I am not proud of it, but for the most part, @mrsbozz does most of the cooking in our house. It's not that I don't want to help or that I am bad at it, but she is a fantastic cook and she is also an amazing planner.

That means she typically has the meals for the following week planned out by the weekend so we know what groceries to get on Friday after work when we visit the store.

She also frequently spends her morning on Sunday "prepping" the meals for the week ahead. This usually means browning off chicken, assembling casseroles, chopping vegetables, etc.

While I am typically the grill master of the family, I occasionally like to take over the menu for a week and do all of the planning and cooking myself. @mrsbozz still has to help me a little(because she knows what we are stocked up on and what we are not), but I try to keep the burden on her minimal.

Since I don't have a school board meeting to attend and the rest of my schedule after work is pretty minimal, I decided this would be a good week to take over.

I am a big fan of patty melts and it is often one of my go-to orders if we are out to eat at a new place.

If you read this post you know that @mrsbozz isn't too fond of beef, so we swapped out the traditional burger patties with some ground chicken. It wasn't one of the packages I ground myself though. It was one of the pre-bought packages from the store.

The patties were pretty easy to make and I just added some salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce to them.

With the patties all ready to go, I started some onions caramelizing in my cast iron pan. I am pretty proud of this pan. I got it several years ago as a Christmas present and though I don't use it often, I have worked really hard to make sure it is seasoned well.

I started with some olive oil as well as a hefty scoop of butter in the pan. I made sure not to turn the heat up too high on the stove top because I know that olive oil can burn at a relatively low temperature. I also know that cast iron conducts the heat really well so you usually don't have to have your burner set as high as you do with other pans.

When I put the sliced onions in, I also threw a small amount of salt on them to help draw out the moisture and allow them to caramelize even more.

While the onions were working their way down to golden goodness, I started mixing together the sauce for the patty melts. The recipe called for equal parts mayonnaise and Dijon mustard as well as some hot sauce and BBQ sauce. We don't have Dijon mustard so instead I used a spicy brown mustard that I like to put on my sandwiches and I left out the hot sauce. Mixed with the mayo and BBQ sauce, the end result was actually pretty fantastic.

I pulled the onions out and put the patties inot the pan. I didn't have to add any additional fat to the pan because it was still coated from the onions.

After about five to six minutes I flipped the burgers over. Normally I would have done this on the grill, but I have always heard about how great burgers are in a cast iron pan. The crust that you get from the pan is supposed to be something special vs. a traditional pan or grilling them.

I probably cooked them longer than I should have, but given we were working with turkey and not beef, I didn't want to take the chance of them being undercooked.

After another six minutes or so on the other side I threw the swiss cheese on the top of them and added a small amount of water to the pan. I then took the glass cover from another pan we had and held it over the cast iron pan so the steam would help the cheese melt.

Not needing all of the carbs, @mrsbozz and I decided to go with an open faced style sandwich. She also isn't a huge fan of the traditional rye bread, so we opted instead for slices of wheat.

My plan was to toast the bread off in the cast iron pan, but I think the bread I was using was too starchy and it started sticking to the pan. I ended up with a hot mess so instead I used the toaster to prepare the bread and then we assembled our patty melts.

I thought they turned out really well and @mrsbozz enjoyed hers too. She actually ended up only eating half of the bread because she didn't really feel like it added much to the dish as a whole. I think it probably would have been better if it had been rye since it would have felt more traditional.

I think this is definitely a dish we will have again in the future.

Finally, I felt the need to show just how awesome my cast iron pan is seasoned. It only took a little bit of water and I was able to wipe everything out with a paper towel. I have always been intimidated a little by cast iron. The ease with which it can rust if you don't take care of it properly can seem scary to some people. With a little care and commitment though you will end up with a pan that can be passed down for generations.

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