Food: My sliders - White Castle eat your heart out

One thing I haven't quite got down in the kitchen is timing. I'll go in, excited to make a recipe, and plan to eat said recipe within an hour of making it. Then I'll actually read the recipe, and find out I have to let something sit for one hour before proceeding. Or that it takes twice as long to cook or bake something as I had expected. Tonight was one of those nights.

I saw premade beef sliders at the grocery store last week, and was inspired to make a fun meal of sliders and fries one night. So I bought a pound of ground beef – Laura's lean beef – and some mini-hamburger buns, and decided to make a California-style slider and a slider topped with carmelized onions (because that's what I've seen on restaurant menus).

I made the sliders tonight after a day of helping some friends paint their house. I was starving.

I started, as always, with wine. Another cheap wine - Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon. It's OK, but if you're going to go with a Barefoot red, go with the Merlot. It's $6.99, and it's a great simple wine for weekday nights.

Now into the preparations, it was the carmelized onion that caught me by surprise. Apparently it takes 30 minutes to properly carmelize onions, according to this website. As I had already started baking Alexia Foods' sweet potato fries, which take 20 minutes to bake, I adapted and cooked one sliced onion for as long as I could until the burgers and fries were finished.

I seasoned the burgers with a mixture I found online at allrecipes.com, but I made it sans onion powder and cayenne pepper because I didn't have any. But it was a great and very simple seasoning to throw together at the last minute.

I grilled the burgers on my Calphalon square grill pan, one of my favorite kitchen items.

And then pieced together my sliders with swiss cheese, avocado and tomato on one, and carmelized onions on the other.

I overcooked the burgers a little, and the sweet potato fries had to be reheated.  But even so, the meal was great. And my husband gave his seal of approval. Once I get this timing thing down, they may be even better.