Hot Dogs, Rib-Eye, Zucchini, and Alligator

Folks used to sit on the porch shootin’ the breeze. For many, now the porch is a cubicle and the breeze is digital. These are a few of the stories floating around our cyber porch today.


The Hot Dog Days of Summer:  This article from Agripulse pays homage to the lowly "tube steak" and gives us a reason to feel good about indulging this holiday weekend.

Road Kill No More:  When we were kids on the farm, we joked about hot dog ingredients coming from various "weird" animal parts, road kill, and the "less than attractive" animals we'd send to market. Now hot dogs can be made of anything from turkey to tofu--and many other products. But the traditional "dog" apparently goes through a rather mundane and sensible process. This foodie takes us on a tour of a typical hot dog plant to show the process from start to finish--including the cuts of meat used, how they are blended together, stuffed into casings, and cooked.

The Zen of Grill:  This guy figures if you're going to grill a rib-eye steak, you may as well do it right.

Zucchini--the Kudzu of the Garden:  This is about the time of year when zucchini can turn from promising squash plants to triffid-like horror vines that want to dominate the plot. We've tried zucchini bread, pancakes, and tacos, but most of the time we pick them small and stir fry them with a load of other veggies and tofu or chicken. This blogger offers a few more recipes that might help with your zucchini burden.

** and now for something completely different (with apologies to Monty Python)

Take-out Food--Leopard Style:  This jungle cat likes to swim and apparently likes to eat alligator. 

by dan gogerty (hot dog pic from goodreads.com; leopard pic from youtube.com)