Baseball, nachos and Fries – A gastronomical Home Run

Now that baseball season is here, I have been able to partake in one of my favorite pastimes. I like to sit and watch baseball and eat ball park food. No, I do not mean a bowl of soup like you can get in A T & T Park in San Francisco. I mean real food. Hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, and fries.

I went to the store to pick up some of that Arrogant Bastard Ale Keith wrote about, but the Walmart doesn’t carry it so I went with the next best thing. Schmidt’s beer is a saucy number with the decorative animal pictures on the can. Perfect for a romantic evening at home or for the hunting camp. This was shaping up to be a good night. Fancy beer, ballpark dinner, and the Mariners with KGJ playing the Angels on TV.

Ball Game Nachos and fries

This is a fairly easy meal to prepare, but it does take some work to assemble. I have tried many times to make this the perfect dinner food by combining the fries and the nachos, but the two are like oil and water, fire and ice, Paula and Simon. They just will not get along on the same plate together so I have to fix them separately and combine them internally. Sometimes they don’t get along there either, but you will figure out how to deal with that on your own.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground venison
1 pound bacon
1 pack hotdogs
taco seasoning
1 large bag of your favorite tortilla chips
2 medium onions
2 large jalepeno peppers
1 large red, green, and orange bell pepper
sour cream
salsa
1 pound of potatoes
1 packet onion soup mix
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 pound Velveeta cheese
1 pound of your favorite shredded cheese blend

Let’s start with the fries. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash and peel the potatoes. Slice the potatoes into fries. I like to cut mine more into steak fries. Rinse the fries and put them into a 13X9 baking dish. Combine the 1/4 cup vegetable oil and the packet of onion soup mix in a bowl. Mix until all of the soup mix is combined with the oil and poor evenly over the fries. Bake the fries for 35 to 40 minutes.

Now for the nachos. Fry the bacon to desired crispness and set aside. Pour all but 2 or 3 tablespoons of the bacon grease out of the pan and scramble the venison. when the venison is cooked thoroughly add the taco seasoning to taste, crumble the bacon, chop up the hot dogs, and mix them into the taco-seasoned venison. Dice the onions, peppers, and Velveeta cheese. Lightly grease another 13X9 baking dish and layer the chips, meat, vegetables, and the Velveeta and the shredded cheese. Sprinkle a layer of the shredded cheese over the top and bake at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted. Remove it from the oven and dish up a plateful. Top it with some sour cream and salsa.

Sprinkle some of the shredded cheese on the fries and place them back in the oven to melt the cheese and you are ready to hit the bean bag chair and enjoy the game just like you were at the park. Well, except that the beer is cheaper and no one complains about you sitting in your underwear eating cheesy nachos.