it: it’s about how to make a juicy, sumptuous burger in your very own kitchen in the same amount of time it takes to make a crappy one. Reading Mr. Bittman’s descriptions of his own family’s burger recipes took me back to summer afternoons in the kitchen, standing next to my mother while she chopped onions and garlic and whipped out the bottle of Worcestershire sauce for the final, crucial dash of flavor. Then came the part where she put her hands into the pink goo and rolled little balls, but I usually ducked out for that. As the piece points out, for not much extra effort you can lift an average burger to the realms of the luscious, and that is pretty much the essence of lusciousity if you ask me.

Mr. Bittman has a several concrete recommendations for making sure your burgers are rave quality every time. The most drastic is that you must grind your own meat. He admits that this sounds scary, but he contends that you can do it quite quickly with a food processor and that the pay-off will have you converted for good once you try it. Choose a high quality and higher fat cut, cube, dump into the processor and pulse away. Next, have a field day with the seasonings–don’t throw in an overwhelming amount, but feel free to experiment. The lamb with smoked mozzarella burgers looked particularly delicious to me. Finally, when you cook, don’t over cook and never (he repeats, never) squash your little burger ball into submission with a spatula. That makes you look like a short order cook and it mashes all the juice out, so just let the roundness be and work on toasting your bun.

If it wasn’t 9am, I think I’d be headed to the Whole Foods for my chuck roast right now.

Recently, I started noticing a particular billboard on US 1 as I drive into south Miami, one that advertises a new beer from Miller called Chill. The website describes it as “a chelada-style light beer brewed with a hint of lime and salt,” and while I was skeptical I knew that inevitably I would give it a try. It’s kind of irresistable, in concept.

Well, last week I toted home a 12-pack of Chill and started drinking. I didn’t make it very far. For starters, it’s a light beer, and while I have nothing against them in principle and drink my fair share of Corona Light and Yeungling Light and sometimes even the Sam Adams variety, when it comes to straight domestic light beer, I usually can’t get very excited. No exception here. Still, some quality flavoring could theoretically overcome a lackluster foundation. Unfortunately, this is very much not happening with the Chill. The lime flavor is way too sweet and has nearly none of the tang that I consider essential to a true chelada. Further, I think because it’s a light beer, they are seriously paranoid about adding any extra calories and have decided to sweeten the lime (which shouldn’t have been sweetened in the first place) with just a hint of aspartame. Gross! The salt flavor they claim to have brewed in is just plain non-existent. So, the end effect is more like light beer mixed with diet Sprite rather than a refreshing summer beverage.

All in all, it’s a big fat thumbs down on the Miller Chill from this Lusciousity editor. As always, it pays to stick with homemade. On that note, I’m off to Publix for some Negro Modelo and some limes.

Verdict: Miller Chill = unluscious

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well– Julian of Norwich

And when we can’t see how it will be well or it is utterly impossible to believe that all shall ever be well again:

Life takes lusciousity– The Editors

Lushes, of late I have been gripped by life’s uncertainties and have too often allowed that to distract me from finding the gushing, lip-staining fruit of every moment. So for today, another too familiar day of aftermath and regret, I want to share with you this piece by Naomi Shihab Nye and a thought from Christine Apter the yoga teacher: this world has so many bad things, but always also there are good and better things.

Anyway, to fulfill the nostalgifying requirement I have set for myself in my Tuesday blogs, I’ll mention that I first read that story during my brief stint as the only student in my English independent study sophomore year of high school. I call it a brief stint because within a week of starting my sophomore year at my regular public high school, I found out that I had gotten last minute financial aid to move to the performing arts high school I eventually graduated from. But one of the reasons that I think I might have been okay even if that had not worked out is that the teacher who I was assigned to was clearly going to let me push ahead as far as I possibly could. He assigned me three short stories to read in a week; I of course had to read them in one day. He assigned me a book the next week; again, finished by my next class meeting (I remember the book, it was the classic A Separate Peace). So it looked like I might finally have met my match. But then, right when the leaves had started to turn and I had started to accept the school year rhythm of getting to school at 7am and riding the short bus to the math and science center after lunch, I got the call that turned me into an oboe player for the next three years. Funny how you think things are going to turn out, and then the way they actually do.

In my mind, all of this adds up to s-c-a-r-y, but there are glimpses of hope and sanity returning in small ways, like the willingness of people to become farmers and find a way to make growing high quality local food work as a livelihood. Daniel talked about doing that when we graduated, and I laughed at him, but seeing as there is a waiting list for every local community supported agriculture collective that I have found, maybe I shouldn’t have. The will and apparently the dollars are out there (even though really it’s not an exorbitant cost by any means, no more than what I’d spend a week on fruit at Publix if I didn’t restrain myself), so this is one luscious trend I’d like to see grow and grow.

*I kid because I love–if this part of the US resembles the third world any more than any other part of the country, it certainly isn’t because of the melange of languages and cultures, it’s because of the income inequality and structurally corrupt government IMHO. I should shut up before I have to start sounding intelligent to gain credibility.