farewell summer.....

To say goodbye to summer, we had a proper grill-out. We made Bacon-Fried Summer Squash and Bleu Cheese Bacon Jalapeno Burgers.

We cut up a few summer squash into slices and allowed them to sit for about five minutes. Meanwhile, we mixed equal parts flour and sugar in a bowl (about 1/2 cup each) and added a pinch of salt. The real trick to this is that we were just finishing up frying some bacon for the burger, so after dredging each slice in the flour mixture we were able to add them to the hot bacon grease to fry.

The bacon grease was not enough to do all the summer squash, so we had to add some oil vegetable oil halfway through. Flip each slice after a minute or two. Here you can see that the summer squash and bacon coexist quite nicely:

These didn't fry up nice and crispy (they were actually a big soggy), but they had a surprisingly delightful flavor from the sugar.

To make the burgers, I chopped up about a half of an onion and added it to lean beef and formed them into patties. I'm not quite sure what Tom added to the meat (I'll ask him about that and update this later), but even just the meat cooked as is would have been fine with all of the yummy toppings we added to this. After the burgers cooked on the grill, we added bleu cheese (the dry crumbles, not the dressing), jalapenos and bacon.

To top off this farewell to summer party, Tom cleared off our back patio and we ate outside in the cooling air. Since we were in Colorado this time last year, we rounded out the meal by drinking two different beers that are both from Colorado (Gordon from Oskar Blues and Ranger).

Our last tomato of the season also makes a cameo shot in the photo above!