The Best Ahi Tuna Burgers Ever

I just made the best Ahi Tuna burgers for about $5 a person. I grilled them but didn't quite cook them long enough so we had to microwave them to cook a little longer, but they were still awesome. I stir fried my home grown cauliflower greens with some kosher salt and grated garlic. Julie got me a microplane grater and I love it for grating fresh garlic.


Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 Ahi Tuna steaks
2 tbsp kosher salt (for fish and veggies)
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp Creole seasoning
5 tbsp EVOO (for fish and veggies)
1 lime (reserving some juice for vegetables)
1 tsp fresh rosemary, minced
1 bunch greens--spinach would probably work well
1 clove garlic, grated
3 tbsp thousand island dressing
1 tbsp hot sauce

Directions:
Sprinkle salt, pepper, and Creole season on both sides of fish. Squeeze lime juice on each side, rubbing in a bit. Drizzle EVOO on fish so that it doesn't stick to your grill. Cook for about 5 min per side. Toast buns and place fish on browned buns. Sprinkle fresh rosemary on fish. Top with greens.

Stir fry green vegetables in 2 tbsp of EVOO. Add reserved lime juice, grated garlic, and kosher salt. Cook until slightly wilted but still bright green.

In separate bowl mix thousand island dressing and hot sauce. (I used the hot sauce that you find in Pho restaurants with the chilies in it.) Spoon sauce on the side for dipping.

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Yesterday I "harvested" my cauliflower and brussels sprouts leaves. I was really just thinning, but since Julie said that I could cook up the plants that I was pulling I decided to try it out. They were awesome. I was glad that Julie told me that I could eat them because I was a little sad that I had to throw away good veggy leaves. They never did anything wrong. Now they're in my tummy.






I really want to make another planter, but there isn't a whole lot of room out in our back yard. Edward said that he'd help me clear out the mound of dirt and junk behind our deck directly across from our current planter so that I could make myself a strawberry patch. I managed to clear his way of tree-like things a little with some gigantic pruning sheers that the landlords had left. The trees must have come from seeds that birds or animals dropped. The weird thing is that they are mostly growing from under the deck, which makes it hard to prune all the way down. My arms are still shaking (its about 2 hours since I finished)from trying to cut the dime-sized (diameter) trees. They were coming up to the deck and making it difficult for me to check on my herbs, which irritated me. I was also getting very tired of all of our weeds in our tiny little grass area. I decided to take things into my own hands. After consulting Edward and Julie, I decided on getting a cheap weed whacker to take down those burly weeds instead of Round Up. Some of them were really thick! I dressed up in my golushoes (not sure how to spell it), snowboarding socks, running pants, one of Ed's long sleeved shirts, garden gloves, a garden mask, and my giant sunglasses. It was about 80 degrees today so I was dripping with sweat. I don't know how Edward did all that grounds keeping last summer. I'm just not cut out for this kind of stuff. However, our little lawn area looks great. Here are some before and after pictures:



I barely even noticed the car in the background in the first picture!




I also finished that book The Red Pony and found the ending highly unsatisfactory. The novella was comprised of a series of four short stories that followed the life of a young farm/ranch boy named Jody. The end was so abrupt that I thought my book had lost a page. For a hundred paged book, there was quite a bit of death, which makes me think that farm life is not as peachy as Paris Hilton made it seem. The writing was excellent and everything that I expected from Steinbeck, but I wanted more! To me, this is the mark of a good book...leaving the reader wanting to know more about the character. The narrative was written in a limited omniscient point of view. Meaning there was a God-like view of the characters and surroundings but also a closer view of what Jody was thinking and feeling. It's kind of like when a movie pans out so that the viewer can see everything, but then zooms back in to the main character. I highly recommend this book. I saw it in the Doyle Middle school library, which leads me to believe that this book was a school requirement that my school failed to teach.

Well that's all for now folks. I think that I'll be very sore tomorrow, but I'm mighty proud of my garden work. I've also attached some of Edward's graduation pictures that I got off of my SLR.










Since Edward was graduating and his family is full of a bunch of nerds Julie got Edward a graduated cylinder as a grad present. Sadly, I knew exactly what it was before she pulled it all the way out of the bag to show me. I guess this means I'm sort of a nerd too. The fact that I first drank champagne (and thought I was totally cool) out of a beaker at Julie's old apartment puts me in the nerd-o category. As a graduate, Ed got an RPI paper weight. Now the paper weight is acting as a pedestal for the cylinder.