Sauerkraut, wiener and potatoes!

A wiener, sauerkraut and a half baked potato! What a great luncheon idea! True, many folks do not like (even hate) sauerkraut, but I would say to them, 'Sie wären ein mieser Deutscher'! As man man with just a bit of pure Aryan German blood flowing in his veins, I fully embraced the concept of eating semi-rotted cabbage soaked in vinegar! Mein gott!

My other signature lunch time meal, which also employs a wiener, is the Anthony Wiener Pork N Beans dish I created some time ago! (And no, the picture at right is not one of Anthony's actual penis, as I've been told it is too small to photograph)!

This SWP meal, as I like to call it, goes together like a dream in that you only have to bring a hotdog wiener to a boil, nuke a small russet potato for about four minutes, add some sauerkraut and then nuke the whole mess for another two minutes or so. As a finishing touch, I also often add a dab of sour cream to the potatoes. Bon appetite!

Nutritionally, this meal is relatively low in calories and carbs! At about half a buck in cost, it's also kind to the pocketbook.

Wiener, potato and kraut diet routine!

In my everlasting and ongoing search for a diet that worked, I came across one lunch time meal that I felt had some merit. A hot dog wiener, ½ a russet potato and a dollop of sauerkraut made for a decent lunch time meal, was cost effective and good to go in the calorie department!

At under half a buck cost and coming in well under 200 calories, this was a real 'wiener' in my book! The only downside was the salt content, (something of a constant battle in a world that seems to love it). Note, also, that I used salt substitute and a spray on 'pseudo' butter.

I planned to try sticking with this combination for my lunch for a sold week, while sticking with an ETM^* breakfast and a MCD or meat centered dinner.

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WPK – Wiener, ½ potato and kraut (180)

ETM^* - Egg, toast and milk (~230 calories)

MCD – Breakfast steak, ½ Russet potato, simple salad (~400 calories)

Pork n Beans on toast with a weiner!

A meal to be henceforth known as the Anthony Weiner meal!

Never let it be said that I cannot get it on down with the more common foods or people. For a Sunday repast, I elected to have a heaping dish of pork n beans on toast along with a firm all-beef wiener. For this meal, I chose only the best of ingredients; Sara Lee bread, Campbell's Pork n Beans and best wiener I could find. (Good nutrition counts for a lot, and I just don't cotton to any wiener that's just full of crap). This wiener was a really good wiener; containing lean and fit ingredients and all of that. It certainly complimented the meal.

A simple sort of lunch menu offering!

Here's a combo lunch item that I've enjoyed for many years. It's composed of a hot dog, a slice of toast and a 1/2 cup of Pork and Beans! It goes together very quickly and adds only about 300 calories! A good lunchtime choice that is also economical! I also included a simplified nutritional panel whose only sore point is the rather high levels of sodium...

Critique: The All American hot dog!

Why does this look like a very fucked up vagina?

The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates Americans consume 20 billion hot dogs a year - more than twice the retail sales figures. That works out to about 70 hot dogs per person each year. Hot dogs are served in 95 percent of homes in the United States.

That is one heck of a boatload of dawgs! (For myself, I think that the total would be a much more conservative rate of consumption... maybe 68 hot dogs a year). Whatever the actual count, I thought to examine this very popular pastime in a bit more detail!

Right off the bat, let it be known that (like eggs), there are many variations you can eat out there; you have all sorts of meat wieners combined with many kinds of buns which are slathered with more crap than I could ever recount here. For this review, I decided to concentrate on your average run of the mill dog and bun! Here's a list of what I used for this post...

A disclaimer: This particular combination of ingredients was not the best a health conscious person could buy, nor was it the worst. (It was the kind of stuff I was able to easily purchase at my local Country Mart located in Forsyth Missouri).

I decided not to add anything about taste as that would be a waste of time. If you do not like to enjoy a good hot dog, you are very likely beyond the administrations of medical science....

What's actually in a common wiener?

All hot dogs (those that are sold commercially in the US) are cured and cooked sausages that consist of mainly pork, beef, chicken and turkey or a combination of meat and poultry. Meats used in hot dogs come from the muscle of the animal and looks much like what you buy in the grocer's case. Other ingredients include water, curing agents and spices, such as garlic, salt, sugar, ground mustard, nutmeg, coriander and white pepper. And that don't sound too bad... [Rumors that some dogs contain ground up eyeballs, beaks and other sordid and sick animal body parts. Not true, those are only sold to some West Coast consumers!]

Calories per gram!

After doing much research, I determined that there are about 2.3 calories per gram in this particular dawg. So, at 57 grams for the Frankfurter and 46 grams for the wiener, that came to only about 230 calories! Really, not all that bad even after adding some additional toppings.

The toppings!

For myself, I like a fairly standard group of stuff to throw on board; mustard, ketchup, minced onions, hot pepper and relish! I also like to lightly brown the inside of the bun for that finished look! 

In the end, you have thrown together a great tasting treat for low cost and a minimal impact on your waistline... enjoy!

So, it's come down to this?

While in a never ending search for meals that would fit well into my latest diet (aka Ketogenic*), I've come across a real wiener, er, winner.

Column headers are; calories, carbs, fat, protein and sodium

OK! So, it don't look like very much and, you know what? It isn't! Just 166 calories (with enough salt to last me a few weeks). And, yes the salt issue aside, this is a low carb, high protein repast that was just the ticket for an otherwise so so Tuesday in September!

*The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fueling brain-function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source.