Ed Icionsub

Usually when I want a hot dog I’m at a ball game. I never really think about hot dogs in the course of a normal day.

For some unknown reason I have been craving a hot dog for lunch today. I just realized that I can’t even think of anywhere close to the office where I can go buy a hot dog for lunch. Most of the places around here are the regular hamburger joints, McDonalds, Wendys, Hardees, etc. We have a Taco Bell and a KFC, too. But none of these places sell hot dogs.

I’ll have to ask around and see if anyone knows where to get one. I feel totally foolish but I want a hot dog today.

My grandson seems to be going through a change in his food preferences. We try to limit candy and sweets and focus on healthy food, but I think the Tooth Fairy has sharpened up his sweet tooth because that is all he asks for now. He wants cake, he wants ice cream and he wants candies.

At our house, an acceptable snack food is something like a banana, a cup of fruit yogurt, or a handful of nuts like cashews or almonds.

He was pretty frustrated that we did not have any cupcakes or ice cream. That might be what he gets at home, but that’s not what he can expect to get here at our house.

Most soft drinks are too sweet for me these days. But when it is so hot and miserable outside, I get a bigger thirst than usual. I’ve had gallons and gallons of water, and after a while you just want something with taste. So I tried a cherry 7 Up from the convenience store last night. It was pretty good. Not too sweet and just enough flavor with bubbles to be a nice change from plain water.

Its very hard to find pistachio nuts other than the cellophane bags of pistachios in the shell. I don’t mind popping them out of the shell, but its messy and its hard to get a handful of them at a time.

Most cans of mixed nuts do not include the pistachios. So today when I found this can of mixed nuts by Planters that feature pistachios, I had to buy them and take them back to work for my afternoon snacks.

Today I had to run out for a quick lunch and wanted more than a burger. It is so hot out, that even getting in the hot car was a chore. Thank goodness the air conditioner in my car gets cold really fast, and before I left the parking lot I was cooling off and comfortable.

Traffic was horrible, so I stayed on the east side of the interstate and found a little sandwich shop in a shopping center. I decided to stop there and get a hoagie, a bag of chips and a cold drink. Ordering the hoagie was easy – choosing the cold drink was the hard part.

I’ve given up dark sodas. No more Pepsi or Coke – and not even Dr. Pepper. Just for the summer. This is a little experiment that I’m trying, to see if the dark sodas have an effect on my taste for sweets and possibly for weight loss. So I’m ordering Sprite, Mountain Dew, and cold green teas and flavored teas. So today it was a Mountain Dew.

This has been “aliens week” for my house. My grandson has discovered aliens and is fascinated with the thought of beings from outer space coming to Earth.

We have watched all sorts of alien movies, watched alien based TV shows and are even eating alien food.My favorite alien movie is now “Aliens in the Attic.” It has hilarious alien characters, the heroes are kids, and the whole movie is a giggle.

When we mixed up a batch of guacamole, he announced that it looked like alien poop. So we dipped a big clump of it and put it in our mouths with a big flourish. Then we proclaimed it to be delicious! We LOVE alien poop! And he ran screaming from the kitchen – in delight.

The newest of the M&Ms. Have not seen a single commercial for the new flavor. But while shopping at the friendly neighborhood Way Big W, I found a bag of M&M’s chocolate covered pretzels.The pretzels are about the size of their peanuts, but crunchy in a different way. Plus there is the tiny tang of salt. With the candy coating, they are not going to melt as easily as regular chocolate covered pretzels, and they are smaller bite size snacks, so you can grab a handful and walk around with them.

Great idea. Bought the M&Ms pretzels. Love them.

They built a new Burger King in Hermitage. It’s very small, almost no dining room area and no playground for kids. I guess they are counting on a lot of drive through lunch crowds.

The land it was build on is adjacent to a creek and is on a flat area that looks to me like flood plain. Sure enough, during the flooding earlier this month the new Burger King and all the other new stores on that parcel of land next to the creek got flooded.

For some reason, the Burger King was cleaned up and passed inspection within just a few days after the flood waters receded. The Buffalo Wings restaurant next door took 3 weeks to clean up before they reopened.

I wonder if the management of Burger King was smart enough to remove a lot of the supplies and food when it was evident the property was going to flood? Or did they just throw it all away and bring in new stuff?

Most nights I enjoy a nice dinner and focus on the main course. I love the meat and three menus of the south. I am happy with beef, pork, chicken or seafood, along with three vegetables. Most nights I am not interested in a dessert.

But tonight, my sweet tooth has kicked in and I want dessert. There’s not much of anything sweet in the house, so I’m probably going to get in the car and head out for something sweet from Sonic.

Went to the Wendy’s drive thru today and they have put big signs up all around the restaurant advising customers that they have no tomatoes. Evidently the bad weather in Florida ruined most of the tomato crop and they are not able to buy tomatoes for sandwich topping and salads.

I can do without the tomatoes for a while. Heck, sometimes I have to pick them off if they aren’t good. A mushy tomato can actually ruin a good hamburger. I would rather not have a tomato than have a bad one that is mushy and makes you want to spit it out.