What'll ya have? those are the words I heard many a time when I approached the counter at the Georgia institution of hot doggery, The Varsity Drive-In. I lived in rural, middle "Joe-Ja" out on a hidden cove on Lake Sinclair near Milledgeville for two years of grad school. Broke, working on two masters degrees at the same time, my entertainment budget was nill. Cheap eats were the norm and my roommates (two pretty gals, a blonde and a redhead) raised a lot of our own food and hunted, fished, and bartered for the rest. Every now and then we'd take a road trip and go shopping and partying in Atlanta or Athens. On the way home it was almost mandatory to make a visit to The Varsity to fortify ourselves for the long drive home.
The default choice is a chili dog, if you ask for a hot dog that's what you'll get. A frank on a soft bun with mildly interesting chili meat sauce and a streak of yellar mustard along its back. Two of those, plus an order of the fries or the fantastic onion rings, a peach fried pie for dessert (I dream of those at times), and you were good to go. To wash down your chow it is a must to have an FO, a Frosted Orange, which is a super tasty and refreshing creamy orange drink that tastes sort of like a creamsicle.
There are six locations of The Varsity. The Mother Ship, which is the worlds largest drive-in at "more than two acres and can accommodate 600 cars and over 800 people inside," serves around 10,000 people a day, double or triple that on game days at Georgia Tech, handing over "two miles of hot dogs, a ton of onions, 2500 pounds of potatoes, 5000 fried pies and 300 gallons of chili... daily."
For those of you who can't get Sabrett's onions for your dogs at home, or want a tastier version of the sauce, here's my recipe that I've been making since I was a teen.
Foresters Spicy Hot Dog Onion Sauce This is a spicy version of the sauce. You can leave out some or all of the hot sauce if you like it milder, or add more for some real heat
1 large yellow or sweet onion, sliced and chopped 4 tbs of Heinz Ketchup or tomato sauce 1/4 cup of water 1-2 tbs of sugar 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of Sriracha sauce or chili garlic paste. I like the brand with the green rooster logo best. 2 tbs of vinegar 1/4 tsp of Worchestershire sauce 1/4 tsp of salt 1/4 tsp of black pepper 1/4 tsp of oregano
Place all ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil and lower to a simmer and reduce until a medium thick sauce. Remove from heat and let cool. The sauce will thicken more as it cools. Serve warm on hot dogs. You can keep it in the fridge for a week.
Most of the time I like my dogs crispy and deep brown on the outside. But then there are the times I want my childhood comfort food, a dirty water dog. I remember the first one I had when i was a youngin' growing up in park Slope, Brooklyn. I was around five years old and my mom stopped by one of those small hand pushcarts, the real tiny one you don't seem much anymore where the yellow and blue Sabrett's umbrella is bigger than the cart, at the corner of Union Street and Seventh Ave.
They were a dime each, and seemed a bargain to me. My mom tried to order one for me with ketchup but they didn't have any and besides, I was already of the opinion that ketchup is for fries and burgers and would never let it dog my franks. I wanted the "other stuff," the bright yellow/brown "deli" mustard and the reddish, shiny stuff. So I had my first Sabrett's hot dog with mustard and Sabrett's onion sauce. It wasn't much to look at, kind of ugly and messy to tell you the truth, but it was mighty tasty and went down just fine, thank you. (By the way, I know that's a nasty photo. I wasn't able to take my own shot.)
I've mentioned NYC Dirty Water Dogs, but there is another big dog on the block in NYC, Nathan's Famous. First seen on the boardwalk in Coney Island at the amusement park in 1916, they later started a small chain of Nathan's with arcades and more types of food than you can shake a dog at. They make some mean pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, but it's the hot dogs that they are known for. Just ask the thousands who come out every 4th of July for the International Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition.
A Nathan's was just a mile or three up the road on Central Ave in Yonkers, NY; where I spent my teen years. I visited them by bus after school a few times to play some pinball, but it was when I was 16 and got my driver's license and started borrowing my folks car, that I started chowing down on Nathan's dogs on a regular basis. These are griddled dogs, fat, crisp and browned outside, and juicy. They set my standard for what a dog should be. I finally came to realize that the best part is the Nathan's mustard. Over time it has become my favorite mustard of all. I try many, my fridge is full of literally dozens of jars, but the only one I buy time and again is Nathan's.
My favorite way to have Nathan's dogs is to grab two and a small fries. The fries are fat, crinkle cut wedges that are crispy outside, fluffy inside, and the perfect complement to the dogs. At Nathan's you have a condiment bar stocked with mustard, ketchup, relish, and sauerkraut so you can help yourself and design your own dog. The sauerkraut is fresh, crunchy, tart n' tangy. I load down the dogs with mustard and kraut, fill a few small paper cups with ketchup and mustard for the fries, and dig in. First a huge bite of frank, then dip a fry first in the Nathan's spicy mustard, then a dip in the Heinz ketchup as well. A great flavor combo where they balance each other out magnificently, with a root beer to wash it all down.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to get pizza out of a vending machine? I mean, you can get all kinds of other junk food, why not something that's actually satisfying?
You may soon be able to do just that. A company called Wonder Pizza is making a vending machine that cooks a pizza in under two minutes. This is a pretty new company, as evidenced by the fact that half the site is under construction, and it's not available in many places if it's available at all right now.
If vending machine pizza is real, then I hope it's good and that it succeeds. I really like the thought of this concept. What do you think of getting pizza from a vending machine?
*update: Sorry, I didn't check our archives and this gizmo has been covered already. However, doesn't a pizza vending machine deserve to be covered twice? ;)
I have been eating Walter's Hot Dogs in Mamaroneck, NY ever since I worked around the corner for a few months after High School. I was a truck driver for a medical supply warehouse and delivered to hospitals all over the NYC Metro area. I was waiting for my 18th B'day to roll around so I could get a job in a wine shop, but had my hot rod to maintain, so any job was a good job, and I have always liked to drive.
I would start early in the morning, so my day would end just after what everyone else called lunchtime. For me this was great because by that time the lines for lunch were gone at most places, and it was easy to get something quick just about anywhere. One place I stopped by almost every week was Walter's.
It's situated in one of those roadfood meccas, styled like a Chinese Pagoda with a copper roof, built back in 1928. Walter's dogs are served up by the hundreds and the thousands every day since they first opened in 1919. Long lines at lunch and dinner mellow out a bit in between. The dogs themselves are a very mild frank, butterflied, the split dogs are grilled in a secret sauce on each side until they are lightly browned and starting to curl and served on a toasted bun.
The usual way to order is with the spicy relish, which is basically a mix of brown mustard and relish. On the side a small basket of fries, onion rings, or sweet potato puffs, and to drink it's mandatory to get one of Walter's famous shakes or malteds made from their own ice cream. I would usually have three or four dogs at a time, being a growing boy who was skinny as a rail and with a fast metabolism. Last time I was there a year ago I could handle two and a shake, no fries, and was full the rest of the day.
AOL Health Editor Katherine Steinberg submitted the photo above for inclusion in the Midnight Sausage series, but we thought it was worthy of a post all its own.
"As I was wandering the streets of London foraging for food, I came across something even more foreign to me than the British slang -- the hot dog hamburger, or the 'express special'. It was so strange that I had to take a picture. I'm not sure what about this makes it faster than your average meal, but I do know that it comes with fries. But don't get too excited, judging by the recent price dip, it won't be popping up in your local deli anytime soon."
Has anyone seen or sampled this frankenfood in London or elsewhere? We'd love a first-hand account.
For years now, I've been conducting a serious love affair with jars. I'm a particular fan of the wide mouth 20 ounce jar that has become all but impossible to find these days (why is it that companies always discontinue the one item that is my particular favorite?). My collection of jars varies widely in size, shape and age and I used them for everything (this morning I ate yogurt and homemade strawberry/rhubarb compote out of a wide mouth pint jar).
However, until I spotted this post on Not Martha a couple of days ago, it had never occurred to me to use the small-size jars as baking vessels. But now I am in love (and totally obsessed with doing this for myself). I recently bought a dozen of these small, squat jars, so I have plenty on hand to give this a go. For full instructions on how she did this, check out her To Make page.
I always find something great over at Mom's Best Recipes, and this one is no exception. It's Peanut Butter Cookie Pie, from Shirley McNevich, and while I can't stand peanut butter in other desserts like ice cream, I will gladly eat it in cookie and/or pie form.
There's something very retro about this recipe, with its use of Cool Whip and Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Nestle's Chocolate Chips. And how many recipes do you find that actually include Nutter Butter cookies?
Now this is what a chocolate chip cookie should look like. Thick, chewy, moist at the center, with a toothsome density that makes it feel like you're really eating something. And so full of melty chocolate chips that when you break the cookie in half chocolate drips from the edges. Thank Vanilla Sugar for the recipe, which attempts to replicate the cookies sold at Levain bakery in New York. Full of brown sugar, walnuts and a healthy dose of salt, these make for the kind of 4 p.m. snack that satisfies you in a way that a Snickers bar never could.
I used to drink Kahlua a lot many many years ago, but as I've gotten older I've gotten away from Kahula/chocolate/mocha/whatever flavored drinks and more towards gin and wine. However, that doesn't mean that I'm against using Kahlua in dessert recipes.
This delicious-sounding recipe for Kahlua Brownies comes from Garrett McCord over at Simply Recipes. It uses 1 1/2 pounds of 60% cacao chocolate, though I wonder how the brownies would taste if you used something even higher (say, 70%) or another type of chocolate?
Do you have a food that came to symbolize a period of time in your life? For me, that would be Zapp's potato chips. The chips came to be a symbol of my college years, and all the time I spent hanging out with friends in local bars.
Before I started going to the bars downtown, I had never heard of Zapp's. Those chips just happened to be ubiquitous to the bars in Athens, GA, where I went to college. However, as they were the some of the only food available at the bars, I did munch down my fair share of them. The chips, with names like Spicy Cajun Crawtators and Cajun Dill Gator-tators, are pretty good, though not the best. The flavors are on the unique side and they are always nice and crunchy.
I haven't had Zapp's in a very long time. I've had them since graduating from college, but I don't eat much in the way of potato chips as part of my long term health goals. Even though I don't eat them, just seeing a bag takes me back to the good times I had, hanging out with friends at the local pub. Do you have a food memory like this?
A Rochester staple, the garbage plate is a whopping stack of (get ready): two hamburger patties and two sides (home fries, macaroni salad, or beans), mixed with ketchup and hot sauce, with a roll on the side for good measure. It originated at Nick Tahou Hots' restaurant over 50 years ago - y'know, before we were worried about stuff like obesity and heart attacks. College kids used to come in and ask for a dish with "all the garbage" on it.
But - gasp - a restaurant in Philly has added the Plate to its menu, with a few changes: fries and mustard pan sauce replace the traditional home fries and hot sauce. Could it be as bad - er, good - as the original?
We all love Girl Scout cookies, right? I try to stay away from them or I'll a whole box at a time, but I love them all the same. Well so does one scout from Michigan, who actually broke sales records.
Jennifer Sharpe sold, I kid you not, 17, 328 boxes of cookies. That's a lot of Samoa's! I can't imagine selling even a fraction of that. Apparently, though, all that selling really helped Jennifer get over being shy. Not only that, the cookie sales (about $21,000) is paying for her troop to go to Europe this winter.
Just think about that next time you buy a box of Girl Scout cookies!
When I first saw what were called "meatloaf cupcakes," I thought, "How cute - tiny rounds of meatloaf with a dollop of mashed potatoes on top." They were only called cupcakes, though, because they were small and topped with something.
However, Fine Furious Life has made meatloaf cupcakes that really, well, take the cake. The meatloaves really do look like cupcakes (they'd only be slightly better if they were in paper wrappers), and the most impressive part is the mashed potato frosting that really does look like frosting because 1) it's piped into swirls, and 2) there are two colors!
I am amazed.
And who knew that so many other cooks could make an everyday meatloaf look so adorably delicious?
I used to drink Kahlua a lot many many years ago, but as I've gotten older I've gotten away from Kahula/chocolate/mocha/whatever flavored drinks and more towards gin and wine. However, that doesn't mean that I'm against using Kahlua in dessert recipes.
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