Hot Dog Time!

There are many things I would not know if not for the internet. Blogging, in particular, has brought me news of a great many things that anyone not desperate for material would find inconsequential to an almost staggering degree. I feel like a newspaper columnist!

For instance, did you know right now we're having some sort of hotdog..awareness...thing? It appears to be true! Now, I have nothing against hotdogs. I do not hold with the baffling snobbery that says it's great to eat the ass-end of a pig, but not the lips. And since I can actually read an ingredients list, I know that most hotdogs contain exactly what an average pork meal would anyway, i.e., pigmeat, spices, maybe a little starchy binder. The Jungle was a long time ago, folks, we get meat in our meat these days. At least in America.

In fact, hotdogs were an essential part of my path to culinary maturity. Tis true! Hotdogs, you see, are safe to trust to a young child who might not have entirely grasped the concept of heat-based hygiene yet. While most people eat them straight or on a bun, I was taught the wide legacy of hot-dog based white trash foods, like beans-n-wieners, hot dog pasta, and the never-again-to-be-spoken-of hot dog salad. Hot dogs broadened my horizons and kept me off the streets.

Yes, there are those who sneer at hot dogs--even those who would ban them-- because they're a cheap and commonly popular protein source, and we can't have that. But to heck with them--when they've eliminated the evils of school-lunch "salisbury steak", then perhaps we can talk. Until then, step away from the dogs. For without hot dogs, what would we eat at spectator sporting events? What could we grill on a moment's notice on sweltering hot summer days? What would be embedded in Jello Salad in old cookbooks, causing us all to have momentary but severe concerns about the existence of just and loving gods?

And most importantly, without hotdogs, how could the Texas State Fair have been the birthplace of that most perfect stick-food, the corndog? Answer: it couldn't. And then the Texas State Fair would not be maniacally devoted to promoting fried madness. And we would probably have had to cede the most lunatic food competition to Minnesota or some forsaken land where "lutefisk" is a concept. As it is, we can claim to deep fry Coke, so we're at least in the running. Thanks, hot dogs!