Needless to say, by the time I got us and all the bags back into the house and put the little girl down for a nap, I was not only hungry, but cranky and in no mood to make dinner.
I had been planning on making meatballs and spaghetti, even though no one in my house likes spaghetti. But that's what your'e supposed to make with meatballs, right? What else could I do? But the thought of standing there and making the sauce and then mixing the meatballs and forming them into the little balls was way too much for me; it made me want to cry. So then I thought maybe I would make hamburgers. Much easier. But there were no hamburger buns in the freezer and my complainers, I mean my kids, prefer to have hamburger buns with their burgers. Okay, but I did have hotdog buns; I once tried to serve hotdog buns with hamburgers and the children were not pleased. Josh is much more adaptable. He just cut his burger in half to fill his hotdog bun. A pleasure to cook for, that one.
And then I remembered that when we were small, my mom, who really really didn't like to serve unhealthy things like hotdogs, would make hamburgers in the shape of hotdogs and have us make pretend. I believe we called them hotdoggers. And so that's what I did. So easy. Mix the one pound of ground turkey (or whatever you make your hamburgers with) with maybe 2 tablespoons of ketchup, around a quarter cup of bread crumbs or matzah meal and an egg. Divide the mixture into six sections and roll each one into the shape of a hotdog instead of a hamburger. Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes on each side, or until they are golden on the outside and done on the inside. I don't have a meat thermometer so I just cut one open - the sacrificial hotdogger always goes to the mommy*. It's fine. I don't mind. Really.
I took less than five minutes and cut up a few sweet potatoes into smallish pieces and roasted them in the oven while the hotdoggers cooked. Defrosted the hotdog buns on the counter and hooray, a half-decent (dare I say, a three-quarters way decent?) dinner. And, and, it was so quick to make that I was able to sit and have a cup of tea and look out the window for a whole five minutes, 'till someone woke up. Heaven.
*Except this time. Because these hotdoggers are definitely not Whole30 approved.