Summer Feasta!

That was supposed to be a summer fiesta but with an accented e so a pun on feast and fie- ah, you get the picture.

But here's an even better one.

This cholesterol cornucopia is easily the centerpiece to an all-american feasta. Such a work of art does not magically appear on a menu or out of a genie bottle, but rather through the careful and precious work of MS and MG. I just stood around looking purty.

At the end of a fine afternoon in the nation's capital, we three created a meal so bold it can only be called cliche: bacon cheeseburger, freshly boiled corn, watermelon, and washed down with a glacier-cool Sierra Nevada pale ale.

A quartet of burger balls were lovingly molded from a mixture, nay, formula of ground beef and a bit of meatloaf mix. While lean ground beef was an option, the fat is the flavor. The meatloaf mix had some veal and pork to give the meat some texture and the burst of flavor that it would need to be heard in this Wagnerian symphony of flavor.

Freshly plucked chanterelles BOLETES (KB) found their way into a lovely and lively butter sauce for a delicious sauteed condiment. A purple cherokee tomato was chopchopchopped for another fine condiment. These were complemented by onions and justice.

What is justice, you say? How about a 3 year aged Gruyere with more sustain than Nigel Tufnel's guitar. This cheese was so good it stuck with your palate as though the hook to "Hey Ya" freaked with the overture to "Nozzi di Figaro" in the back of Radio City and then made a baby and then that baby winked at you and was named "finely-aged Gruyere." Or something. If you can gather, it was pretty good.

Too much of a condiment and not enough to be a second course, a side of peppered bacon tenderly fried to a crisped phalanx of phlavor.

MG mixed up a fined cooked summer salad composed of eggplants, leeks, and a bunch of other stuff overshadowed by home-grown chilies added pizzazz and pop to this meal unheard of since Count Basie dropped his latest phonograph.

The burgers on the grill (along with a carrot for caramelization that was too thick to be a success) and the corn in the pot, we could only wait.

Though the watermelon was ripe and juicy, this was one "pudding" we would gladly wait to eat until after our meat.

boom.

Oh, the greasy glory. The bun held up because the meat and toppings were so rich they scoffed at the addition of a flavor blunderbuss like ketchup, although the heat of Sriracha never hurt nobody. Unfortunately, the Gruyere only came through in voluminous bursts as the cooking process favored the fattier Bacon in the battle of the tastes. The burger was fine, but at times lost out to the power of the dueling condiments (and the ubiquitous/alwaysawesome onion). But at times that savour did come through harmoniously, a rising crescendo in each chomp cascading about the caverns of the mouth and contours of the tongue. Hot damn.

This perfect summer's supper was complemented by watermelon, beer, and good company. An American must.

JK