Main Dish #1 has Arrived!

If there were a prize for the person who traveled the farthest to attend this Retro WW Potluck Party, Lexi would win by a landslide. She brings her dish to our table all the way from the land down under! You may recall my pal Lexi from the great Knoxapocalypse jell-o challenge from earlier this year. Well - As it turns out, this girl from Oz loves a good culinary challenge, and Lexi does not disappoint! Please take a plate and do enjoy this hearty Retro WW main dish! But save some room and maybe pop a Pepcid or two...

We still have soup, cookies, coffee, cocktails and two more main dishes coming your way!

Hello everyone!

My name is Lexi. It’s so nice to meet you all! I live in Melbourne, Australia with my little cat Quincy, and I blog over at after apple-picking. I write mostly about food, but the topics of cinema, sewing and my little puffball all get a bit of attention there too.  The rest of the time I’m working on my PhD in Film Studies or teaching kids at university about how wonderful and important cinema is. I don’t write about it so much, but I’m also obsessed with nutrition – and everything vintage. I have an ever-expanding collection of vintage cookbooks, so it’s no wonder I’d turn up at a potluck like this!

I’ve never been part of the Weight Watchers program, but like most of us, I’ve lost weight and put it on with varying degrees of success and failure. In honesty, I don’t feel I’m at my best at the moment; in fact, I’m about 10kg heavier than I was when I started my thesis. Yeah, it’s frustrating looking into my closet of late 50s and early 60s wiggle dresses that don’t fit right now – but you know, there’s truly so much awesomeness in my life that it never has me feeling down for very long. I’ll fit into them again – and pretty soon, too. I’ve done it before and I will do it again. I’m just not sure how much the dish Mimi picked for me to make will help…

Stuffed Hot Dogs 

(WW Hot Stuff Recipe Pamphlet 1978)

4 oz hot dogs

1/2 cup celery, chopped fine

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp poultry seasoning (I used Creole)

1 slice bread

1 oz. onion, chopped

1 tbsp imitation or diet margarine

1/8 tsp pepper

1/4 cup skim milk

1 cup water

Make bread into crumbs in the blender. Combine with the onion, salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, milk, celery and margarine. Mix well. Slit the hot dogs in half lengthwise (do not cut the whole way thru). Spoon the stuffing into franks, and place in a shallow baking dish. Pour the water over the franks, cover with foil, and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Makes one serving for the evening meal.

 

 On the upside, it’s a gloriously easy dish, this Stuffed Hot Dog caper. A stuffing of fresh breadcrumbs and finely diced celery and onion is bound with margarine and a bit of milk, before being amped up with ‘Poultry Seasoning’ and good ol’ S&P.  As I don’t know what ‘Poultry Seasoning’ is – and my pantry doesn’t contain many premixed seasonings at all – I used a good shake or two of my Zatarain’s Creole seasoning. Hope that’s ok, Mimi?

 Then comes the fun part! You slice almost all the way through down the length of each hotdog and stuff the little franks’ pockets with the celery/soggy breadcrumb mixture.

All that’s left to do now is pour over a cup of water, cover with foil and bake the little boys for about 30 minutes until piping hot, and kinda gross-looking.

 

Look, I love franks and links. I’ve totally got my hand up when someone calls out, ‘Any Link Lovers in the house?!’.  So, I actually thought that these were ok. I’m not saying I’d make them again, but I’m not saying I didn’t eat them for lunch, either, if you know what I mean. I’ve got a bit of a soggy bread phobia that stems from reading a Poppy Z Brite novel as a teenager (there is a connection there, but trust: you don’t want me to illuminate), so I thought I’d be in trouble here, but the bouncy-tender texture of the franks balanced it out enough for me to get through. I found a little French’s Classic Yellow Mustard on the side added that touch of je ne sais quoi that is so important to party food.

 Anyway, I hope you all love them! I’m looking forward to trying everyone else’s dishes before the drunken dancing starts.

Lexi.x