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Hi food folks. I joined the StartUp Nation community recently, updated my profile yesterday and am ready to engage.

Erin’s idea here is terrific, and because it’s the first day of the Labor Day weekend, I’d like to contribute three recipes: a family favorite, one adapted from another source, and one that’s all our own (my soft companion, Vicki, and me).

Great-Aunt Laura, like most of the women on Mom’s side, was an Indiana farm girl, and I’m here to testify that farm girls can cook. (One of their big advantages, of course, was the easy availability of the freshest seasonal ingredients right outside their doors.) At gatherings, one of her many favorites (including farm-fresh deviled eggs with just a trace of Amaretto stirred into the yolk filling as a sweetener) is marinated four-bean salad. We’ve been eating it for (mumble) years, and it’s still the best I’ve ever shoveled into my yap. At the risk of a certain kind of sacrilege, I sometimes add a fifth bean, garbanzos (chickpeas, chichi beans, ceci beans), just because I like ’em.

Make this today if you can, because as good as it is on the same day, it’s transformed when allowed to marinate for two.

Aunt Laura’s Marinated Bean Salad

For the salad:

• 1 can (14-16 oz.) each: green beans, wax beans, small red (kidney) beans, butter beans and garbanzos (optional), drained and rinsed in cold water.
• 1 cup each chopped celery and onion (sweet onions like Vidalia, Walla Walla, Maui or OSO Sweets are best)
• ½ cup chopped green pepper
• 1/4 cup (small jar) chopped pimientos (most of us call them “pimentos,” which really refers to Spanish allspice. Food trivia: Pimientos, when dried instead of canned, are ground into paprika).

For the dressing/marinade:

• 1-1/2 cup each, sugar and white (or cider) vinegar
• ½ cup cooking oil (corn, canola, peanut, but not olive)

Combine the dressing ingredients. Bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved, then remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

Combine the salad ingredients, add on the dressing, stir well and refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

Spicy-As-You-Want Smoky Honey Sauce

Make this today or tomorrow to get a little age on it and allow the flavors to combine. I adapted this from a recipe on www.honey.com. I’m a beekeeper, so honey shows up in a lot of the stuff I cook. It includes chipotle pepper (chee-pote-lay, not chuh-pole-tea, like Emeril and others so persistently mispronounce it), which is smoked jalapeno, sometimes available dried, but more commonly canned and packed in tomato-based adobo sauce. You can find them in the ethnic foods section of most any decent supermarket these days. Add a tad of the adobo to this recipe for more tang.

This is fantastic for burgers, but once you taste it, you’ll think of all kinds of other things to use it on.)

Combine:

• 1 canned chipotle pepper, sliced or chopped
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons Miracle Whip (or mayo, but the MW adds a different sweetness)
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard

Blend thoroughly and refrigerate until ready to use.

On Labor Day, if you plan to make some tasty burgers, try these. Please don’t waste your money on ground beef labeled “hamburger” (too much fat by weight) or steak cuts like sirloin (too little fat, too little flavor, cooks up dry). Use ground chuck. It has the perfect meat-to-fat ratio for burgers, cooks up juicy and full of flavor, and is by far the first choice of professional chefs.

Vicki and I like to use Mexican cheese for our burgers, either queso blanco, which becomes soft and creamy, but doesn’t melt when heated; or chihuahua, a very light yellow, semi-soft cheese sometimes called queso menonita, because it was first made by Mennonites in northern Mexico. Both are getting easier to find in good supermarkets, and are always in the cooler in Mexican food stores. If you can’t find them, substitute Monterey jack.

This is the way we like to do it:

Southwestern “Cheeseburgers”

• Enough ground chuck to make a half-pound patty per person (or no less than a quarter-pound), well-chilled.
• Sliced queso blanco, chihuahua or Monterey jack
• Salt, any Mexican (or American) chili powder, dried oregano (preferably Mexican, which has a more pungent flavor)

Season the ground chuck liberally and shape into an even number of thin patties. Don’t squeeze or handle the meat any more than necessary to shape it; the warmth in your hands will start to melt the fat and ruin the texture of the burgers. Place a slice or two of cheese on half the patties, then top with the other half. Press lightly around the edges to seal the cheese inside.

Grill or pan-fry the burgers just until a little cheese starts to ooze out of each, serve on good Kaiser or onion rolls, top with Spicy-As-You-Want Smoky Honey Sauce or your favorite condiments, a thick slice of red or sweet onion, maybe a slice of fully ripe tomato, and chow.

One more thing: Give some thought and thanks to the hard-working folks who built this country and still are its backbone, then lustily feed your face and have a great time.

Sorry about the long post. It’s my first time.

this requires a shift in priorities!

clearly, i will have to change the "one thing i will accomplish today" i already logged.

thanks for the ideas!

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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation