My favorite birthday dinner? Hot dogs cooked in the dog’s water dish.

That birthday hot dog-dog.

On special occasions I like to eat hot dogs. No fancy food in expensive restaurants for me, please. And no ketchup, either. Just a hot dog with plenty of mustard is all I need.

So that is what we brought to a house we rented on my birthday one year. But the house that had nothing to cook with. A stove, but no pans. A microwave, but no bowls. No grill or fireplace, either.

It seemed like I wouldn’t get to celebrate with hot dogs after all. Until my husband finally found a way to cook them: boiling the hot dogs in the microwave with the only bowl we could put in there — the dog’s water dish.

That was cool.

Many people certainly won’t think cooking hot dogs in a pet’s bowl is cool, especially not the man who did it. But I love that he found a way to cook that night, deciding that at least one thing would be worse than cooking hot dogs in a dog dish: Me not eating the hot dogs at all. 

 That was super cool.