Story's finished, trying to get a job, burgers.

So I put the finishing touches on the cigarette tax story and printed it out tonight. I'll turn it in tomorrow morning. It turned out fairly well, though it's not as good as I envisioned. Some sources didn't get back to me, and I really had too much information for a 1,000-word story, so I had to make some tough choices about what to include. As usual, holding myself to the maximum length was a struggle. My first draft ran about 1,250 but I knocked it down to 1,075. So, yes, it's still technically overlength, but not enough that it will cause any concerns. And as much as I generally hate revising or cutting things out of my writing, it reads better now than it did the first time around. I cut out some extraneous information, found ways to make sentences shorter and cleaner, etc. Good stuff.

I will post the story here eventually, but not until I get it back from my professor (which will be next Monday, if they grade these in the same amount of time they have graded other assignments). I think it's very unlikely, but I can envision a scenario in which posting the paper on the internet before my professor reads it could cause a problem, so I'll hold off.

The multimedia presentation that I had to do today (see previous post) went smoothly. It's not finished yet; we still have to put the audio and the photos together tomorrow morning and put the finishing touches on it (write captions for the photos, add a title sequence and end credits, etc.) but it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Honestly, I think a lot of groups will have better presentations than ours, but I don't really care. When it comes to stuff like this, which I hate doing, my only real goal is to get it done on time while suffering as little bullshit as possible.

This week the grad school was accepting applications for fall semester positions as teaching assistants, research assistants, and office assistants in the administrative offices. I applied to a total of seven of these jobs, and if I manage to get one it'll be a huge boost to my financial situation. All the jobs give you tuition credit (two classes for most of them, three for some) and also pay a pretty decent hourly wage. If I were to get one of these jobs, I would be able to readjust my financial aid package so that I'd be taking out a lot less money in loans, which is a priority for me. I did this loan calculator thing online the other day, and it told me that if I actually borrow all the money I plan on borrowing if I don't find another source of funding, I'm going to need to be making about $86,000 a year when I graduate to be able to make my loan payments and still supply myself with food, shelter, and transportation. Yeah, journalists don't make a lot of money. I might make half that much at an entry level position, if I'm lucky. Of course, considering I will have a master's degree, and I intend to do some networking and carve out an excellent reputation for myself when I'm in school, I might be able to land a job that is significantly better than your average entry level position in journalism, but I still think it's highly doubtful I could be making $86K right out of grad school.

Now for a more enjoyable subject: burgers.

The hamburger, at its most basic level, is a very simple and only marginally satisfying meal. A slab of fried/grilled/flame-broiled beef between two halves of a bun, perhaps topped with a dollop of ketchup or a slice of American cheese. Now, I've got nothing against these simple burgers. I've eaten a ton of them in my days, and they usually taste good and sate my craving for cattle flesh. But such burgers are commonplace, run of the mill, even boring.

A finely crafted burger, on the other hand, is a meal in the truest sense of the word. It was with that in mind that I decided recently to try out a couple burger recipes of my own invention. One day the idea just popped into my head to try making chicken wing burgers-- hamburger meat mixed with wing sauce, among other things, topped with bleu cheese dressing.

So I drove down to the local Wegmans a few days ago and bought what I would need to make these burgers. Since I live alone and you cannot just buy enough beef for one or two burgers, I found myself with a quantity of meat that would be appropriate for about four decent-sized burgers. So I decided to make two chicken wing burgers, and two of another type.

I am a big fan of Chiavetta's sauce. For chicken, for steak, for cereal. Okay, maybe not that last one. But it's a fact that Chiavetta's marinade improves the taste of damn near anything. I decided that Chiavetta's burgers were an experiment I needed to conduct. So I wound up making two wing burgers and two Chiavetta's burgers.

I would term both these experiments successes, although there were some problems. The biggest one was that, since I was in both cases adding liquid to the meat, the burgers didn't hold together as well as you would like them to. They didn't fall apart on the grill or anything, they just weren't very firm. I think I could fix this problem by adding a little bit of flour to the meat before cooking, or a few bread crumbs, a little oatmeal, anything that would absorb some liquid and improve consistency.

Aside from the texture issues, the burgers tasted great. The wing burgers were not as hot/spicy as I expected them to be, especially since I added red pepper flakes and chili powder to the recipe, but I think I could fix this problem the next time around by just using more of those spices. And the flavor was excellent; it just didn't have that bite to it I was going for.

The Chiavetta's burgers, which were more or less an afterthought, were even better. The marinade just added a very distinctive flavor to the meat, and made it really juicy. Even though I'm biased since I made them myself, I would consider these some of the best and juiciest burgers I've ever had.

Obviously, the meat is the most important factor in determing the quality of a hamburger. But there are other important things that must not be overlooked. The presentation and arrangement, all the toppings and extras, are vital as well. I gave my burgers a little more texture and character by mixing green peppers and chopped onions into the meat itself before cooking, and I later topped them with lettuce, tomato, and red onion. I put bleu cheese dressing on the wing burgers, and ketchup on the Chiavetta's.

I feel the bun is often neglected when it comes to the art of burger-making. The bread is not just there to hold the sandwich together (although that is an undeniably important function), it's there because it's part of the meal. Now, I started with cheap, low-quality (but soft and tasty) buns. Wegmans brand, 99 cents for 8 of 'em, can't beat that price. So how did I make these more impressive and exotic? I coated them with margarine and then sprinkled garlic powder onto them, then put them facedown in a hot frying pan to toast them a little bit, turning them into pieces of garlic bread. I cannot claim this idea as my own. Matty's Pizzeria in Batavia serves a submarine sandwich called the Maximus which, in addition to having a badass name for a sandwich, might be the best sub ever created. The first time I tried the Maximus was when I was introduced to the idea of using garlic bread as a sandwich bun, and it's amazing. So yeah, credit the guys from Matty's for that one.

I can't really give you a recipe for these burgers, since cooking them was sort of an improvisational process, and I just threw in as much of every ingredient as seemed appropriate. I would encourage you to do the same thing, use your own discretion, experiment, see how it turns out. Anyway, here's a list of the stuff I put into the two recipes.

Chicken Wing Burgers:

Stuff I put in the meat: Chopped green peppers, chopped onions, chicken wing sauce, chili powder, red pepper flakes, garlic powder.

Topped with: Lettuce, tomato, red onion, bleu cheese dressing, toasted garlic bread bun.

Chiavetta's burgers:

Stuff I put in the meat: Chopped green peppers, chopped onions, Chiavetta's marinade (so it's not just a clever name), seasoned salt, red pepper flakes.

Topped with: Lettuce, tomato, red onion, ketchup, toasted garlic bread bun.

Okay, that's enough for tonight. Feeling good about this blog entry. Don't forget to come back next time.

-Nick