Tuesday, May 17, 2011

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:
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.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for coming. The kids loved it, and so did I. I was also very impressed with the amount of toppings they piled on. Among the students it was widely held that these hot dogs were the best they'd had. They were certainly delicious. I do know for a fact most all of them had never had a hot dog from the grill.
    Thanks again,
    Aaron

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  2. I know you made all your customers smile! Sounds like a lovely way to do lunch.

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