Burnt Weenie Sandwich

For a while I agreed with Frank Zappa at an easy and quick meal. The grill marks tell the tale but then it became unpleasant.

A hot dog (also spelled hotdog), also known as a frankfurter (sometimes shortened to frank), dog, or wiener, is a cooked sausage, traditionally grilled or steamed and served in a partially sliced bun. It is a type of sausage sandwich. Typical garnishes include mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise, relish, coleslaw, cheese, chili, olives, and sauerkraut. Hot dog variants include the corn dog and pig in a blanket. The hot dog's cultural traditions include the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

This type of sausage was culturally imported from Germany and popularized in the United States, where it became a working-class street food sold at hot dog stands and carts. The hot dog became closely associated with baseball and American culture. Hot dog preparation and condiments vary regionally in the US. Although particularly connected with New York City and New York City cuisine, the hot dog eventually became ubiquitous throughout the US during the 20th century, and emerged as an important part of other regional cuisines (notably Chicago street cuisine).

Ingredients

Common hot dog ingredients include:

* Meat trimmings and fat, e.g. mechanically separated meat, pink slime, meat slurry

* Flavorings, such as salt, garlic, and paprika

* Preservatives (cure) – typically sodium erythorbate and sodium nitrite

Pork and beef are the traditional meats used in hot dogs. Less expensive hot dogs are often made from chicken or turkey, using low-cost mechanically separated poultry. Hot dogs often have high sodium, fat and nitrite content, ingredients linked to health problems. Changes in meat technology and dietary preferences have led manufacturers to use turkey, chicken, vegetarian meat substitutes, and to lower the salt content.

Not one to be appetizer by the common bologna sandwich even with cheese and pickles I found the flat slab of pink meat(?) was bland and unappealing. I just figured hot dogs were bologna rolled into a penis.

Bologna sausage, sometimes called baloney and known in South African English as polony, is a sausage derived from mortadella, a similar-looking, finely ground pork sausage containing cubes of pork fat, originally from the Italian city of Bologna. Aside from pork, bologna can alternatively be made out of chicken, turkey, beef, venison, a combination, or soy protein. Typical seasoning for bologna includes black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, celery seed, and coriander, and like mortadella, myrtle berries give it its distinctive flavor. U.S. government regulations require American bologna to be finely ground and without visible pieces of fat.

In my youth, I didn’t have hot dogs at home. There was no grilling but a few dinners were ‘beans and franks’. My memories of ‘hot dogs’ were at the beach when one of my uncles would grill this stuff for the kids who had been running around out in the sun and ocean all day and immediately became projectile vomit.

Having grown up on steak and prime rib, I had to acquire the taste for pork and seafood because it wasn’t on the menu. Still hot dogs are just like chewing on rolled up baloney no matter how much onions, relish, pickles, tomatoes, kraut or other imaginable fixings piled on top.

Even with finer brands of quality meat, I still over think what makes a sausage. One should not think about their food or we would all starve.

The story ends with me going through the Tummy Temple looking for something consume to maintain life and with the heat, nothing catches my taste buds. Pizza? Nah, I had that the other day. Salads? I’ve eaten them for a week. Sandwich? All the deli choices are unimaginable. Soup? Seriously? In this heat?

So the result was to try ‘The Burnt Weenie Sandwich’ again. Burnt some ‘dogs’ in a frying pan then popped into the microwave to melt some fine cheddar cheese on a soft bun split down the middle. Slattuered in yellow squeeze and red splash and sweet cucumbers chips I timidly cut up the mass into bite size pieces and take a bite. Then I wait.

After a swallow of Colorado water I await to see if my tummy will accept this mass of familiar yet none tasty lunch or if I should stand up and move for the regurgitation process.

This time the mass went through the channel and stayed down even through my interpretation.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the process of frying and microwaving and chomping down on undistinguishable foodstuff and then move onto another food group.