An Eldest Daughter Post
Since I have basically taken over the cooking process in our home, I will be adding some more posts of new to us recipes that we have tried and were hits in our home. There will be a lot more seasonings compared to some of the older recipes Mom shared, since many of those were modified to fit certain dietary restrictions that are no longer a factor in our home. Some will be basic blog entries in the tip formula, like this one, and others will be recipes that we have worked out with trial and error. I hope that you will enjoy this!
One thing that we like is something akin to fast food for significantly cheaper: Chili Dogs with fries. The price breakdown can be as cheap as about $1.75 per person, or just under $7 for a family of 4.
What I like to do is buy one of the large 24 count packages of hot dogs and divide it up, putting one meal's worth into a freezer bags to freeze. As our current household size is 3 adults and no children, I can get 4 meals worth out of the package with no excess, but for a family of 4,you can get 3 meals, at 2 hotdogs per person.
While I bake our bread, I don't make good buns for burgers and hot dogs yet, so I buy the store brand when needed, and at the time of this post, that would run about $1.99 for 8 buns. The two extra won't go to waste, but be used to make mini sub sandwiches in the following days. The chili sauce is also store bought. We have tried quite a few different brands and styles. We have found a favorite, which is a good dupe for the kind used at Sonic and A and W drive in restaurants: Castleberry's Hot Dog Chili Sauce, at 89¢ per can. We only need the one for the three of us, and that's with Mom and I smothering our hot dogs in it, so I believe it can be split 4 ways easily.
We pop the fries in the oven (about 2/3rds of the bag is more than enough for the 3 of us), plop the dogs in a grilling skillet to mimic putting them on the grill outside for that added bit of flavor, and heating the chili sauce in a tiny pot with a pouring lip to make getting every bit of the tasty chili onto the dog's that much easier.
No real recipe with this post. The youngest will go fancy sometimes and sprinkle a little bit of cheddar cheese on top of his, I might add fresh chopped onion to mine, but Mom likes hers unadulterated, just chili. Just do whatever tastes best for you!