This is a simple picnic-style Sunday afternoon meal. Most of the time, it's good for large groups. However, if you do not have capacity for cooking a large amount of onion rings and keeping them warm, perhaps you should reconsider the menu. Nevertheless, I enjoyed making this meal because of its unusual situations. Read on.

On this day, I had failed to purchase hot dog buns and had no desire to go out to get any. We elected to cut the Veja-Links by Worthington Foods (vegetarian hot dogs) in half length-wise before grilling. Then, we dressed the hamburger buns as we would have a regular hot dog. We broke the dogs apart as needed to fit the bun appropriately. I don't believe any of them fell apart.

Baked Beans

I simmered a handful of onions and a couple cloves garlic before adding the can of baked beans. My mother has always taught me drain (but not rinse) the beans and to add a teaspoon-plus of mustard and barbeque sauce to taste. I have never strayed from this recipe. It doesn't add sauce to the beans; it actually makes the sauce that is there thicker.

Onion Rings

I used the Tempura recipe (see previous blog post)for the onion rings as I didn't have time to research another. My secret, however, is that I took three rings of increasingly smaller size and dumped them all in the tempura dip with one inside the other. Then, I fried them in the same set and they came out more like a onion patty instead of like individual rings. It's a little more non-traditional. I had an empty skillet on the bridge burner of my stove and after removing the excess oil by drying the rings on a paper towel, I put them in the skillet, they weren't as hot, but were still very good.