Wiener Wednesday: Tom Boy & Baby Hot Dogs with Pa’s Hot Dog Relish

Greetings! Welcome to Wiener Wednesday!

I wish that I could start this out on a more positive note, but I want to kill myself right now. This post was epic, detailed, and covered a whole 2 and a half hours of Brian mouse-hunting, but it is no more. As I was backing up the post the computer froze and POOF! Gone.

So I am going to try to recreate what I wrote before. But it won’t be what I wrote before because it is 9 now and before it was 6. And at 6pm Brian was all wild-eyed hunter and now he is this:

That is a relaxed, blissed-out boy. Which is not good because that means that there is a semi-battered mouse somewhere in the apartment that he has not killed. And he likes to bring his victims into bed. So I will be sleeping on the couch tonight!*

It’s odd. This is Brian’s second or third mouse. No mouse for a whole 2 and a half years; and I haven’t noticed anything that would suggest mice other than I have seen them. What gives? Perhaps Brian has developed the power to conjure up his own real, live, playthings.

Holy crap. Brian is a god.

Anyway, on to the wieners!

This is from the 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection from 1977, which has fast become one of my favorites.

Everything in this dish was straightforward.

However, I think that Pa wasn’t right in the head because the ingredients of his relish are very reminiscent of the concoctions we would brew up during games of Truth or Dare in 5th and 6th grade. All it’s missing is mayonnaise. But don’t worry, that does make an appearance.

That’s a lot of shit in one relish. I cut the recipe by 1/4. There was no way in hell that I’d ever need 2 1/2 pints of anything, let alone a relish. And I even scaled the number of ingredients back because in lieu of dill pickle, pimiento, and gherkin I just used dill relish for it all.

Anyway, here are the baby wieners!

I think I did A-OK with my photo recreation!

The Baby Hot Dogs were good. The heated potato roll and Hebrew National hot dog with just the schmear of mayo and mustard were a little bit perfect. But Pa’s relish was strong, and like a lot of the other relish/dressings/sauces that I’ve made through Dinner is Served! and this era, all of the elements scream instead of meld. This particular one was mustardy and vinegary. And the chopped onions, peppers and celery–well, they just stood out. They were crunchy. A little bit jarring. And it looks a little vommy. That’s quite the shade of orange. And just who is this Pa? And why are we letting him cook?

The Tom Boy is reminiscent of the Michelada–a drink that I tried when I lived in Brooklyn. I hated it. It’s beer and salt and hot sauce and lime. My boyfriend at the time described it as “what the condensation from an AC unit in Mexico City must taste like.” Which was pretty spot-on, I suppose. Thankfully, this was nowhere near as bad. It was completely unoffensive. It was sort of a mild, carbonated Bloody Mary. I could definitely see this as a hair-of-the-dog hangover remedy–I wonder if that’s its intended use?

Anyway, overwrought relish aside, this was good. I was definitely surprised by the Tom Boy. But by-gosh by-golly do I wish I was able to upload my original post. This is just a downer. Damn you, wordpress.

*Update. At about 3:45 am I was awoken by a clatter–Brian smacking himself into the wrought-iron kitchen table. Argh, he has the mouse cornered in there now. This means that cat and mouse have been at it for the better part of 12 hours. They must be exhausted. I am exhausted. It’s now past 4:30 am. Jeezie creezie.

**Another update. Woke up at 8am–I let myself sleep in because of the mouse trauma– things in the kitchen and bedroom are knocked over–there are big dustbunnies that the  cat brushed out from under the radiators–but, as far as I can tell, no little mouse body.

Welcome to Thunderdome! Day II, bitch.