Dan and I came up with the idea for this burger while we shared milkshakes at Luna Park Café in West Seattle, for lunch.
(If you haven’t been following along in a while, we lived on a rural island called Vashon for 15 years. We loved those years, but we’ve moved back to Seattle. We love it here.)
What do we talk about at lunch together? Food, of course.
This was his first day at home after quitting his job on Vashon. The commute was brutal — he’d leave the house at 7 am and return at 6:30 pm — and not worth it for the small amount that para-educators are paid in the American education system. He already has a path to a new job here, so we knew we had a week or two together at home.
Let’s celebrate with milkshakes!
I told Dan I had seen a turkey burger on someone else’s newsletter. “We should make a really good turkey burger,” I told him.
He took a sip of his vegan vanilla milkshake. (Dan doesn’t digest dairy easily. I can’t eat gluten.) “It’s hard to make turkey burgers taste juicy. They always feel a little dull to me.”
“Yeah, but that’s why we should try it! Come on — you love a challenge.”
So we bandied about ideas for ingredients that would add juiciness to the burger, umami, maybe a little sweet, something smoky. I wrote down some words on the notes app on my phone.
I swear, my entire life’s ideas live on my notes app now.
We finished our milkshakes, with a recipe mapped out, and drove to pick up our youngest from school.
After years of losing Dan to depression and autistic burnout, having him fully himself again has brought the return of our goofy, half-sentence, excited conversations about what we could create together.
God, I love this.
5 days later, we went back to it. “How about these for dinner tonight?” I asked him.
“Sure, let’s do it. Let’s play.”
These are the best damned turkey burgers I’ve ever eaten. Dan especially enjoyed watching our youngest kiddo — who will only reliably eat 8 foods — take a bite, then turn to us and say, “These are good.”
And then Deej ate the entire burger, without stopping. “Mom, this isn’t turkey, is it? I don’t like turkey at all. But I like this.”
So now we have 9 foods they’ll eat!
Danny called them heaven on a plate.
We love these. They are going into regular rotation now.
I’m pretty sure we’ll make this turkey burger every time now.
Plus, the mix makes excellent meatballs the next day, especially when you dip them in spicy peanut sauce.
We topped the burgers with that spicy peanut sauce too.
You’ll see that recipe this week.
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