Superbowl Sunday Excess

I suspect that today is the Super Bowl, but I think it’s a little late for it. I mean, doesn’t it usually happen in January after the New Year’s Day bowl games? And aren’t we about a month past that? Maybe it was postponed as a patriotic gesture so as not to take the attention away from Obama. As if. (I say that and it feels like whistling in the dark. I HOPE as if.)

I’ve never watched the Super Bowl, don’t even know whether it’s one word or two, and have no idea who is playing in the game on this particular day, nor where they are doing the playing. I am sufficiently connected to know that it is football, just as I know that the Gray’s Cup (the Grey’s Cup?) is about hockey [except that I don't know that: it turns out that it is the Stanley Cup that is about hockey....I'm hopeless on this, I guess.] . I last watched a football game in 1955, when Idaho State College played somebody else on Homecoming Day. I realized at that point that it was unlikely I would ever figure out the game, would ever figure out, even, who had the football at any given moment. They all run around looking as if they have something like a football tucked under their arm, and I’m ready to believe them. It made for a confusing experience, all round, so I gave up on football. (Despite the fact that I am an American, born and bred, I do much better with hockey, but that is because I graduated from Saint Lawrence University, a New York institution up on the Canadian border, and hockey was the only thing to watch for about 5 months of the year. Also, I can see the puck against the ice.)

So, the fact that today is a great American celebration in which we all participate by gathering with our friends in front of a giant TV and eating a lot of high calory snack food, or even a lot of high calorie main dish food, and drinking a lot of beer: well, it’s largely lost on me because I don’t have a TV, don’t know anyone nearby who has a giant one, or if I do, don’t know anyone with a giant TV who is watching the Superbowl, and don’t drink beer. So disappointing. So out of it.

But this past week—the Internet will help you to do anything—I ran into a series of links about food that would be just terrific for eating while watching the Superbowl. One link led to another, of course, and while I’m not sure that all of the things I saw were intended for the Superbowl Nosh Fest, here’s what I found on offer that captured my fancy: barbequed turkey wings (those chicken wings are so 90’s and also so tiny); a 2-pound mat of woven bacon stuffed with sausage and an additional pound of cooked bacon, which is then rolled up and either barbequed or grilled, and then I assume you just use your hands to slather it around on yourself; and fried cheese.

This is a nice range of choices, I think, so for tonight, in celebration of Superbowl Sunday and just to feel a part of things, I fried some cheese and ate it with my fingers. This recipe involves cutting a thick slice of some kind of cheese—I used jack and cheddar, but I imagine some kinds work better than others--and cooking it over a medium-low flame in a non-stick frying pan for 8 minutes. At the end of the eight minutes, it’s turned into a very thin, crispy kind of cracker-like item. You mop up the extra oil with a paper towel before you eat it. Which probably can’t be done with the roasted bacon mat stuffed with sausage: that’s said to come in at 5,000 calories per recipe. Awesome! Just like the Superbowl. But the fried cheese is pretty nice, too.