angela boggiano's ultimate burger & homemade chips and hugh fearnley-whittingstall's lentil and bacon soup

We're admittedly slightly brackish this morning after last night's one or two drinking, so we have a fairly low-key day lined up. The absolute minimum is achieved; we watch some Scooby Doo, eat pancakes for brunch and then head over to Nursery as we're on the gardening rota.

An hour of battling with leaf-blowers and sweeping sand later, we have a mini-lunch, go shopping and finish the day in the sun in Palewell Park, where Milo decides he's a dog and we spend 15 minutes throwing a stick for him to fetch. Seriously. Had this been five years earlier, say in Tewkesbury, we'd have been in The Bell feeling slightly wonky on the quiz machine, so this is probably a step forward. Maybe not.

Anyway, the sun has clearly gone to Ana's head because she requests, for the first time ever, burgers for dinner! I'm agog, and we quickly find a positive side-effect because if you describe them as 'sort of like meatballs', somebody will actively volunteer to help make them:

Here is my first plate, replete with cheese, pickles and IoW relish:

It's definitely the first taste of summer, and I'm looking forward to doing some more burger recipes this year. We've got a turkey and lemongrass version from Billy G which we used to have fairly regularly, and there's a tandoori lamb one which has caught my eye. Fingers-crossed the weather rocks this year...

Eating together has another benefit which means I've got time to make up a week's worth of soup. This time an experimental Saint Hugh's lentil and bacon soup. It smells amazing simmering away:

sources
ultimate burger - angela boggiano, Delicious, June 2009, p46
lentil and bacon soup - hugh fearnley-whittingstall and fizz carr, The River Cottage Family Cookbook, p328