Humble Pie, Er Corn Dogs?

I decided to try something new for our dinner menu this month.

For over a year I've been following a basic rule for my menus, that I got from a fantastic book called I Dare You To Eat It, by Leisa Card. You can check her out by clicking here. In her book, she uses a general guideline for using your food storage on a regular basis, to rotate it, and make sure your family is used to eating it...just in case you might actually have to use for survival.

What I've been doing is making meals each week based on one of the Basic Food Storage Staples. For example, each night of the week we have a meal that uses either Wheat, Rice, Potatoes, Beans, Pasta, or Oats as the main ingredient. It's been a great system for me, and I've really learned how use what I store...and for the most part everyone else in the family enjoys the meals, too.

What I've been noticing is that I end up making all the meals I like...and somewhat neglecting everyone else's favs. So this month I decided to ask each member of the family to tell me their four favorite meals, and I would incorporate them into our regular meal schedule.

Tonight was Ben's night. He picked corn dogs. You have to understand that I'm not the kind of Mom who keeps corn dogs stocked. Like, ever. He picked french fries as his 'potato' side dish. Now french fries I can do...but corn dogs?!

I decided that it probably wasn't that hard to make your own corn dogs, right? I mean you just batter dip hot dogs and bake or fry them, right? So I made up my mind to give it a try.

I used a thick cornmeal batter, coated the Turkey hot dogs I had on hand in a little flour, dipped them in the batter, and laid them on a baking sheet. I baked them for about 8 minutes, and could see there was a problem. The batter was kind of pooling around the hot dogs and baking into a kind of blobby muffin mess. I took them out, kinda squished them back together, and tried to bake them a little longer. I really thought it would work. Ha, ha.



Anyway, I decided that even if they weren't pretty they were still edible, and my family would just have to eat them anyway!

As we sat down to eat the kids looked at the plate of 'corn dogs' and basically asked, "What are those?!?"

"They're home made corn dogs."

"Oh."

Before he even took a bite Ben said, "Uh, Mom...do I have to eat this?"

"Yes. You do."

Marc came in and started eating, and said, "These are yummy!"

I replied, "Yeah...I think that they have potential, but it just didn't work out, too well this time. I think the next time I make these I'll..."

Ben: "BUY THEM!!!"

Well, you can't please everybody! So much for domesticity, eh?