3rd Grade Hot Dog Day

Today I cooked hot dogs for my son-in-law's 3rd grade class and we had a great time. I bit off a little more than I expected when I offered to do this so I greatly appreciated the help of my friend Ed, my wife Caroline & her sister Nancy Paulina Meatballa Spaghetti (That name is an old family joke). The kids were well behaved, polite and appreciative; it doesn't get much better. Aaron was also happy to let his class have a special time out in the park.

This class is at Restoration Academy, an urban Christian school located in downtown Fairfield. Fortunately there is a beautiful park right across the street which provided a great place for hot dog day. I have a long relationship with Dr. Edwards from Hope Health Center located right next door to the school; so he came and brought along his entire staff. We also had numerous members of the school's administration. We did have quite a few customers, but with all the help things went pretty smooth. In the end we had one lone hot dog left over; but I made sure it didn't go to waste.

There's Aaron, my son in law with some students.

I was super impressed with the selection of toppings selected by the students. We had avaliable the following:

• Chilli
  
• Slaw from Zoe's Kitchen
  
• Kraut
• Mustard (regular)
• Dill Mustard
• Ketchup
• Dill relish
• Sweet relish
• Wickles red pepper relish
• Tomatoes
• Cucumber
• Onion
• Remoulade sauce

The remoulade sauce came from a book (The Great American Hot Dog Book) recently given to me by Josh, a young man I have known for decades. I had suspected that there must be a cajun tradition for serving hot dogs. In that book I found the "New Orleans Remoulade Dog" which I was eager to try. This was a totally different recipe for remoulade sauce than I had seen before so I wanted to try it. The cajun dog is simple; a grilled hot dog on a toasted bun topped with remoulade sauce.




Back to hot dog day: These kids tried just about every topping we had. About the only one neglected was the onion which is a shame. I had bought a purple onion and chopped it so we would have a mild onion. I had expected an endless parade of kids wanting ketchup, mustard or both... and nothing else. But instead they each piled on numerous toppings; it made me smile.





Today was a beautiful cool spring day, near the end of school; and we were under big old growth trees in the Fairfield City Park. It was the perfect setting. I regret that I have no pictures to post; I intended to take a camera but forgot. I guess that's just as well; things were jumping so I couldn't really have given photography much attention.