Humbercumberito

About two weeks ago, I made a rather unusual purchase. I was at Safeway.com, scrolling down the aisles, trying to keep my shopping cart from reaching the same limit as my bank account, when I came across what seemed like a tolerable substitute to my usual choice of New York steaks and flanken-style ribs. It is still in my freezer, so I will recite the label for you exactly as it reads on the packaging: "Twenty Quarter Pound Beef Patties - Smoke flavor added". The logo reads "Picnic Perfect". It resembles nothing so much as a frozen shoe box full of meat.

My first attempt at eating one of these failed. After Keithen and I had already put cheese and barbeque sauce on our Quarter Pound Beef Patties, I decided to make good use of some tomatoes and cucumbers and create a Mediterranean burger wrap. Needless to say, the combination of vegetables, cheese, barbeque sauce, and Smoke flavor did not sit well after the first few bites. I picked off the vegetables (I can't waste a good tomato!) and left the rest for the ancestors, with my humble apologies.

I've been avoiding the box in the freezer ever since - until tonight. This time, I planned it out from the beginning. First, I had Keithen season my Quarter Pound Beef Patty with paprika and cumin, instead of the previous Lawry's and Mrs. Dash. Then Keithen decided to flame-broil the Patties in my frying pan, by flipping them until the grease caught on fire. I suspect he was trying to burn away the smoke flavor. It worked pretty well. Unfortunately, in all the flipping and confusion of the smoke-filled kitchen, the two patties got mixed up. We turned off the fire and tried to determine which was which. They looked the same. They were too hot to taste-test, and one of them needed some cheese, stat, so we took a gamble. (I found out later that the only difference between them was pepper.)

My mystery-seasoned Patty in hand, I took out some leftover hummus from last week, spread it on a lightly-singed tortilla, and sliced up a cucumber. It was actually the other half of the cucumber from two weeks ago. I had to cut off some parts.

Well, if you're still here reading, and not running towards your bathroom holding back whatever the last thing you ate was, then you probably want to know how it turned out. I looked at my new creation, and wondered briefly what I should call it.

The Humbercumberito was born.

It needed pepper.

I give the Humbercumberito a 3.9 out of 10.

For the record, Keithen has been making something similar for several years and calls it a Mediterranean Burger. His uses fresh hamburger and other quality ingredients, and would probably warrant a 7 or 8 out of 10.