For The Dogs.

St. Patty's Day and National Corn Dog Day Are Both Tomorrow? This Calls For Something Special.

Now this is pretty neat: Saturday, March 17 is both National Corndog Day and St Patrick's Day. That almost never happens, you guys. And it's a pretty big deal for us folks here in Dallas. Not only do we have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade every year on Greenville Avenue, but we're also the ones responsible for introducing the corndog to America.

Yep, that's right: Back in 1942, Carl and Neil Fletcher introduced their “Corny Dogs” at the State Fair of Texas. And, each year, approximately 500,000 corny dogs are sold within the three weeks that the state fair is open each year. That's an average of 21,000 corny dogs a day, folks! Dallasites just love their deep fried meat on a stick, huh?

Well, we also love St. Patrick's Day: This Saturday, the streets of Greenville Avenue will be lined with party-goers decked out in green from head to toe. The first Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day parade took place in 1979. It consisted of just a few cars and a few more beers.

Since then, it has grown into an event often referred to as our own little Mardi Gras. Indeed, the parade has become the signature St Patrick's Day celebration here in Dallas, now boasting more than 100 floats and close to 100,000 spectators each year.

The mere fact that these two days have fallen on the same day this year is pretty amazing. So it really seemed like a no-brainer that we do something special for this special occasion. Something along the lines of, y'know, a green corn dog. Trick is, the only way to do this is to make your own corn dog batter. Actually, that's fairly easy.

Ingredients: 1 cup yellow cornmeal; 1 cup flour; 1/4 tsp salt; 1/4 cup sugar; 4 tsp baking powder; 1 egg; 1 cup milk; green food coloring; 16 hot dogs; 16 wooden skewers; 1 quart of oil.

Directions:
1. Preheat oil in a deep sauce pan over medium/high heat.
2. Combine cornmeal, flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, egg and milk in a medium bowl.
3. Stir in about six drops of green food coloring — or as much as you want.
4. Insert wooden skewers into hot dogs.
5. Roll hot dogs in batter until well coated.
6. Fry two or three corn dogs at a time about four minutes.

If you happen to have some red food coloring, mix it with your mustard to make it an orange color. Green corn dog, orange mustard, flag of Ireland — you see where we're going with this.

Point is, have fun with it. And have a good time this weekend!