While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Please hold all wiener jokes until the end - September 9 is National Wiener Schnitzel Day!

You may just toss this phrase around willy nilly, or you may have been saying it for fun all your life, but do you actually know what it is?  Today's the perfect day to find out, and then go track down some darn good schnitzel and scarf it up.

This traditional Austrian dish involves pounding a boneless bit of veal or pork, escalope-style, dredging it in bread crumbs and frying until golden brown. Wiener schnitzel is usually served with a lemon wedge and a potato side, usually potato salad or potatoes with butter and parsley.  Mmm, meat and potatoes sounds good in any language!

Schnitzel varies across the world, and even the origins are hotly contested. The dish is similar to cotoletta alla milanese,  an Italian creation from Milan. However, the Italian version involves a cutlet, usually containing a rib, so it's a no-go. Others believe the dish was served in Vienna beginning in the fifteenth century, but the actual term didn't appear until 1845.

So what came first, the wiener or the schnitzel?!?