When Tamar Adler decided to hand-make hot dogs for a summer wedding party, she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Jesse had dark pink cheeks and on cold days wore a brown skullcap. He wasn’t a crush or an idol—I now realize I don’t even know how to spell his name. I never saw it written, and when I last saw him, I was twelve and didn’t think of such things. Jesse stood on a dim stretch of Central Avenue in White Plains, New York, selling perfect and peppery hot dogs. My father visited regularly and brought me along on Saturdays—in my favorite pinafore and patent leather shoes—on our drive home to Westchester from concerts at Carnegie Hall. Jesse and my father would exchange pleasantries. Jesse would hand us three hot dogs wrapped in thin napkins, steam rising from them, and we would bend over our lunches, careful to keep mustard off our nice shoes. Eventually my younger brother, John, joined us. Eventually I spent Saturdays with my friends. Eventually everyone outgrew everything, and I never caught sight of Jesse again.

Jesse’s hot dogs came to mind when planning started for a party this summer celebrating my wedding. There would be a lunch of lobster and mussels by the sea. Then we wanted hot dogs for a late-night meal. And with both my father and Jesse long gone, what I really wanted, I heard through a quiet corridor of my inner self, was for those hot dogs to be like Jesse’s.

From an emotional perspective it was a good plan. From a practical one, it was complicated. I had no way of asking Jesse about the hot dogs he served from his roadside cart. I imagine they came in industrial packages from an anonymous factory—though I can’t say. So much about hot dogs is opaque that when I think about the breed of affection we have for them, it strikes me as the dysfunctional one we reserve for foods and friends about which we say things like I don’t even want to know.

Then an idea: What if I were to decide, in the spirit of my age, to Make My Own? Which led to another question—one I had somehow never asked: What, precisely, is a hot dog?