Tuesday, March 19, 2013

IT JUST TASTES LIKE A HOT DOG, OKAY?!?!?

Every week as I compose my grocery list, I ask Patrick what he would like for our upcoming dinners.  And for the first four years of our marriage, every week he would invariably say one of the following items:

Meatloaf
Spaghetti
Fish

Please do not suppose that this is because I lack creativity in the kitchen.  I enjoy cooking (mostly because I enjoy eating) and I am not afraid to tackle new recipes.  And Patrick is most certainly not afraid to tackle new foods.  In fact, he likes to order items off restaurant menus that he has no idea what they are just to be surprised when they show up at the table (swiss cheese, ham, powdered sugar, and grape jelly on pumpernickel bread anyone?)  

Last June, I asked him the same old question expecting the same old answer.  But this time, I got this response:

Hot Dogs

Now, I am not a food snob, but I have some standards.  And eating hot dogs for dinner is below them.  But he followed his response up with this:

...and I'll make them.

And that, my friends, is all it took for hot dogs to no longer be below my standards for dinner in our household.  Bring on the frankfurters.

So over the past 10 months, we have periodically had hot dogs for dinner.  But Patrick cannot just bring himself to slap together a hot dog, bun, ketchup, and mustard and call it dinner.  No, no, we must become hot dog connoisseurs.  We must not just eat the hot dog, we must experience it.  And (like all things the Esbers do) we must make hot dogs unnecessarily complicated.

Our running list of "hot dogs we have tried" is written on the back of a sample ballot for the 2012 election.  A ballot which a friend asked to borrow and make a copy of, and I said, "uhhh, not to be difficult, but our hot dog list is on the back of that...so can I email you the website I got it from instead?"  Aforementioned friend's look was priceless.  A mix between "what the heck are you talking about?!?!?" and "why am I somehow not surprised that the Esbers think their hot dogs are more important than the presidential election?"  Like I said, priceless.

The list goes as followed:

  • Cuban Dog - ham, Swiss cheese, pickles
  • Seattle Dog - onions, cream cheese, brown mustard, sauerkraut 
  • Hawaiian Dog - mango, pineapple, jalapeño peppers
  • Parisian Dog - pears, Brie cheese, Dijon mustard
  • Chicago Dog - tomato, pickle relish, yellow peppers, onions 
  • Pizza Dog - marinara sauce, mushrooms, fresh mozzerella cheese, basil leaves
  • Banh Mi Dog - mayo, Sriracha sauce, sugar, cucumber, carrot, mint leaves

Not exactly a health food list.  But overall, they were good; some better than others (mint + hot dogs = bad choice) but as long as Patrick is willing to fix them, I suppose we will be adding new recipes to the list.  But for a woman who prides herself on her "personalized" grocery coupons always being for carrots, apples, and whole wheat bread, I will admit to being a tad appalled when our last flyer arrived in the mail.  You guessed it: $1.00 off your choice of hot dogs...







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