Friday Night, Hamburger Night

 I love Friday nights, the official end of the education/work week. At any stage during the education process Friday night was a release from the academic pressure of grade school junior, high, high school and of course college. Of course once you enter the work world Friday I've just time to even deep sigh of release knowing you don't have to face anything about work until the coming Monday unless it was holiday weekend and this is a holiday weekend now that I think about it. Even in retirement, I just love Friday nights. The sure is not the television entertainment venues to cover the Friday night. My favorite. As well Star Trek first broadcast on Fridays and I think also F Troop and Get Startthere were other offerings over the years including The Twilight And Outer Limits. But what I remember most was Friday was also designated hamburger night. I know in other posts I've indicated that our family often enjoyed square pizza night as well on Fridays but I remember a great many nights with homemade hamburgers.

A bit of a Segway but it's kind of important at night was that Friday was usually asleep overnight as well. My best friend John and his brother Tom spend the night at our house one week and the next weekend we would spend the night at their house. This was perfect for us because John and Tom were Catholic and forbidden to eat meat on Friday. They did then on Saturdays when we spent the night at their house John and Tom's mom made the best bacon and our sausage breakfasts which we are forbidden to eat (we followed a lot of the Jewish traditions in my home for some reason I've never really figured out). We had the best of both worlds.

Since we lived on farm and we raised our own beef we pretty much had endless supply of hamburger. I love my mom's hamburgers. She of course fashioned the patties by hand. Mom stretched the hamburger by adding bread and onions. The burger rendered a taste like small meat loaves. She also canned this great relish which was red. I did not really appreciate the relish in my younger days but not love to have a small bottle of her relish. Mom's hamburgers were moms hamburgers. I never appreciated the little burgers my mom made. I love the superflat patties which characterized burgers from the fast food joints. That's what I want but I was more than content to have mom's burgers on a Friday night sitting in front of a black-and-white television waiting for Star Trek…