Missing Members

[LizzieMaine]

I once worked in a small meat processing plant, making hot dogs, sausages, liverwurst, and similar products. It was good meat, and the products were good, but the cleaning part of the job was a back-breaking horror, especially the saw, which had to be cleaned of chunks of fat and gristle with a high-pressure steam hose. Which once ruptured when I was holding it, and I narrowly escaped severe injury.

They say if you've seen hot dogs being made you'll never eat one again. That's not true for me, I eat them all the time. But there is no amount of money you can ever pay me to go near a steam hose again.

 

[Haversack]

Steam can be nasty stuff. The less you see it, the worse it is. One summer at the cannery, one of the plant managers was working with an engineer from Italy installing a new, (for the cannery), steam tomato peeler. A line ruptured and both caught some live steam. Not too bad but seeing them walk to the infirmary with the skin from their backs hanging down from their waists is not something I'll soon forget. Needless to say, the cannery did not adopt steam peelers and stuck with hot caustic soda, (lye), baths.

 

[belfastboy]

I once worked in a small meat processing plant, making hot dogs, sausages, liverwurst, and similar products. It was good meat, and the products were good, but the cleaning part of the job was a back-breaking horror, especially the saw, which had to be cleaned of chunks of fat and gristle with a high-pressure steam hose. Which once ruptured when I was holding it, and I narrowly escaped severe injury.

They say if you've seen hot dogs being made you'll never eat one again. That's not true for me, I eat them all the time. But there is no amount of money you can ever pay me to go near a steam hose again.

My mother who met my father in an abatoir/processing plant. My father worked the killing floor my mom on the wiener line. I loved hot dogs as a kid and once I asked "Mom, what are wieners, what is in them?" Her terse response....."Don't ask, you don't wanna know!" But then that was early 1950's.

 

[Harp]

Chicago Vienna Beef dogs are the absolute best hot dogs around.

There is a Vienna Beef dog stand at the Las Vegas airport and I was stacking two dogs with everything
when a Chinese gentleman approached asking for stack advice. Showed the best stack strategy and also
tendered some Chicago rules and regs about the illegality of ketchup on dogs. Mustard, relish and all and
everything else, but no ketchup. None whatsoever. That's when he confessed to being a White Sox fan.
Having committed the mortal sin of teaching the Cubs Wrigley Field neighborhood stack to an admitted Sox fan,
I passed him a ketchup cylinder.

 

[EngProf]

Chicago Vienna Beef dogs are the absolute best hot dogs around.

There is a Vienna Beef dog stand at the Las Vegas airport and I was stacking two dogs with everything
when a Chinese gentleman approached asking for stack advice. Showed the best stack strategy and also
tendered some Chicago rules and regs about the illegality of ketchup on dogs. Mustard, relish and all and
everything else, but no ketchup. None whatsoever. That's when he confessed to being a White Sox fan.
Having committed the mortal sin of teaching the Cubs Wrigley Field neighborhood stack to an admitted Sox fan,
I passed him a ketchup cylinder.

You may remember some time ago that we had a discussion here (FL) about the mustard/ketchup rules that some people and places have.
At the time I said that such things were never mentioned or thought about here in Nashville/mid-South. Shortly after that discussion I ordered a hot dog at a local drive-in and was given the dog and several packets of ketchup and nothing else (no mustard).
That's normal for here...
I prefer mustard, but in this case I would have had to supply it myself.
Are there rules in other places about putting chili on hot dogs? That is something that is very common here and something I like (a lot).
In that regard, there was a great chili-dog place that I often ate at on the way home. Some out-of-towners bought it and starting selling (or trying to sell) exotic dogs with some obscure adjectives in front of the word "dog" - *&^%$-dog.
I ate there once after the sell-out, but disliked the idea of ordering something without knowing in advance what I would get.
I hated to see my favorite place eliminated, but it didn't take long for them to go out of business. (revenge) They also tried to sell doughnuts with unrecognizable adjectives in front of the word "!@#$%-donut". They didn't sell enough of those, either.

 

[Harp]

Having traveled the world, I learned two things in life:

1. Chicago Vienna Beef hot dogs are the best; and ketchup-at least in town-is illegal.

2. Speaking of Nashville/mid-South: The most beautiful women in the world are in Tennessee.
Specifically Clarksville, TN. Absolutely gorgeous, polite, sweet, and awesomely wonderful.

 

[tonyb]

I’ve toured Tukwila, Tacoma, Twisp and Tonasket, and I’ll here to tell you, you can’t beat the microwave tamales at the truck stop in Tenino.

 

[belfastboy]

I’ve toured Tukwila, Tacoma, Twisp and Tonasket, and I’ll here to tell you, you can’t beat the microwave tamales at the truck stop in Tenino.

I love Tenino!!!! We would stay at Lake Offut in our RV, bike the track into Tenino for lunch, head to the Wolf Haven refuge the next day. Next day bike the trail north into Lacey.

 

[tonyb]

I love Tenino!!!! We would stay at Lake Offut in our RV, bike the track into Tenino for lunch, head to the Wolf Haven refuge the next day. Next day bike the trail north into Lacey.

So I trust you’ve been to beautiful Bucoda?

 

[belfastboy]

So I trust you’ve been to beautiful Bucoda?

No, dammit...somehow we have missed that.

 

[tonyb]

No, dammit...somehow we have missed that.

You haven’t lived!

 

[belfastboy]

You may remember some time ago that we had a discussion here (FL) about the mustard/ketchup rules that some people and places have.
At the time I said that such things were never mentioned or thought about here in Nashville/mid-South. Shortly after that discussion I ordered a hot dog at a local drive-in and was given the dog and several packets of ketchup and nothing else (no mustard).
That's normal for here...
I prefer mustard, but in this case I would have had to supply it myself.
Are there rules in other places about putting chili on hot dogs? That is something that is very common here and something I like (a lot).
In that regard, there was a great chili-dog place that I often ate at on the way home. Some out-of-towners bought it and starting selling (or trying to sell) exotic dogs with some obscure adjectives in front of the word "dog" - *&^%$-dog.
I ate there once after the sell-out, but disliked the idea of ordering something without knowing in advance what I would get.
I hated to see my favorite place eliminated, but it didn't take long for them to go out of business. (revenge) They also tried to sell doughnuts with unrecognizable adjectives in front of the word "!@#$%-donut". They didn't sell enough of those, either.

Perhaps a decade ago a young Japanese emigre opened a downtown street level hot dog cart...named it JapaDog. The wieners/buns were not astounding but he had a buffet of toppings available with a decided Japanese/Korean flavour. Wasabi dogs, kimchi dogs, etc etc. He sold them at a premium price and the line ups were lengthy. He expanded into multiple carts and has since opened a bricks & mortar restaurant.

 

[belfastboy]

You haven’t lived!

Spent a fun day in the ghost town of Molson WA, up in the hills near Oroville (I think!) but now I have something to look forward to if they ever reopen the damn border.

 

[Fifty150]

Wasabi dogs, kimchi dogs, etc etc.

On The Left Coast, where we don't have a revered hot dog tradition, we treated our hot dogs like cans of Spam. They could, and did, go into anything and everything. Omelettes. Ramen. Tortillas. And all toppings were on the table. Basically, whatever you had, you could eat with it. If you had a couple of eggs, cooked them with pieces of hot dog and/or Spam, and rolled it in a tortilla with kimchi, sprouts, tomato, cilantro, etc...... Or put the hot dog pieces and/or Spam into a pot with instant ramen, then put the egg, kimchi, sprouts, tomato, cilantro into the bowl....... you just made something to eat after school, before your mom got home.

Maybe in some parts of the world, hot dogs are sacred and a culinary icon. To me, it's just something that I buy every few months, and it's in the back of the fridge just in case I don't have anything else. Sort of like those cans of soup that you never really eat either..... unless you live where canned soup is a staple of your diet, and it's the hallmark of your culture.

What I don't get is the sudden fad of eating ramen. All of those ramen restaurants popping up in shopping malls. And then hipsters trying to explain to me, an Asian person who grew up eating noodles, how to appreciate the fine nuances of a perfect bowl of noodles, like it's some sort of fine wine. In my neighborhood, I grew up with shops making fresh noodles daily. All sorts of different noodles. I guess it's just not that special to me. I won't pay a half a day's wage for a bowl of ramen. But paying $50, for $0.50 worth of noodles, is probably pretty special if you grew up eating soup from cans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Everybody I ever knew who ate ramen, as in the reconstituted Cup-O-Noodles type stuff, did so only as an absolute last resort -- starving college kids and such. I've been desperate -- as in Campbell's Pork and Beans, 40 cents a can desperate -- but I haven't quite hit that level yet.

I imagine actual ramen, traditionally made, has about as much in common with the compressed-brick-and-flavor-powder kind as Campbell's Pork and Beans has with traditional baked beans baked in a hole in the ground.

 

[belfastboy]

On The Left Coast, where we don't have a revered hot dog tradition, we treated our hot dogs like cans of Spam. They could, and did, go into anything and everything. Omelettes. Ramen. Tortillas. And all toppings were on the table. Basically, whatever you had, you could eat with it. If you had a couple of eggs, cooked them with pieces of hot dog and/or Spam, and rolled it in a tortilla with kimchi, sprouts, tomato, cilantro, etc...... Or put the hot dog pieces and/or Spam into a pot with instant ramen, then put the egg, kimchi, sprouts, tomato, cilantro into the bowl....... you just made something to eat after school, before your mom got home.

Maybe in some parts of the world, hot dogs are sacred and a culinary icon. To me, it's just something that I buy every few months, and it's in the back of the fridge just in case I don't have anything else. Sort of like those cans of soup that you never really eat either..... unless you live where canned soup is a staple of your diet, and it's the hallmark of your culture.

What I don't get is the sudden fad of eating ramen. All of those ramen restaurants popping up in shopping malls. And then hipsters trying to explain to me, an Asian person who grew up eating noodles, how to appreciate the fine nuances of a perfect bowl of noodles, like it's some sort of fine wine. In my neighborhood, I grew up with shops making fresh noodles daily. All sorts of different noodles. I guess it's just not that special to me. I won't pay a half a day's wage for a bowl of ramen. But paying $50, for $0.50 worth of noodles, is probably pretty special if you grew up eating soup from cans.

In the 1970's my favourite restaurant was a little hole in the wall Vietnamese place that made a great bowl of Pho. Can't remember how much but it was a delicious meal and very very cheap....maybe $1.50 for a huge bowl. One bowl and all you could drink tea set me up for the entire day. It lasted for decades under different owners but now Pho places are almost as present as Starbucks and that magic is gone and the little shop is now a hole in the ground awaiting a high rise condo.

 

[tonyb]

Cheap ramen with a couple of cheap cut-up hotdogs and maybe an egg, if they’re on sale. Easy on the belly, easy on the billfold.

 

[Harp]

Everybody I ever knew who ate ramen, as in the reconstituted Cup-O-Noodles type stuff, did so only as an absolute last resort -- starving college kids and such. I've been desperate -- as in Campbell's Pork and Beans, 40 cents a can desperate -- but I haven't quite hit that level yet.

My Irish plebeian palate can't tell the difference so I stock up ramen, elbows, Campbell's Pork & Beans
(looking around last night in the kitchen cubbard), and with Campbell's Cream of Chicken or Potato soup,
heat up, open some tuna, toss in with the Campbell's chaser, stir, leave on burner half-hour.

Love spam and corned beef hash, canned chicken, deviled ham. Oscar-Meyer cotto salami with peanut butter
and crackers. And I opt the low end glass with Evan Williams bourbon, now $15 bucks a throw
but that whiskey's a soldier.

 

[belfastboy]

My Irish plebeian palate can't tell the difference so I stock up ramen, elbows, Campbell's Pork & Beans
(looking around last night in the kitchen cubbard), and with Campbell's Cream of Chicken or Potato soup,
heat up, open some tuna, toss in with the Campbell's chaser, stir, leave on burner half-hour.

Love spam and corned beef hash, canned chicken, deviled ham. Oscar-Meyer cotto salami with peanut butter
and crackers. And I opt the low end glass with Evan Williams bourbon, now $15 bucks a throw
but that whiskey's a soldier.

Spam got me through university with bologna to change it up once in a while.

 

[Frunobulax]

Spam got me through university with bologna to change it up once in a while.

I have never been without a reserve can of Spam since I became an adult.

RE: Ramen noodles. I really do like those overprocessed little bricks and the little packet of colored salt that goes with them; however, I was put off a couple of years ago after reading the revelation that ramen noodles over a week old have been found in the stomachs of some folks during autopsy. It's not that hard to make a good dish of noodles from scratch.