I am an American and I Eat Hot Dogs

Sunday, April 18th, 2004, Fenway Park, Red Sox vs Yankees

1 x Fenway Frank with onions, relish, and mustard, $3.75

I decided to play it safe for this game and went with the classic Fenway Frank. It was pretty much the highlight of the game. Derek Lowe sucked and the Yankess got their only win of the series. Boo!

Thursday, April 15th, 2004, Fenway Park, Red Sox vs. Orioles

¾ of a Foot-long dog with onions, relish, and mustard, $4.75

It was my first game of the season, so I decided to go all out. It had been well over a year since I had a dog at Fenway, so I was pretty psyched. I got all my favorite condiments on this foot-long, and it lived up to all my expectations, but I just could not overcome it. In the past weeks I’ve had such a surge in hot dog consumption, that I couldn’t bear to stomach this entire, enormous dog. Jay gladly took care of the final quarter of my dog.

The game was a pretty discouraging affair. It went into extras, but the Sox bullpen blew it bit time and we had to watch the Orioles score about 6 runs in the 11th inning. By the time the game was over though, we had upgraded our seats from mid-Bleachers to a few rows behind the Sox on-deck circle.

Sunday, April 4th, 2004, my apt.

1 x Karl’s hot dog served ballpark-style

This was the actual opening day dog. I invited a bunch of friends over for some weenies, martinis, and Red Sox baseball. Yes, it was all very exciting. We cooked these suckas up on my charcoal grill. Everyone seemed pretty pleased with the combination of dogs, booze, and baseball.

I had a Karl’s original with some raw onions, red pepper relish, and Grey Poupon. It was a little fancier than a normal ballpark, but it had the right attitude. The Karl’s dogs really grill up nice. They split open and fill with charcoaly-goodness. The Red Sox lost.

Saturday, April 3rd, 2004, Liz’s birthday party, at her house which is somewhere in Medford or Somerville

1 x Fenway Frank w/onions, relish and mustard, 1 x Karl’s dog w/ rabbit stew and Parmesan, all grilled (charcoal) by me!

This was the big event. The first Hot Dog Consulting job. Jay picked me up a couple of hours before the party and we drove up to Karl’s Sausage Kitchen in Saugus. I bought a handful of the frankfurters and I also got some nitrate-free dogs because the Hot Dog Headache has been getting me down. Then we went to Star and picked up some good old fashioned New England Style split-top buns. I think we even got 3 different varieties, but I can’t remember what they were.

Once we got to Liz’s, I stared the prep-work. We had planned to serve two hot dogs. The first was a ballpark style dog in honor of the impending opening day of the baseball season. I bought some Fenway Franks and some Hebrew Nationals for this occasion. This one was topped with diced onions, green relish, and some Market Basket yellow mustard (as ghetto as it gets!). The second dog was a Karl’s frankfurter topped with rabbit stew and Parmesan cheese. I had made the rabbit stew the night before. I didn’t start it until 10pm, and it is supposed to cook for 3 hours, but I fell asleep and didn’t shut it off until 5am. It was a little overdone. The onions appeared to have disintegrated, and it lost a good deal of that nice sweetness, but at least it was still edible. We had originally intended to serve this with Romano, but, despite Jay’s assurances, there was no Romano to be found in the fridge.

The party was pretty small. Katie and Dave seemed most excited about the hot dogs. They were pretty psyched for the rabbit stew. They were impressed enough by the concept to be somewhat forgiving about the overcooked rabbit stew. I think Dave even ate two. I thought they were all right, but it really paled in comparison to that dog Georg put together at the first Weenies and Martinis.

Liz’s other friends gave me the impression that they considered themselves to be above hot dogs. At the very least, Liz tried a ballpark style and seemed to enjoy it. I’d say the event was a success even though we didn’t get paid. At the very least, I ended up with more than enough left-over dogs for opening day.