If at first you don't succeed...

...try, try again next month :)

Tonight I tried round 2 of entering the Better Homes and Gardens Prize Winning Recipes contest--this one didn't work out so great for me :)

The theme was "Burger Love" with the goal of creating a new take on burgers (to go along with a summertime issue next August.) I loved everything I put on my burger except my burger patty (haha!)

You see, I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could craft a new burger from ingredients I almost always have on hand, so I made a patty out of 1/2 lb of ground sausage and 1 lb of ground venison...
--Okay, you caught me. I was just too lazy and too cheap to run to the store to pick up something specially for tonight!--

But in my defense, I mixed the venison with the sausage with sound logic in mind. Because venison is an extremely lean meat (it is almost impossible to make a burger patty out of pure venison without it crumbling--at least in my experience), I thought that the pork sausage would help hold the patty together and give the meat a bit of moisture (aka-delicious, fat-flavored goodness.) Well, while my patties did hold up incredibly, they were a bit drier than I would have hoped for. I think this also had something to do with my cook time. I was hesitant to take the meat off the grill pan early because both sausage and venison don't have the luxury of being served up a little rare like beef does.

Anyway, since I felt like my main component was not up-to-par, I chose not to send this recipe in. However, I saw no reason why it shouldn't make it onto my plate for supper tonight.

Not bad for a Tuesday night, right? By the way, if you are ever looking for a different way to dress up your burger, top your (BEEF!) patty with fried mozzarella slices, spinach, and slather your bun with a dressing made from about 1TBS mayo and 1tsp sun-dried tomato pesto (to be shared equally among all burgers, of course.) Perdy good.

So while I was bummed about my botched burger, it is hard to be completely down in the dumps. For one thing, tonight I taught myself how to make fried mozzarella slices. (SCORE!) But mainly, I realized that I have come a long, LONG way from being the girl in college who only knew how to make Cheerios and thought you were supposed to heat up canned tuna in the microwave (oy...yes, I know, disgusting.)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, my pie did not collapse in the freezer. Here's the finished product:

And now to wash it all down:

(Just kidding! I couldn't resist lol)