Tom has had a schtick for as long as I can remember. He’s had a lot of those, but this one, in particular, revolves around the 4th of July. He always said that to celebrate America on July 4th he would have a McDonald’s cheeseburger and some fries. The punchline was that he was twenty years behind on the tradition.
I think I only saw him do that once, mainly because I goaded him into it. And to me, it is the hot dog that I associate with the 4th of July. Last year I compared all the hot dogs I could find just to discover the best hot dog I could get in the supermarket.
What I discovered from this experiment was surprising. I realized that I don’t like hot dogs. Or at least the hot dogs of today. I grew up on red wieners. It has been a long time since I ate those, but I do remember liking the Oscar Meyer Weiner very well. My kids love them, and at that time I ate way more than my share of them.
It has been countless years since those times, but when I went to buy simple Oscar Meyer Weiners, they were nowhere to be found. Everything was uncured. The vogue now is to eschew nitrates, but there is so much unhealthy about our food with or without nitrates, it seems a shame to mess up a tasty little iconic hot dog
This year I went to the Oscar Meyer website and discovered that they still make the original version, but I don’t see them in a store locally.
I got Ball Park “grill flavored” hot dogs. So how does one get grill flavor naturally before a weiner is cooked? Nitrates seem healthier. I also got Gwallney, which is a brand I became curious about last year. There isn’t much about the history of the company, but the wieners looked natural, and simple, like the old kind. Unfortunately, I only saw a party pack of 36 weiners. This 4th of July was a party of one.
I grilled a few of the hot dogs on the cooktop grill and put them into a Bunny Bread hot dog roll, which I really like for some reason. I chopped some pickles and grated some Ultra Sharp Cabot white cheddar and squirted a bit of yellow mustard. I ate about half of each of the two kinds of hot dogs, and I have to say I preferred the Gwallney. The “grill flavor” Ball Park dogs never made it out of the pack, because I got some bun-length weiners from Ball Park instead.
And I had the same reaction as last year Meh. I wonder if my taste has changed that much, or if it is that I have no little kids to be enthusiastic about hot dogs, or maybe hot dogs just really are different circa 2023.
I had that things-are-so-different feeling about the burger too. The double burger from Five Guys and a regular fries was $16.16, and with a dollar tip that was a little shocking. I could spend that at a real restaurant for a burger with fries, though the tip would be larger.
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But the difference in burgers is stark. I know that Tom always mentioned McDonald’s, but if I am doing a fast food burger it will be Five Guys. That particular chain brings a flood of memories no other one offers. I remember the first time we ran into it. We were heading up to DC to begin a temporary new life. Five Guys was getting famous fast in the mid-Adlantic states. We got off I-95 in North Carolina at Dale Earnhardt Pkwy and there it was, right next to a Pizza Place. We had both, but we were instantly smitten by this burger place with fresh-cut fries. It would be quite a few years before it headed our way, making its way to 50 states, but we could indulge our passion in the mid-Atlantic. Our “temporary” life lasted three-plus years. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this chain.
The burger we had today was nothing special, even though it was done to order. And the fries, which have affectionately been called a “heart-attack-in-a-sack” were cold and limp, but that could be because I drove home before we ate it.
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Maybe I’ve just lost that loving feeling for it all. I hope not. After all, I am a proud American, and it is the 4th of July. But at least Tom is finally keeping his promise.
