Harvey's Revisited

During our recent move we ate out and had take-out a bit more because it was practical when living for fifteen days between two houses and during the settling in period.  Once we were back from our fall vacation the first week of October, we quickly got into the routine of cooking at home again.  We generally go for wings at Crabby Joes on Tuesday nights and to our favourite English fish & chip restaurant on Friday nights leaving five nights a week most weeks for home cooked meals.  The weather has been getting gradually nastier so we even skipped going out the last couple of Fridays in lieu of have a nice home cooked fish dinner.  My husband surprised me last week by bringing home Harvey's burger and fries.  He seldom does this because he knows I usually have dinner on but that particular night he had a couple of meetings so was running late for dinner.  It's a good thing I didn't have dinner on!

I wrote about the Canadian restaurant chain, Harvey's before.  By far, Harvey's is one of the very few fast food restaurants I will eat at.  Their charbroiled on a flame grill burgers are very much like the burgers we make at home on the outdoor grill.  The burgers are deliciously unpretentious with custom toppings of your choice.  What is really nice is you can order a topping like pickles on the side.  They are quite generous if ordered this way. 

Pictured is the old fashioned cheese burger with fries and dill pickle slices on the side that my husband brought home for me.  He had a double original bacon burger and we shared the fries.  It was a delightful taste of summer on a cold, dreary, rainy evening.

We grill year round but during the months of November and March, the weather tends to be the nastiest.  Quite often it is raining or drizzling or sleeting or whatever else Mother Nature wants to toss at us making it not the nicest grilling weather.  It doesn't help that its dark by 5 PM in November either.  It's nice to have an alternative like Harvey's where the burgers are very close to homemade to enjoy should the craving for a grilled burger arise during those months.  Now the biggest difference between our homemade grilled burgers and Harvey's is the actual burger patty.  Our homemade burger patties are handmade, never flattened or frozen into a pattie so if you want to make one Harvey's style you need to flatten the patty using a burger press then freeze and grill from frozen without thawing.