Stadium Spaghetti

It's just about Opening Day. Look outside, get up, go on. It's April Showers, already. The grass smells like an ache; a lump, a bruise, waiting for the crackling summer sun to heal it flat. The girls aren't so thick with clothes but pretty soon the oaks will be and we'll throw the 108 stitches, the 5 1/4 avoirdupois. We'll raise our kids on it.

It means more than that, though. Our time will shift around the game, the tinny AM station will be seen sitting in the dugout of our pick'dups, and the old man in the booth will make us think of sawdust and the old garage and we'll get wistful and wizened.

We'll also eat hotdogs. Nobody knows why they're so good, or why we can eat a dozen before we get sick. Nobody knows why but they're so damn cheap and they go good with living.

So, here, in honor of my favorite season, Baseball Season, here's my recipe for Stadium Spaghetti.


5 hotdogs
3/4 lbs. of spaghetti noodles
8 oz. of Ketchup
2 oz. of Mustard
2 tsp Relish or 1 pickle spear (optional)
1 cup chopped onion
2 tsp. of butter
Serves 1


Fill up a large, deep pot with a lot of water, and boil it. Once it's roiling, add the spaghetti. Cut open the package of hotdogs directly above a bowl, but save the juice. Just drop all the hotdogs in; it's the best way to get the authentic hotdog flavor worked into the noodles. Let this boil for about 20 minutes. Don't worry about your dogs in there- They may look ugly, but you were going to chop them up anyway!


While the noodles are cooking, let's work on the sauce. Melt down one tsp. of butter. Mix that with the ketchup, mustard and relish if you've got it, all in a mixing bowl. You might want to add a few onions, but save most of them for later. It should turn into a orange paste with speckles of green if you did it right. By now, the noodles and the dogs should be almost done. Hopefully you've still got plenty of water, so you can mix the noodles around as you chop up the dogs. They're probably so soft they'll fall apart with just a little nudging. Once they're sufficiently broken up, pour them in a strainer and let them sit for a few minutes.


While they're sitting, melt down that last tsp. of butter and mix it in with the hotdog juice. Remember the hotdog juice? It's still in the bowl. Now that the noodles have cooled down a little bit, put the noodles and dogs on a plate and pour the hot dog butter over it and mix it around, then add your sauce, and garnish the rest of it with your onions and maybe a couple of pickle spears. Bon Appetit!