Silly spaghetti and hot dogs – DIY tips, past versions, and future ideas
I found it via “TheKitchn.” They found it from Woman’s Day article “10 Off-the-Wall Hot Dogs.” Woman’s Day got the picture from BoingBoing. BoingBoing got it from a tip from DrO who was pointing out some people on LiveJournal doing this.
Needless to say, I did some digging to find the most original source of it I can find from back in 2004, and it’s on a page with a language I can’t even read. Fortunately, they translated a portion for English readers.
The image that was used in all of these looks a bit different than mine. They used larger chunks and stuck more spaghetti into each one. Keep in mind that I was using leftover hot dog slices from muffins, though, and I wasn’t convinced that the dogs weren’t just going to split open and fall apart either, so I didn’t want to waste too much on my first attempt.
There’s also the above variation over there. This sparked two ideas with me.
- I wanted to know what the black pasta was. After talking to @khorre, I ended up with two possibilities. First, there’s organic black bean spaghetti. More interestingly, there’s instructions on how to turn spaghetti black or dark purple with icing paste for Halloween. This could certainly be fun! (See the picture below, and be sure to follow the link for more details and pictures)
- Playing off the Sally-chick scenario even further, I want to take a whole hot dog and put the pieces of spaghetti just in the top to form hair. I know there’s a higher chance of it being forced out as it expands, though, so I’d have to make sure it goes far enough in. Also, the hot dogs are likely to split, so I may have to split some down ‘the back side’ to allow for that in advance. Either way, add a face and suddenly I have little hot dog spaghetti-head dolls.
Want to make your own? Here are some tips:
Tip: Break your spaghetti strands in half for easier-to-work with segments.
Tip: If you want to add more than one hot dog to a set of strands, stack the pieces and carefully slide the spaghetti through the whole stack. If you try to add a single piece at a time, you’ll struggle to get all the spaghetti strands to line up easily.
Tip: Make sure there’s plenty of water in your pan. You’ll want to have plenty of room for these to stack gently before they start cooking. Otherwise, you’ll have some sticking out of the water to begin with and unevenly cooked.
Tip: Don’t do this when you’re in a hurry. Set aside some time to play. It doesn’t take ‘too’ long to stab all the hot dog pieces, but it’s certainly not as quick as a plain pot of spaghetti. And hey, you need to have some time to play with your food. ;)
Tip: If you’re going to get side-tracked with taking pictures and braiding spaghetti “hair,” make sure the kids are able to eat while you play. Fortunately, I had already fed them when I detoured to play with this.
Sally-chick spaghetti head makes me think of the muppets for some reason. And given that Tuktuki, a muppet from the Bangladeshi version, is the only one we came up with, I’m thinking that the purple spaghetti idea is really going to play out well now, hehe. Add more spaghetti to each one, braid it down the sides, use a full hot dog for the body…..now what can I make a green dress out of? Hmm…
Pork Marinades – Mass Experimentation
One of the things I’ve been doing for months now is buying food for an entire month and then cooking several things in bulk. I don’t quite do the full-blown once a month cooking (OAMC) production, but it still works out well regardless.
This month we bought two sets of meat from the local meat market instead of just one month’s worth, and I ended up with 80+ pounds of various meats including beef/pork roasts, steaks, pork chops, sausage, bacon, chicken, and a few other random cuts of meat.
To help me out later in the upcoming months, I went ahead and split the pork packages up into zip-loc bags in appropriate portion sizes for our family. For five of portions, I also whipped up some marinades to pour in and freeze with them so they’re all ready to go*. I’ve never used marinades much, but figured with so much pork, they were worth a shot and would give us something different to try.
I looked around for marinade suggestions online, but I wanted to use what I had on hand, so I tweaked several of these recipes to make them my own. Some won’t look much like what they original did, but they all tasted pretty good before I even put them in the bags, so I’m betting on mostly successes.
Apple Cinnamon (compiled from a few different recipes)
2-3 apples, peeled and chopped
1 cup applesauce (I’d just made some fresh applesauce, so this was perfect)
1-2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tbsp brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
6 tbsp. oil
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. parsley (I used about 1/2 tablespoon fresh parsley)
2 tbsp. wine vinegar (I used regular white vinegar and used a bit less, just for the tang)
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp. dry mustard (I used regular yellow mustard here)
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 tbsp. lemon juice (I squeezed a fresh lemon and used a bit less)
1 cup blackberry wine (Me? Keep blackberry wine on hand for cooking? I think not. I actually added some frozen berries instead, knowing full well that it’ll taste nothing like this recipe was intended, but it’s fun and different, so we’ll see how it goes….oh, and some water to make up for the liquid difference)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup green onions
1/2 tsp ground ginger (used less ginger, simply because I didn’t want the flavor to be overpowering with the fruit attempt)
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup olive oil
Cinnamon Honey BBQ Sauce
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. bbq sauce
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tbsp. oil
1 1/2 tsp. honey
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Honey Mustard Marinade
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
4 tsp. honey
3 Tbsp. Dijon Mustard
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh tarragon leaves (skipped the taragon altogether)
4 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (only used 2 cloves)
1 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
(This one was already so much of a success that it was requested we have it again soon, so I made more and tossed it in with some other pork that I left un-marinaded)
* Tip: After putting the meat with marinades, put it in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight before freezing. You could also freeze immediately and when you’re ready to use the meat, let it thaw overnight in the fridge. This gives the meat time to really marinade in the sauces for a better flavor.
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