My beloved husband went off on a Boy’s Adventure Weekend. This left me with the entire house and kitchen to myself. When this happens, I become a bit like a mad scientist left alone in my laboratory. So, it was just me, the cats, and that most dangerous invention, Food Network. After some house work, chick flicks, and visiting with my parents, I spent an hour putting away laundry and watching Emeril. He made a great looking cold cucumber soup and I just had to try it. It’s been over 90 degrees and very humid in New England, something we are not used to, and this dish seemed like the perfect antidote to the sweltering heat.

I woke up on Sunday and went off to my local market and raided the produce section. I had decided that a nice salad nicoise would be the perfect accompaniment to this dish. I also picked up a bottle of my current favorite cheap wine, the pinot grigio produced by Twin Fin (available from Wine.com). I headed home and got cooking. My plan was to have a lovely late lunch waiting for my husband when he returned from his manly outing. I find its important to remind him of the comforts of home.

The soup was a blast to make because it required no cooking. It gave me the opportunity to spend some quality time with my beloved food processor. I altered the recipe a bit by using only one jalepeno, I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy foods. The final product was lovely, cool and refreshing. I think that next time I make it I’d like to add a citrusy note, maybe lime juice, I think it would give it a little something extra.

To make the presentation special, and because I am big geek who loves to make things look pretty, I decided to serve the soup in a couple of our martini glasses. I garnished with chives from my garden and snipped a couple of the chive blossoms as well. When my husband returned home, all sweaty and smelly, I first sent him to the shower. Then, we settled down to this perfect summer lunch and laughs about his camping misadventures. Then I sat and sipped my wine and watched him clean up the kitchen, a perfect Sunday afternoon.

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My favorite place to eat in all of New Hampshire is LA Burdick’s in Walpole. It’s a chocolate shop and cafe and I’ve never had anything there that isn’t sinfully delicious. We took my mother-in-law there for Mother’s Day this year. We started the meal with their delightful cheese plate. This featured four cheeses in a range of intensities, a delightful fruit chutney, olives, seasoned nuts, and crackers. The cheeses were all wonderful and could be purchased at the market next door, many are by local artisans. We took home a creamy sheep’s milk cheese and a tangy blue.

For entrees Judith, my mother-in-law and I both enjoyed the salad nicoise. This version featured perfectly prepared tuna, egg, roasted peppers, new potatoes, green beans, and some delightful pickled red onions. My husband had the steak frites, cooked to perfection. We enjoyed this with a couple of glasses of house wine. The meal was simply scrumptious.

At Burdick’s desert is not an option. Unless you are a robot, their sweet confections are quite simply too good to pass up. Judith and Casey, my husband, both had frappes made from Burdick’s homemade ice-cream. Judith had the chocolate-banana and Casey had the chocolate-strawberry. The frappes were thick and a rick dark-chocolate in color. I sampled both and I can honestly say that these were the most delicious frappes I’d ever had. I had the hazlenut-orange cake and it was perfect, nutty and sweet.

Of course, I can’t leave Burdick’s without a take-home treat. The brazilian chocolates are my favorite, I savor their rich taste long after I’ve returned home. When I run out, I know its time to go back.

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Karaoke means “empty orchestra” in about the same way that karate means “empty hand.” The “oke” piece is actually a shortened form of “orchestra,” borrowed from western languages.

Ethiopians supposedly discovered coffee when they noticed goats eating the beans. No word on weather the coffee beans in their droppings are any good.

lunch, coffee, karaoke, karate, goats, coffee beans, orchestra

I learned of Harmon’s Lunch from a mention on The Splendid Table a few weeks ago. I wrote down the following quote from the show from memory, so it may not be entirely accurate:

They have two things on the menu, and nobody ever orders the other one. They serve hamburgers, and the only option is with or without onions.

As it turns out, the menu is a little richer than suggested. Red relish, mustard, and yellow cheese round out the toppings you can order, and celery salt sits with the condiments (including the traditional ketchup) at every table.

Founder Marvin Harmon died in 2003 at the age of 83. He opened the restaurant in 1960 and quickly became known for making the best hamburgers in Maine. The place has been in good hands since his 1985 retirement, though, as it’s still a popular place serving fresh-cooked burgers and fries to those who can find it.

And finding it can be a little difficult. Our first directions led is in a circle, our second directions got us lost, the third set of directs told us to look for landmarks we didn’t find. We were getting closer with every try, though. So the fourth bunch of directions just had to turn us around and get us headed the right direction. It was a pretty drive, even if a little uncertain. Use this map if you’d like to avoid some confusion.

tags: cheeseburger, diner, dinner, falmouth, falmouth me, food, hamburger, hamburger stand, hamburgers, hard to find, harmon’s hamburgers, harmon’s lunch, lunch, maine

Treated Mom to lunch at L.A. Burdick’s in Walpole today. The food at Burdick’s is always remarkable, but this time I got a decent photo of it.

I’m calling the plate in front a real tuna salad. Yes, those are strips of medium-rare tuna, but it’s the pickled onions that delighted me. In the middle is my rare steak with a dollop of stilton butter. For desert, we enjoyed a frappes and shared a piece of hazelnut-orange cake while thunder and large hailstones menaced the street outside.

The bigger problem, so far as Sandee is concerned, is that I’ve taken to photographing everything I eat. I blame Friday Food Fiesta on Flickr for that.

Technorati Tags: burdick’s, lunch, main street, new hampshire, walpole