Growing up, despite having a super health conscious mother. She was a Vegan before the term “vegan” was popular and mainstream. I always called it Militant Vegetarian, and can you imagine being a vegetarian in the 80s when there all the GOOD vegetarian choices at fast food places?

The majority of my diet consisted of: Count Chocula, Hotdogs (the RED DEATH dog variety), frozen burritos, and instant oatmeal (straight from the pack, that is with NO water). There was also the Snickers and Dr. Pepper from 7-11 when I wasn’t getting a Slurpee…

Hotdogs have always been the butt of many jokes… perhaps because they contain butts (and ears, and noses, and leftovers and roadkill and mystery meat) but I have eaten them regardless because 1)They are fast and 2) Yummy. It takes a great chef to turn Raccoon butt into a delicacy in tubular form. Then, hotdogs started to become more of a single “meat” such as Beef Franks, Chicken Dogs, Turkey Dogs, etc. Not telling us WHAT part of the Chicken it used, but that it was enough chicken to call it “chicken”. Then the vegetarians came in with the Tofu Dogs and “meatless” hotdogs, which…well, I won’t comment here.

Then we found out that hotdogs are bad for you because of the preservatives they use, Public Enemy Number 1: Sodium Nitrate and #2 Sodium Nitrite. Who knew? I had already consumed so many hotdogs up to that point, that I have exposed my body greatly to these carcinagins.

But now that I am responsible parent, I have to approve the foods that the family consumes. This meant limiting hotdogs to a minimum. Every single hotdog in the mainstream hotdog section has Sodium Nitrite. In fact, most processed meat has in there too. *Sigh*

But that was until I shopped the hotdog section in Earthfare last month. I found a All Beef Hotdog that was Uncured and free of the Sodium Nites. So I thought, lets try them as hot dogs are a fast easy food to give the kids and the adults in time of hunger.

These hotdogs are GOOD. They are incredibly delicious and with out all the yuckies in them, I could reminense to my younger days and eat 2, 3 or 4 hotdogs at a time. Did I “younger”?

I was eating a hotdog, or rather, I had a bite of a hotdog and The Younger became interested in what I was eating. He soon discovered how GOOD these hotdogs were and proceeded to eat about half of my hotdog and promptly told me that he wanted more. Okay.

Except, he ate the whole hotdog by himself. And then asked for more. Um, okay. If he got full on the hotdogs, I would just eat the leftovers. Except there weren’t any. He ATE approximately 2.5 hotdogs! But where does he put it? He’s in the 10 percentile for his age for size.

Later, I was thinking about it… he ate all those hotdogs. Yup, that boy is related to me… that’s my kid.