Harold & Kumar Go to the Farmer's Market

Special to Seattlest by sous chef Ryan Tateishi, who can also be found at Canlis.

After grilling off nearly a thousand burgers at the Queen Anne Block Party, we wanted nothing more than to take a cold shower. We were covered in soot, face and neck badly sunburnt, remembering dad and how he would return home from long hours spent on the tarmac, burnt the same shade of deep red.

Dad's a great cook, but he has a special talent for overcooking fish and burgers. Upon eating them, one’s mouth achieves a state of dryness that is usually only accomplished by attempting to eat a whole sleeve of saltines without taking a single sip of water. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s not clear why dad feels the need to press down on the burgers so hard that all the juices come pouring out of them like a wrung-out sponge, but it was because of those patties--so dry they could rival the absorption power of a ShamWow--that we swore off well-done burgers.

But with consumption of E. coli-tainted meat on the rise, we’re wary of eating anything other than a well-done burger. Seattle attorney Bill Marler recently stated in his blog that the meat industry and the USDA have a habit of blaming the consumer for eating tainted meat. So if one falls victim to a contaminated burger, it’s because he or she didn’t take the proper precautions. There are warnings printed at the bottom of many menus indicating the dangers of consuming undercooked meat. However, as is pointed out in Marler’s blog, cooking meat to a proper temperature doesn’t necessarily ensure one’s safety.