Homemade Burgers

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This weekend I decided to attempt to make some homemade beef burgers which although I’m watching what I’m eating I thought I fancied a treat. As it happens I kept them pretty healthy, The recipe below make 4 large burgers, I served them with a bit of salad, but one on a bun with some cheese (and possibly bacon) I’m sure sure would have been even better! :-D

Ingredients

  • 1lb (450g) Lean minced beef steak
  • 1 Onion, medium, finely chopped
  • 1 Red Chili, finely chopped (optional, but not all that hot)
  • 1 Egg, beaten
  • 1tsp Parsley
  • 1tsp Oregano
  • 1/2tsp Thyme
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground black (or mixed) pepper

Method

  1. In a large bowl place the mince beef and break it up with your hand
  2. Add the onion, chili and herbs to the beef and mix in well
  3. Season with a little salt and black pepper
  4. Add the beaten egg to the mince mixture and mix in well, so that all of the egg is combined into the mince.
  5. Heat a frying pan (preferably, non stick) to a medium heat
  6. Take a small amount of the mix and flatten, fry the sample of the meat until cooked and taste to ensure that the seasoning is adequate.
  7. Adjust the seasoning, if required
  8. Split the remaining mince mixture into 4 and shape into burgers then fry for about 15 minutes or until the page is thoroughly cooked.

There are a number of other herbs, spices or ingredients which could be added to your tastes, such as placing some cheese into the centre of the burger to create a melting burger… Yum!

If you’ve tried making these and have suggestions for others to try, add your comments below!

Homemade Burgers & Salad

Aku's Burgers and salad

Birthday Weekend in Chester

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Back in the middle of February it was my birthday and as it happened I didn’t have a lot planned so when a friend of mine who was 30 a few days later invited me to visit him in Chester I thought “Why not!”

I decided that I’d take the train for a change, it would give me a chance to relax for a few hours and hopefully revise for my first MySQL exam. Typically although the train left on time there were a few issues with a level crossing at Gilberdyke, which meant I had to dash to my connection when I got to Manchester.

After a rather enjoyable and scenic (and as it happens chatty) journey on the second train I arrived in Chester. I met up with my friend, headed to drop my stuff off, something to eat and then out for a few beers – not a particularly late night as I was planning on seeing a bit of chester the following day and not be stuck inside with a hangover.

Having never been to Chester before I wasn’t really sure what to expect of the place, I’d heard it was meant to be quite picturesque and I’d also heard that it dated from Roman times, but not a lot more than that.

Typically as is often the case in the North West of England, it was raining on the Saturday morning but that didn’t stop us getting up and heading to Lloyds No.1 for a cooked breakfast. Once fueled up for the day I was taken the grand tour of Chester, being shown “The Rows” & city centre, the Grosvenor Museum the Cheshire Military Museum, the city walls and the grounds on Chester cathedral.

The Cheshire Military Museum wasn’t a place either of us were planning on visiting but due to the poor weather and the Grosvenor Museum not yet being open we happened to pass by the castle grounds, saw the sign, so checked it out. The entry price was only £3 for adults and as it turned out I really enjoyed it. The museum had a large section that was dedicated to the armed forces of the local area and also covered many period from Roman times to the 20th Century.

More information about the Cheshire Military Museum can be found here

Room in the Grosvenor Museum

Room in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester

The Grosvenor Museum was another place well worth visiting it had a variety of sections and exhibits including rooms in a house as they would have been throughout the ages, a collection of art work and small natural history section. This museum was free entry, although of course donations are always welcome.

 

More information on the Grosvenor Museum in Chester can be found here

The Roman AmphitheatreAs well as the museums I saw some of the outside attractions including a walk right around the city’s walls and also the ruins of the amphitheater.

In the afternoon we headed round the city centre stopping for a drink, then headed back to change and out for a some food and a couple of drinks for Matt’s birthday, finding nice “crypt” bar, playing some good music, shame about the food though!

On Sunday we got up grabbed some breakfast and it was time for me to be on my way back across the country.

All in all I had a great time in Chester, not only seeing friends again and have a few beers, but also the city and all the attractions. I’m sure I’ll be heading back to see more in the future.

MySQL Exam Booked

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Powered By MySQLAssuming that this blog is accessed by actual people and not just spam bots, adding comments (a long shot, I know), some of you might remember that one of my goals for this year was to become a MySQL certified developer (followed, hopefully by DBA).

Well last week I got agreement from my employer that they would pay for the exams and as such have now booked exam number 1 for the 19th March 2012. All payed for and arranged by our training department, I’ll be taking a trip to Beverley and 90 minutes later, be a step closer to achieving one of my professional aims for the year.

This won’t be the first certification for a specific computing technology, a couple of years ago, I became a Zend Certified PHP5 Developer, the bad news is about 4 weeks after I obtained the certification they released the new exams for version 5.3 – oh well.

Well wish me luck!

 

Goals for 2012

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Each year I set myself some goals for the year and attempt to stick to them, usually it doesn’t last a whole year, in fact in most cases might last for the whole of January but then I lose interest – generally due to time. This year I’m going to make a real effort on a number of my goals and I’ll set myself some additional which I don’t expect to achieve, but will feel so good about myself if I do somehow manage it.

This year I’m going to split them down into some broad categories, which might help me make things easier to plan and prioritise. Continue reading →

A Blog Reborn

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Some of you who read my old blog might have visited today wondering, where is all the old content? The answer is, unfortunately, gone! never to be seen again.

The data is gone because the VPS service that I was using to host my blog terminated my service at the end of last year, and as I didn’t notice the email until January it was too late to do anything about it. Luckily for me I have a “spare” server that wasn’t doing much at all, in fact I got it because I had intended to get some practical experience with Asterisk but failed to find the time, so all it was doing in the end was serving as a seldom used mercurial server and dns server to one of my domains.

Probably the most annoying aspect of the termination of my other VPS was that I lost a number of sites that were up an running and of course I didn’t have a recent backup of them – lucky for me these site are done not for profit, otherwise it could have been worse.

As it happens I don’t think it is necessarily all that bad, I lost a couple of sites which I’ve had to since replace and disable some content of, but it’s given me an opportunity to upgrade my blog and start thinking about adding fresh new stuff on a regular basis.

So I hope that the (few) people that make time to read this enjoy and of course comments are welcome, but spam will be deleted!

Just one final thing, the themes, plugins and everything else a stock WordPress, I hope to very shortly get round to tinkering with the look and feel of the site, so please bear with me!

Happy Reading,

Aku.