Man's Favorite Dog

Today I ate my all time favorite fast food.  I may call it that but never junk food.  I'm talking about the legendary tube steak, the hot dog.  I have always loved hot dogs.  Even though I once worked in a meat processing plant in the sausage room where I processed the wieners by the thousand. I still like to eat them although I don't eat the brand that I once processed.  Indeed part of my education was learning that a wiener is a sausage and that the hot dog was invented by accident when someone sliced open a roll and put a sausage in it. Ah...such a colorful history about such a delicacy.  I am discerning in my tastes of hot dogs. While in Chicago I saw a hot dog with lettuce tomatoes and cucumbers on it. I'll take my salad in a bowl, thank-you.  They say a New Yorker never puts catsup on his dog.  There's no accounting for poor taste.  Some cover them with cole slaw, sour kraut or something else.  Most of these coverings should be considered sacrilege. And never, never confuse a wiener with a bratwurst.

I like my hot dog with a Ball Park or Hebrew National wiener. I don't eat "all-meat" wieners, they don't say where the meat comes from.  That wiener must be on a white steamed bun. It must be steamed. I like the wiener smothered in chile, with French's mustard and Hunts catsup and diced onions, but not Vidalia onions. French's mustard is bright yellow the way mustard should be and because of my political beliefs I refuse to use Heinz catsup.  The chile I make is from the recipe below that I got it from a friend who was a television videographer who got it from the station's weatherman.

Bill's Chili

• 1-11/2 lbs. ground beef (browned and drained) 
•  2T chile powder 
• 1/2 t Celery salt 
• 1/2 garlic salt
• 1/2 ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup catsup

Mix together and cook for 15 min. on low heat 

I add a touch of hot sauce  for a little bite and cook the beef in water, it falls apart better

I was selling bottles I had collected when I was a kid to the owner of what is now referred to as a convenience store.  It also sold fish bait and hot dogs and other stuff guys would need for a day of fishing on the near by lake.  I had only been there a few minutes when a big fellow with a hot dog in his hand came blasting through the door.
"This bun doesn't  have a wiener in it!" he said in a loud voice and without the customary southern accent.
Old man Parks, the store owner, stopped counting my bottles and looking him straight in the eye said, "You got what you asked for. If you had asked for a hot dog with chile instead of a chile dog you would have gotten a wiener1"