corn water dogs.

We had hot dogs and corn on the cob last night. Which seems like kind of an unusual combo, but we ate what we had. And what we had was three-quarters of a pack of hot dogs and eight ears of corn that had been sitting on the counter, unshucked, for two days. I wanted to make chicken parmigiana, but then the leftovers would overcome me and we'd end up forgetting about the hot dogs and have to throw them out next week, sometime after they started growing blue stuff.

So we had hot dogs and corn on the cob. We had six hot dogs and five hot dog buns.

Last weekend, we had company, and I served hot dogs and french fries with homemade cincinnati chili. I don't like to tootle my own horn, but I make fantastic hot dog chili. It is better than my mother's. Which is to say that we follow different recipes and mine produces a superior product. I take no credit in this chili, because although I do the leg work of making it, someone else did the more difficult work of writing out the instructions. It would be like me using the GPS to drive you to a theme park and then taking credit for rollercoasters.

The nice thing about this chili recipe is that it makes enough chili for about four packs of hot dogs. So after that first lunch, I stuck the whole pot of chili into the fridge, to be divided up into 1-cup portions and frozen later. But then I had to go to my brother's on Monday, and Tuesday, I just didn't feel like it, and then on Wednesday, I found an open pack of hot dogs in the fridge. This threw me off, because I had not been planning to eat hot dogs again soon. I was thinking about making chicken parmigiana or maybe something that went with corn on the cob. But hey, I'm hip, I can roll with the punches. I can adjust my plan when a blue-eyed eating machine rummages through my fridge.

It was a little weird, though, because I knew we didn't have any hot dog buns. We didn't even have any sandwich bread. I'd actually bought hot dog buns on Sunday to serve to my guests, because when you're already making a big pot of delicious hot dog chili, going the extra mile of making buns is just too much. So Wednesday night, I decided to make a batch of hot dog buns. A batch usually means sixteen, but today it would mean fourteen. I specifically made enough for one and three-quarters packs of hot dogs, because it would not make sense to not have a one to one correspondence of buns to dogs.

Josh came home from work and saw the buns cooling on a wire rack, still warm and a lovely shade of golden brown. He grabbed a jar of olives, a pack of salami, a block of cheddar, and a single hot dog bun. That was his dinner. We now had six hot dogs and five buns. My head exploded.

So last night, I decided it was time to eat hot dogs. We had buns, we had dogs, we had chili, and we had corn. I was filling a giant pot of water for the corn when Josh said, "You can use the same water for the hot dogs after the corn is done."

"And then we can make coffee."

A long time ago, my brother "invented" something called coffee dogs. Which means that he boiled some water to cook hot dogs, and then after the hot dogs were done, he made coffee with the water. I would call that hot dog coffee, since it seems like it was the dogs modifying the coffee, not the other way around. But it doesn't really matter what you call it, because it's nasty. Don't ever make coffee dogs or hot dog coffee. It is gross, but it will make a good family joke. I will allow you to borrow my family joke, though, to spare you having to ever drink coffee that tastes of a ballpark.

So even though I was more than a little freaked out by doing anything related to the idea of coffee dogs, I boiled the hot dogs in the corn water. I ate mine with delicious chili and cheese, but couldn't really enjoy it. All I could think about was what I would call it. I settled on corn water dogs.