Ghetto Gourmet

I live pretty simply, for the most part. In particular, when it comes to taking care of just my immediate needs, I go for the bare minimum, and that includes when I eat. Sure, I'll cook something semi-decent for myself every now and again, but it usually takes someone else eating for me to cook something proper. For example, when I know someone will be over, I'll make the effort to make a stop at the grocery to get food to cook, and depending on whether I have stuff already at home, what I make may depend on what I already have on hand. When it's just me (maybe my roommate who usually doesn't eat with me), I just get plain lazy.

Factor in the fact that I'm worried a bit about money and trying to save (aka BEING REALLY CHEAP), and you multiply the laziness by 1,000. I may have gone to the grocery sometime earlier last month, but I've been mostly surviving off frozen burritos and canned soup, and maybe a can of refried beans, but today, I felt like something different.

Having little to nothing around the house makes it easier to come up with a plan of attack. I had a few large hot dogs in the freezer, an entire onion in the fridge, and a bunch of tostada shells in the pantry.

That was more than enough for me for the night, so I boiled the three remaining hot dogs in a saucepan as I chopped half the onion and started cooking them up in the skillet. As I was doing that, I figured it would be tastier if I actually got one of the 'dogs and cooked it up with the onions, so I nabbed one of them from the saucepan where it was already warm enough to slice and toss into the pan with the onions. I may have put more hot dog in there, but my roommate wasn't sure how much she wanted, so I left two intact for her, and I figured that once the onions reduced down, the onion-hot dog ratio would be appropriate.

I thought about adding seasoning to the mix, but I figured the onion and the dog have enough to carry their own, and the tostada shell would be a nice, crunchy and starchy add to it. Once the dogs browned a bit and I could smell the sweet burnt smell of cooked onions, I was ready to eat.

It wasn't half bad considering, and it sure beat chewing on a mouthful of broken glass. I might have wanted the hot dog bits a little smaller, as the cuts I made were a bit too big for each bite, but I think the onions were just right. I'm pretty glad I didn't add any seasoning, as the hot dog was pretty salty in itself.

Roommie only wound up eating one hot dog, which left one uneaten, which I put away for maybe eating tomorrow. Maybe what I'll do is do something of the same, maybe add the last egg I think we have in the fridge and make a scramble of it...and since the hot dog water isn't discarded yet, I may save a teeny bit of that to add into some refried beans to soften and salt it a bit and at least I have breakfast!

But tonight marks an end of an era. The three hot dogs I warmed up last night were the last three in a giant pack of large dogs I got from work as surplus from an Earth Day event of last year (2007). My old work was the storage place for TONS of these packs of hot dogs for the local Fire Department, as they got an old-timey grill to raise money for their cause, but when they ran out of propane, they just stopped grilling, which left our work with packs of these, one of which I got to take home. It's taken the combined efforts of me and my roommate this long to get through all of them, and I feel like without that safety net of frankfurters if I'm ever starving, I very may well.


They were good while they lasted. Maybe with their departure, I may very well not buy much meat to cook, unless, of course, there's a special occasion.