Sleepless Nights . . . Pondering

The great mysteries of life keep me awake at night.

Hot dogs come in packages of ten.  Hot dog buns come in packages of eight.  Doesn’t seem quite congruent.  What’s a person supposed to do with the extra two hot dogs?  Growing up we didn’t always have hot dog buns in the house.  The solution for hot dogs was Wonder Bread . . . the hot dog was laid from corner to corner diagonally with the bread then folded to make a triangle, and there you had a poor person’s hot dog bun.  A temporary solution for an age-old problem.  I ate a lot of hot dogs like that growing up.  Ten hot dogs . . . eight buns.

 

Why!

 

I recently stumbled upon the issues creating this dilemma.  It comes down to industry standards and “that’s the way we have always done it”.  Prior to pre-packaging meat, people had to go to the butcher to get hot dogs.  A person would tell the butcher how many hot dogs were needed.  They were weighed and sold by the pound.  That was back in the good ol’ days.  Today, hot dogs are pre-packaged.  A typical hot dog weighs 1.6 ounces.  It takes ten hot dogs to make a pound.  Meat is still sold by the pound thus hot dogs come in ten count, one-pound packages.

 

That explains the hot dogs, but what about the buns?  Why eight?  Because bakeries are systematic and designed to be efficient.  At some point buns were made in clusters of four in pans designed to produce eight rolls a piece.  It has always been that way, and it costs too much to change it.  They aren’t going to change it now . . . costs too much and is a pain to change.  Eight is what you get.

 

Well, at least in the United States of America.  In Canada producers or hot dogs and hot dog buns have decided to solve the problem.  They have brokered a deal to produce ten-packs of buns . . . a bun for every hot dog!   At least in Canada life makes sense.  In the meantime, the bigger issue is for us Americans to figure out what to do with those extra hot dogs.  Or we can wait for the president to annex Canada as the 51^st state and write an executive order declaring eight buns to a pack!

 

Just when I thought I’d finally get a good night’s sleep, my mind has shifted to those extra two hot dogs.  I guess there’s always “beans and weenies”.  I hate “beans and weenies” . . . makes me flatulent.  People already say I am too full of “hot air".  Thank goodness there is Wonder Bread!