Do You Remember.....footlong hot dogs?

Summertime literally makes me a different person.  I start to want to do things I normally dislike, like exercise, and start to dance around the house and stuff.  But probably the oddest thing about summer is that I crave very specific foods.  I made Hubby buy some Flavor Ice pops the other day, because as a kid, I lived in a rural area where the Ice Cream Man never came, so all we usually had were Flavor Ice, and I loved em.  Still do.

Well, today, I had another one of those cravings.  Hot dogs.  But not just any hot dogs, oh no.  Footlong hot dogs.  Done on the grill.

As a kid, and to this day, I was never much of a hot dog fan.  To me they tasted too much like baloney, which I hate.  But there is something about a hot dog being either grilled or cooked over a campfire that increases its value exponentially.  And if that hot dog is a foot long, well, buddy, you just won the jackpot.  I can remember begging my dad to make these for me as a kid, and usually once, maybe twice if I was lucky, a summer, we would grill footlong hot dogs.  I am not sure what my obsession is, they are the same make up as regular hot dogs, but to me, they just taste different.  Better.  Like childhood. 

So, I mentioned to Hubby today that I wanted these, and he was all for it.  I found the footlong hotdogs at a big box supermart, but they did not carry the footlong buns.  Hubby was taking his mom to the store, so he checked the regular grocery stores, and alas they had no footlong buns either.  So, we had to improvise by putting two regular buns together.  It got the job done.  We grilled up extra so I will get to have some tomorrow too, which makes me happy.  The funniest thing is, as soon as I had eaten these, I immediately said to Hubby, "Now I want to watch a baseball game."

Are there other people like me, who have specific foods that scream summer to them?  I mean beyond the normal watermelon, corn on the cob, burgers type foods?  Another one for me is shish kabobs.  I used to plead with my dad to make these as a youngster.  The idea of eating food off of a skewer was fascinating and exotic to a small town girl like me.  Unfortunately, he used filet for the meat, which meant we were lucky to get these once a year.  I can still remember the filet, mushrooms, peppers, onions, and cherry tomatoes lined up on those little bamboo sticks.  Perhaps this will be something I try to recreate soon....