Baltimore Dogs and Baseball

I'm having one of those rare Saturday's today.

Just a perfectly productive day and some free time for work in the man cave.  I kicked off the day getting up early to drop the wifey's car off for an oil change before heading in to the office, you see she happens to be going to see her old girlfriend tonight and daddy's got the night to him self. 

Now I couldn't get too crazy.  I still had my daughter to take care of.  So I got out of work around 11am and headed home just in time to put her down for a nap.  My wife was going to be using nap time to get ready for her trip and I was free to get my night started in the cave.  Ever since I've started to reel in my Lost Cards I've thought about how I should display them.  Up until now I've only kept them filed away in the catalog, but I had to do them justice and put them out to be seen.  I looked up display cases online, but the truth of the matter was that I'd rather spend the money for a display case on actual baseball cards.  There was only one thing I could do...

D.I.Y.

Basic Woogenomics states if you don't feel like paying for a display case, build one out of scrap wood lying around your basement!

So that's what I did...

Now I didn't plan on writing about it, but my wife came out and saw what I'd done half way through and she told me it would make a good blog post. So here I am and there you are... now where was I?  Oh yea...

I had an old TV stand sitting in my rubbish corner of the basement and it had this removable shelf and I decided it would be a good board to use as the base to my display case.  Besides an old TV stand the rubbish corner also has a stack of scrap wood including various lengths of wood trim.  I grabbed four scraps of trim and did my best to measure them for cuts to fit the board.  I would be basically making them mini shelves to have the cards displayed properly.  However I don't own any power saws and only have an old fashioned bow saw.  So I taped all four together to make it easier to cut them to size and it actually worked okay.  I sanded the ends afterwards and while it wasn't "exact" it looked good enough.

I then laid out the distance between shelves to have the top 2 only hold standard sized top loaders and the bottom 2 shelves be spaced enough for graded cards.  After I had them placed I nailed them down and that's about the time I started snapping photos.

Above are the four pieces of trim nailed to the shelf of my old TV stand.  Once it was all nailed together I spray painted it all black.

I laid it on a crate to dry and it was around that time that my daughter was getting up from her nap.  Not bad work for deciding to get creative on the fly in a 2 hour window.

Once it was all dry, I drilled a hole in the top center of the board and then screwed it to a good spot on the wall by the shuffle board table.  

Once it was up on the wall I noticed the spots I had missed with the spray paint.  Always thinking on my feet I quickly devised a plan...

and I did a little coloring.

Problem solved!  Check out the final results!  Looks GREAT in my own humble opinion.

I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and also really impressed that I could make something like this out of scrap wood laying around the basement. Just goes to show what you can accomplish with a little Do It Yourself attitude!

Now normally this is where I'd end the post, but I've just gotta tell you about the best hot dogs I've ever made in my whole entire life... and I just happened to have eaten them tonight and be documenting the whole way.

For those who have not already been privy to this delicious take on the American Classic, may I introduce you to the one and only...

The Baltimore Dog

The Baltimore Dog is essentially a hot dog wrapped in fried bologna.  Here is a step by step tutorial on how to make the best Baltimore Dogs right in your own kitchen!  If you live in Baltimore I recommend you pick up a pack of Esskay All Beef Hot Dogs and 1/4 lb. of Esskay All Beef Bologna (The brand recommended by your Baltimore Orioles!)

The best way to cook your hot dogs other then the grill is to take a sauce pan and fill it with about an inch of water and get it to a boil. Then pop a couple of doggies and steam cook them covered till just about all of the water has cooked away.  Add a table spoon of butter per hot dog and fry the out side of the hot dog to get a crisp skin.  Once you toss the butter in to the pan with the hot dogs and you get it all melted I recommend you take a half  an onion chopped fine and drop it in to the pan.  Once the onions are perfectly cooked down your hot dogs are ready.

Simultaneously while cooking the hot dogs take another pan and melt some butter and fry two pieces of bologna per hot dog and also toast your buns.  Once that's done it's time to build your Baltimore Dog!

Lay out your toasted buns and place your two pieces of fried bologna down.

Next lay down a bed of your cooked down onions.  Raw onions would do just as nicely.

Then lay down your hot dogs...

And lastly top with ketchup.  Some people think this is child's play, but I will always favor ketchup over mustard on my hot dogs.

Plate with some hot fries and you've got yourself a Baltimore classic!  My wife would never eat like this for dinner, so naturally I took advantage tonight and was left wondering why I only decided to make two. They were so freaking good! The only thing that could have made this night better would've been an Orioles win.  They lost a tough 1-0 pitchers duel.  Danny Duffy lost a perfect game in the 6th or 7th and Bud Norris only gave up one run in the first inning and pitched in to the 8th.  Tough to take a loss like that when you pitch that well.  At least I got to watch it in The Cave.  Even if it is the smallest TV on earth it's nice to enjoy the space I've worked so hard to put together.

Well that's a wrap on this post.  

Till next time...

Thanks for reading.