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Feeling the dog days of summer right about now? Well, how about stopping by Evanston this Saturday for some dollar hot dogs and corndogs? Think that’d make things a bit better?

The Wiener and Still Champion is celebrating National Hot Dog Day this Saturday and is offering every Vienna Beef, Chicago-style hot dog (and freshly battered Dipping Dog) for $1.00, so make like a Kobayashi and get yer fill.

Now there’s some conflicting info on the web as to whether July 19th or July 23rd is the actual National Hot Dog Day this year, but I like having the offer available on the weekend. National Hot Dog Month is also most definitely July, so there’s little to do now but kick back and enjoy some super sausage… on the cheap. Eat up.

Guy Fieri of the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives stopped by Evanston, IL to tape additional material at Wiener and Still Champion today. Lucky for me, I was there to get this picture taken with him. (Thanks, nr706!)

Feel free to check out the other photos I snapped while he was there at the Picasa web album set up for just that purpose.

Yup, so there goes another chunk of my internet anonymity, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. And in case you were wondering, that’s a shirt for Korea University, which was established in 1905… in Korea. No, I didn’t go there for college.

It’s that magic time of year again when the digital calendar rolls over to 7/11: 7-Eleven Day! And why should you care? ‘Cause you get free Slurpees!!

So they’re only 7.11-ounce cups… but you can’t beat free, and it’s hard not to stumble on one of the thousands of locations that could potentially be participating. (Only once did they reject someone in my experience — a whole lotta schoolkids — but otherwise it’s been good.) Just don’t go too late or the Birthday cup supply could run out on ya. (And yes, it’s the company’s 81st B-day, and this apparently marks the 7th year of this wonderful promotion.)

I don’t know what radioactively colored frozen beverage you might be interested in this Friday, but I personally like Coke and Mountain Dew quite a bit… if they’re available (and the machine’s working).

Price: $0.89

Availability: participating Bells

Location: 3511 W. Devon Ave., Chicago, IL 60659 (map); phone: (773) 588-9712

Rating: 3 out of 5 - acceptable

New menu items can obviously be hit-or-miss affairs, but Taco Bell’s additions have been surprisingly more pleasant than they seem to have any right to be. And while the Triple Layer Nachos didn’t stick to their Value Menu pricing as well as their Cheesy Double Beef sibling at my particular location (they’re listed at 79 cents online, though the web site does warn that prices and items may vary), the meatless combination of “nacho chips, covered in simmering red sauce, hearty beans and nacho cheese sauce” remained quite palatable — and under a dollar (even with tax).

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Price: $0.99; paid - $0.00

Promotion: Subway Get Smart sweepstakes, instant-win game

Location: 6843 N. Lincoln Ave., Lincolnwood, IL 60712 (map); phone: (847) 329-8134

Rating: 3 out of 5 - acceptable

I like entering online contests, but some sweepstakes are clearly more giving than others. I was lucky to win more bags of these Flat Earth Baked Veggie Crisps from Frito-Lay than I knew what to do with (thanks, CAG), and the winning e-mails just began to form daily in my inbox like the evening dew. It had been a while since I’d stepped foot in a local Subway sandwich shop, but I knew I was in for trouble when the person working there had never seen my winning redemption e-mail before. Fortunately, the deeper inspections, personal-information taking, and management consultations would come after this initial trip, freeing me to enjoy some free veggie crisps after a brief and relatively pleasant round of counter confusion.

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