Corn Dogs (and Belly Buttons)

To read my post on how I celebrated finishing my second book, please click here.

My daughter’s librarian is brilliant. Katy Rose is in first grade, a HUGE grade for developing a love of reading. While most schools try to entice kids with points for reading a certain list of books that have been deemed worthy of the points system (which I know works well for some), my Daughter’s librarian has truly lit a fire in them all to not only read books, but to write them as well!

At their school, anytime a child writes a book and gives it to the librarian, she makes a barcode sticker to put on it, enters it into the computer, and puts it in a special section where all of the students are allowed to check it out. This has gotten them so excited. Katy Rose has written three books so far and every time another classmate writes a book all of the kids scramble to check it out. I’ve never seen her so excited. “Mama you have GOT to read Lindsay’s book! I was the first to get it, it is so funny!” Or “Guess whose book I have today? I read it during lunch because I couldn’t wait!” Then I hear “Mama, guess who checked out my book today?”

After writing her last book, I told Katy rose “See? You might be an author someday!” She said “Mama, I already AM an author, and all of my friends are, too!” I have never seen kids so inspired, having so much fun reading. The books truly are wonderful and I have found myself just as excited as Katy is to see what they write next.

The other day, Katy Rose brought home a book that her friend Hannah, had written back in kindergarten. She couldn’t control her giggles as se pulled it out of her backpack and said “Oh Mama, just wait til you read this. It is the funniest book ever.”

So I opened it to read. It was a story about a fat cat and a fat dog, who both had belly buttons. The randomness of pointing out they had belly buttons was priceless. I won’t go into the details of the book because I truly believe this one needs to be published one day, but during the course of the book some crazy antics ensue and it is drawn to a close with the last line:

“But they still had their belly buttons.” 

I think there is a big moral in that story…and I shared the tale with my friend Jyl. Now, whenever life gets a little crazy or we find ourselves at the end of one of those days where we are not quite sure how we managed to survie it, I’ll say “BUT, we still have our belly buttons!”

Don’t you just love brilliant librarians and young authors?

Now lets get cooking with my daughter, the author

You know, corn dogs are actually one of those things that most kids don’t realize you even can make at home, which makes it easy for you to win coolness points as a parent by making them.

And lets face it, we all secretly live for those moments when our kids give us that “Wow, you’re actually kind of cool” look.

Before we start, you’re gonna need a deep fryer, filled with oil, and turned on so it can be heating up.  

You’re also going to need Baking Powder and Baking Soda, flour, milk, plain corn meal, an egg, and sugar. 

I know this seems like a lot but it mixes up really fast. I wanted to use plain corn meal and plain flour everyone would be able to make them because I know some places don’t have self rising meal and flour in the abundance that we do where I live.

 You’re also gonna need a package of weenies and some sticks, skewers, or popsicle sticks to go in them.

I got these sticks on the kid’s craft aisle at Wal Mart.

Katy is holding two packages of weenies but you only need one…

Dump your plain flour into a shallow bowl.

This is a Corelle pasta bowl in a rare yellow pattern from the eighties called “Citrus”.

Stick skewers or sticks into each weenie and lay them on a paper towel lined plate.

The paper towel helps to absorb excess moisture off of them.

This is a current Corelle pattern called “Cafe Red” that I love . I know, me and my fine china…

Roll each weenie in flour and shake off the excess.

This will help our corn dog batter stick to the weenies and we really need this step because once I forgot to do it and my batter kept sliding off in spots. By dipping them in flour first, it sticks perfectly.

See Katy’s little hand and her little hot pink fingernail? Awwwww.

I usually call her Karo in my posts and eventually in this post I will slip into using her nickname and someone will inevitably leave a comment or send me an email saying “Seriously? You named your daughter after corn syrup?” Eventually I’m gonna email back and say “Yes, and her big brother, Tabasco, thought it was a grand name!”

I’ve never known a single Southerner who did not have a nickname. We talked about that a while back on this post.

Here is Karo finishing up the weenies…

Tabasco was busy on his computer and could not be bothered to make corn dogs…but he requested we bother him once they were done.

(My son’s name is really not Tabasco, it’s Brady…)

 Now we assemble our corn dog batter ingredients.

This is a pretty straight forward batter for corn dogs and you can easily spice it up a bit if you like.

If my kids weren’t eating these, I’d add a little bit of onion powder.

 In a bowl, place flour, plain yellow corn meal, salt, baking soda and powder, and a little bit of salt. 

 Stir that up while sticking your tongue out. 

 Pour in milk

 and add eggs.

This is Katy’s favorite part. When I first started letting her crack eggs they were like little grenades…

 She’s gotten much better.

Stir all of that up really well until it’s all smooth and well combined.

NOW is our trick…

Spoon your batter into a tall drinking glass. 

Dip each weenie into the glass until covered.

As your batter in the glass gets lower, spoon more in.

 VOILA! C’est Corn Dog!

or in my native Alabamian “Well looky thar! It’s a corn dawg! You done gone and done it, Karo!”

Here is an up close shot in case you wanna see it.

Please do not allow kids to help with the following:

Immediately place these in deep fryer, one at a time, and fry until golden brown. They’ll take about five minutes or so to cook and you can cook more than one at a time, just make sure you get them in one at a time and give them a few seconds to start cooking before putting the next one in, taking care not to overcrowd your deep fryer.

 I like mine with lots of mustard…

And NOW Big brother could be bothered to come out of his room

Just like  a man ~winks and grins~

“Our days are happier when we give a piece of our heart

rather than a piece of our mind.”

~Unknown

Submitted by Tammy Bish. Submit your quote by clicking here. 

Related posts:

Posted by Christy Jordan on Apr 16 2012. Filed under Main Course, Quick&Easy, Southern Plate Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry