One of my favorite meals has always been a cheeseburger and french fries, but I don’t eat them much any more, certainly not at a fast food restaurant (or even a chain restaurant), where the fries would almost certainly be cooked in unhealthy vegetable oil, the meat would likely be CAFO, and the condiments would include lots of MSG and high fructose corn syrup.  when I decided I would really like to have a burger and fries, I wanted to try to make them as healthy as possible.

Here’s how I made my burger & fries, along with some compromises for convenience.  First, the hamburger meat is, of course, local and grassfed (Law Ranch Cattle Company), cooked medium, still a little pink inside, since I know where it came from and how it was processed.  The meat was lightly pattied and turned out tender and juicy.  Then I double fried organic potatoes (not local, but seemed fairly fresh) in goose fat and salted them with a little Celtic Sea Salt.  Wow!  It was the first time I’d used goose fat to fry potatoes and they were delicious!  The condiments included tender lettuce and juicy, red-ripe tomato (both bought at the farmers market this morning from the Winter Family Farm, Santa Fe, TX), a homemade dill pickle spear (made with the Nourishing Traditions dill pickle recipe), organic prepared mustard, and unsweetened ketchup (unfortunately, not organic).  The cheddar cheese slice was made with whole milk without artificial hormones or rBST, but was not raw milk cheese.  I think the biggest compromise was the bun, a white flour, non-organic, non-soaked bun, but it was at least freshly-made at a local bakery, not pulled from a grocery store plastic bag.  We did improve the buns by grilling them in real butter.  We eat bread so rarely, that it’s not worth keeping the ingredients and equipment to make it myself.

Well, that’s what was for dinner this evening and was it oh so good!