One of the very first entries in this blog—noted “entered 21 December 2005 by Marcus”—was actually entered by Eric, the guy who gave me this WordPress template for Christmas, four days later. He had already posted five entries—taken from my eats4one book—to demonstrate what it would look like (looks good!).

I didn’t work up the confidence or technique to make my own post until January 14th when I put together Broccoli di Cicco.

At a recent baseball game, I got a Giants Dog, a long hotdog in a bun with grilled onions. Damn that was good. At home, when we eat hotdogs, they are Hebrew National, all beef. The Giants Dog was more tangy, full of flavor, than those Kosher dogs. I asked Carol to get hot dogs with some pork in them when she goes to Safeway. Maybe pork will give me the taste of that Giants Dog. She brought home Ball Park Hotdogs, the brand we were eating back in the day when the kids were kids. She even brought mushy white hot dog buns (what a woman!).

We each ate a couple dogs with yellow mustard and by gosh, they just weren’t that good. We need to (oh, am I really going to say it?) kick it up a notch! What could be kickier than BBQ Hot Dogs, passed down from the Mother Hale? And just when I started putting the stuff together and preheating the oven, who should call but—you guessed it—The Mother Hale, herself! “Oh… you’re doing those?” she remarked. “I haven’t made those for ages.” I asked Carol about the chopped onions in the recipe, her father doesn’t eat onions, raw or cooked. “She didn’t use the onions… I added those to brighten it up a bit. What’s a tomato sauce without onions?”

The sauce is great, fresh and tangy (Eric said it all in his comment to the initial post), but (am I really gonna say this, too?) it’s like putting lipstick on a pig… the dog is still a bland dog.

Now that the taste of that sauce is again in my memory, and it’s so quick and easy to make, over time, we’ll find the right dog/sauce combination. When that happens, you’ll see it here first.

into the oven

onto the table