Sunday, September 27, 2009

Well, Hot Dog



Hi all,
Just a silly short post today as I spent a lot of the day trying not to be underfoot with older relatives around visiting.

Why a "Hot Dog"?
Is exactly the question HD put to me as he handed me what they like to call "sausages" after G's basketball training session today. Granted, this hotdog was topped not only with ketchup, but also with french fries and mayo (urg?), but was most definitely a hot dog. I proffered several explanations, my top two being perhaps that they were rumored to be made out of dog meat, or that they looked like Wiener dogs (with Wiener coming from Vienna just like frankfurters coming from Frankfurt!). But I honestly told him that I didn't know. So, I did what every post graduate knows will unduly aggravate their English teachers do: I looked it up on Wikipedia. (I have one Prof who is a Chaucer Goddess and likes to go on and mess around with facts about him, she despises the open domain format and the reliability that people assume comes from it!) It pretty much corresponded with my thought Wikipedia states that meat grinders were suspected of/ rumored to be putting dog meat into their sausages as early as 1845. Apparently there were also links to show the use of the phrase "hot dog" as early as the 1890's. So, there you have it! Maybe.

Hope all is well,
Steph

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