It’s National Hot Dog Month! Yes!

And Nathan’s just had its famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. What a way to honor the frank – shove as many into your mouth as you can in a short amount of time.

This year’s champion is Joey Chestnut, who set a new record of 69. He absolutely shattered his own record. He beat it by one.

Chestnut says he does this for the “prestige” and not the prize money. And can you blame him?

Read on for more about the hot dog record here.

And have your own contest at home with these beef franks. Ya gotta eat the buns, too. So make sure you’re hungry first.

If you do hold your contest at home you won’t win the prize money, but the prestige factor will definitely be there.

Eat on, my hot dog loving friends!

Photo courtesy of AP via foxnews.com.

So, we’re back in the real world after a wonderful visit to Florida’s Gulf coast. It was well worth all of the wondering and worrying and ultimately the decision to keep our plans.

The area was beautiful and people seemed genuinely happy to have us there. That’s always nice, right? To have people happy you’re there?

We always like to cook in our little rental when we travel there because we like what we like and — well — we’re kind of picky.

As I’ve done for the past few years, I had an order of some of my faves sent to me there and let me tell you we were not disappointed.

Isn’t it beautiful?

The first meal we cooked was an all-beef franks extravaganza. Can’t go wrong with that, I say.

We were like Burger King — you could totally have it your way. Plain, ketchup, mustard, spicy mustard, relish, cheese . . . anything.

We cooked these babies on our trusty George Foreman grills indoors. The place smelled so good!

Cooking for a bunch of hungry vacationers sort of makes you well-liked. And I liked earning my place at the top of the food chain (so to speak) every night. It makes everyone happy when Mama’s happy.

More scrumptious meals from our week later!