Unsinkable

So, Dillon is trying to raise/save money for an iPad. His Dad told him if he came up with half the money, we’d pay for the other half. The question then became: how does an 8-year-old with an allowance of $4 per week raise this kind of money?

It occurred to me that there is a hot, long, laborious job that I wanted to be completed this summer that I could outsource.  The fence needs to be stained again.  And Dillon and I negotiated terms and he got to work.

He’s been listening to his iPod shuffle while he works, and occasionally I hear him belting out the strains of a song as he paints.  Yesterday I heard the familiar, “way oh way oh waaaay ohhh waaaay ohhhh,” and he runs over and puts an earbud in my ear.  “You need to hear this!”

I already know, as I am the person who loads the music on his iPod.  And I tell him that the Bangles was the first tape I ever bought.  I am not sure he knows what a tape even is, but he says, “This is my favorite song in the whole world!”  I tell him I’ll make sure it’s on my iPod for our upcoming car trip, and he says, “Yeah, put it on FIVE times in a row.  I like it a LOT.”  And I laugh.

For mother’s day this year I gave several of my favorite mothers (including my own) a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  I loved this book about a family’s quest to eat local, healthy, non-factory-farmed foods.  My mom took this book to heart, and has been trying a similar experiment at her house.  She and my dad ate pretty well and mostly vegetarian (to my dad’s chagrin) anyway, and my dad’s standard joke when she serves up a heaping plate of quinoa is: “well, as long as you made me a cheeseburger.”

So, for father’s day this year, my sister Kate and I decided to take my dad on the Best Four Burger Tour.  Basically, I googled and tried to find a consensus of the best burger joints in Milwaukee and came up with a list: AJ Bombers, Sobelman’s, Solly’s, and Stack’d.  And we made a date to go out for burgers on four sort-of-consecutive Wednesday nights.

Our first burger was at AJ Bombers, where we realized we needed a rubric, which we discussed and drew up on a napkin as we ate.  We decided to go with: Burger to bun ratio, Creativity, Quality of secret sauce, Messiness, and Taste.  We also gave an overall grade, which we borrowed from http://www.madisonatoz.com/ (You should check out their website if you haven’t, it is awesome.)  I set up a surveymonkey to track our grades, and we were good to go.

Each of the burger joints stood out in their own ways.  [Spoiler alert: at Solly’s the secret sauce is butter.]  The perfect burger is an elusive thing, and I wasn’t disappointed at any of the establishments.  And I am not turning this into a food blog, so if you want to get the ratings you can message me.

But really, this was the best present I have ever given my dad.  Well, I haven’t asked him, but it was my favorite present anyway.  Because it was just awesome to hang out with him and my sister once a week and have a burger.  As a matter of fact, none of us wanted the burger tour to end, so we’re expanding our list a bit.  (Let me know if you have a recommendation.)  Though that might just be to save my dad from having to consume excessive amounts of quinoa.