Only when I’m cooking professionally do I make a list and go into a store and buy the items to make a recipe. Instead, I usually buy what I think we’ll eat. In practice, that means many dinners are built around whatever foods in the fridge/freezer need to be eaten.

Pinto beans and some Nathan’s hot dogs taking up real estate in the freezer, turkey bacon and a bell pepper reaching their sell-by date and some no-salt-added ketchup purchased by accident — a batch of beanie weenie would clear it all out at once.

About 35 years separate me and my last serving of beanie weenie, so I can’t explain why it came to mind. It seemed like an interesting path: study up on 35 years’ worth of technological and flavor-profile improvements to the somewhat lame beanie weenie of my youth. But when I looked for a beanie weenie recipe, I came up empty-handed except for three “combine a can of pork and beans with some sliced hot dogs” on Recipezaar.com. Not what I wanted. I looked in some very likely cookbooks: Fannie Farmer, the Dinah Shore cookbook, Amy Vanderbilt, the old Joy (2 editions), the Good Housekeeping cookbook, Dinner Doctor. Maybe people didn’t make beanie weenie from scratch. I never have before either, it’s true, but I figured someone out there was doing so, especially in these economically trying times.

So I developed a recipe. The trick is to cook the bacon, onion and pepper low and slow, and to make a little roux. Not a big scary roux. You’re just browning a little flour in a little oil so all those flavorful fats and oils form a suspension that binds the beans and the hot dogs so they become one in deliciousness. Pintos and Dawgs were very good, and even Sweet Cheeks only had to be asked twice to eat it. I even wrote down the recipe, so I have a copy of it. And now you do too.

And the plate partner there in the photo is panelle, a crazy good French fry substitute made from chickpea flour and nearly carbless, recipe from my pal Claudia at CookeatFRET.com

Pintos and Dawgs

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon butter

3 slices turkey bacon, chopped

1/2 chopped onion

1/2 chopped green bell pepper

2 tablespoons flour

5 hot dogs, sliced

1 scant cup chicken bouillon or broth

1/2 teaspoon ground mustard

1/4 cup barbecue sauce

2 tablespoons ketchup

2 to 3 cups cooked pinto beans

Salt to taste

In a nonstick pan, heat the oil and butter over medium-low heat and saute the bacon until the fat is rendered. Add the bell pepper and onion and saute until very tender and beginning to brown. Sprinkle with the flour and saute for about 10 minutes until browned. Add the hot dogs and saute until browned. The mixture will be sticking to the pan. Add the chicken broth and mix very well. Cook until thickened, about 3 minutes. Add the mustard, barbecue sauce and ketchup and mix well. Cook until thickened and hot. Taste it — the mixture should be tangy but not tomatoey. Add the beans and salt and cook until heated through. Makes 3 to 4 servings.