What do you put on your hot dog?
I ask because I had hot dogs yesterday, and I just happened to have a very well-stocked condiment shelf in my fridge. And boy did I...go...crazy.
Ketchup. Mustard. Relish (not the sweet stuff...the other stuff). Cheese. And some of my dad's homemade horseradish (whew! burn off the nose hairs a little bit).Am I the only person who can slather a hot dog bun full of condiments, forget to add the hot dog, and probably not even notice??
While I love to add four or five (hundred) different condiments to my hot dogs when I have the chance, the one drawback to that is when you've got everything stuffed in there, and you wrap the bun carefully around it all, trying not to lose any of the ingredients, as soon as you take your first bite, the back seam of the bun rips open, leaving you with two separate halves flapping against the dog, red and yellow and green spilling everywhere onto your fingers and the plate below, and quite frankly (get it?) an unsatisfactory hot dog-eating experience overall.
If anyone out there can manufacture some kind of edible hot dog zipper pouch or something, I'll put as much funding behind it as I'm able, because these puny little hot dog buns just aren't cutting the mustard. *ba dum bump*
I realize that many people don't share my love of condiments, but there are enough others who do. Please, help. We're going through napkins at an alarming rate.
So. Back to my question. Do you put a one-squeeze line of ketchup down the middle of your hot dog and call it good, or do you add dozens of different flavorings by the steamshovelful. (now that...is not a pretty-looking word.)
Or...(third option)...do you avoid those cylindrical tubes of mystery turkey, chicken and pork "products" and buy tofu instead?
I'd create one of those fancy polls, but it's kinda late, and I really don't know that I want my first poll to be about hot dogs. That'd be embarrassing.
For the record...I can eat hot dogs with just ketchup on them as well. As I did for most of this challenge, if I remember correctly. (For those of you curious about the reference to 58 brats in the opening paragraphs of that post, please click here for that tale.)
And after posting those two links, I should probably take this space to say farewell to the new readers I may have attracted in the past month, as they get to see what the early days of this blog were filled with. I'm not proud. (well...I am, kinda. or I wouldn't have created the links. right?)
It's not just punctuation, prepositions and proverbs, people. There's good old-fashioned gluttony, too. (yay.)
"Some people wanted champagne and caviar
when they should have had beer and hot dogs."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
A trip to Fenway Park a little over a decade ago wrought two unique experiences...
ReplyDelete1. The Fenway Crowd. It would seem that Bostonians treat their baseball as they would their opera and their symphony. Dead silence until a base hit or a nice catch, both of which were greeted with *polite* applause. As a County Stadium head banger, this was all very odd to me.
2. Their hot dogs came in what can only be described as glorified Wonder Bread masquerading as a bun. The positive byproduct of this was that you could use a front end loader to pile on the condiments and the monolithic tubesteak would all stay together quite nicely. Which, of course, was a perfect companion to the prim and proper Boston crowd. No relish on the ascot, please! Like a freakin' stadium full of Charles Emerson Winchester the Thirds, ya' know?
Additionally, if you trek to the Chicago (or even Milwaukee) area, you can find fully functional Vienna style hot dog stands with condiment options so vast that you're ultimately weighing the merits of Quik Chocolate Drink powder on a cheddarwurst.
And that, truly, ends what must be my longest diatribe, lifetime, on frankfurters.
Man what your blog brings outta' me!
Your dad makes horseradish?!? Ton-Fifty-ONE... you GOTTA bring some of that up north next time we all get together. You GOTTA!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, it was a treat when my mom would slice the hotdog lengthwise and fry it. I would dip in ketchup.
ReplyDeleteJeff...Front end loaders are the only way to go when filling a hot dog bun with condiments! And I don't think I've had enough Vienna style hot dogs in my day...the ones with the pickle spear and the big tomato and onion chunks. Mmm. I gotta get down to Chicago.
ReplyDeleteC!...He doesn't make it too often, but I'll put in a request that coincides with a trip. I think I've determined that if I could choose only two condiments for my hot dogs, they would be ketchup and horseradish.
SBW...Makes you wonder if slicing it lengthwise is part of what made it a treat for you, rather than, say, cut-up chunks. Sometimes preparation and presentation is a big deal...even with hot dogs! :)