Yes, Hot Dogs

We're still trying to use up the leftovers from a party we had several weeks ago, which is why I'm eating hot dogs for dinner. Although the party involved homemade pizza and fresh fruit, it also involved slaw dogs...and people ate all the dogs but left a bunch of leftover buns. So we bought more hot dogs. This was a totally logical thing to do.

Slaw dogs are one of the more bizarre Southern foods I've encountered. I'd heard of them and figured they were just hot dogs topped with coleslaw, until I found myself in a hot dog restaurant near the beach earlier this year and ordered one on a whim. It turns out a slaw dog is a hot dog topped with mustard, meat chili, and coleslaw. And I swear, it's completely delicious. Unreal.



For our home experiments I bought the all-beef, less sketchy hot dogs, and they're good. We have no more chili or coleslaw, so we're eating them plain. These were the last of them, grilled, served plain on whole wheat buns with ketchup and mustard. With them we had sauteed beet greens with garlic (on the left). My favorite thing about buying beets is that you can get two separate vegetable dishes out of one bunch -- the beets one night and the greens another. We also had the first garden eggplant of the year, grilled and tossed with olive oil and garden basil (on the right).

Mom, are you totally horrified that I eat hot dogs now? In my defense, it was probably you who fed me my first hot dog. It was probably cut into small slices with a toothpick in each one.