One night, while Nick was off on a work trip, Nia and I decided to try out the hot dogs here. I don’t recall ever eating hot dogs at our prior posts (except one 4th of July when someone hand-carried them in a cooler from the U.S.). However, the meat here is of notable quality and there’s an abundance of sausages, so I figured we had a good chance of it going well.
I picked the package that looked most similar to American hot dogs in shape and color. What I didn’t notice until I opened up the package was that there were words printed on them! (“МЯСНЫЕ” means meat in Russian. No idea what the other word is, perhaps the brand name.)
I wasn’t about to let this deter us, so I cooked them up. But when I put it in the bun and lifted it to my mouth, I found myself bothered by eating a hot dog with writing on it, so I set it down and covered it in mustard and ketchup to solve my problem. However, when I finally took my long-awaited bite of hot dog, the casing wouldn’t give–in fact, it tasted distinctly like cellophane–and the meat came squishing out the end. Heavy sigh. Something was not right here.
I was quite annoyed by this point because I just wanted to eat my damn hot dog but clearly I was NOT doing it right. So back I went to the sink to wash off said hot dog. I tried a new approach, skillfully wielding the kitchen shears to remove the casing. Now it REALLY looked like the hot dogs I knew and loved with all that annoying writing gone. But seriously, what a pain in the butt. Eating a hot dog should not require so much effort. I will give it points for taste though. Still TBD if they’re going to become a regular menu item in our household.
