Food For Football

The Super Bowl is on Sunday! And today is Thursday? Egads! I’m not ready for this. Heck, I don’t even know if I want to try and have a healthy and virtuous Super Bowl, or if I’m going to throw caution to the wind and go for the gusto of a more traditional football feast.

Was it just last year that I made the most American thing ever? Who remembers the Big Mac Tater Tot Nachos? Man, those were delicious. Since obviously I’m rooting for Philly this year, part of me wanted to make Philly Cheesesteak Tater Tot Nachos. Because Super Bowl. Amiright? Or amiright?

On the other hand, I’ve been trying hard to be moderate. For the most part it’s been working, even with the pizza and beer party, judging the Schenectady Soup Stroll, and all of the other food shenanigans that come my way through Yelp and the blog. Except yesterday while driving back home from Saratoga Springs, I caught what might have been the most depressing twenty minutes of radio ever. It was a Commonwealth Club interview with Daniel Ellsberg on WAMC about nuclear holocaust.

The bottom line is that now I just want to eat all the things.

As of this moment, there are only a few ingredients I have on hand, and one of them was for the healthy version of Super Bowl snacking. That’s the head of cauliflower. Which was somehow going to magically transform into buffalo cauliflower.

I have no recipe. It certainly wasn’t going to be fried. Maybe it was going to be roasted. Perhaps I can toss it with some green-tube shaky cheese first, and give it a little bit of a crust. Or maybe breadcrumbs. Or maybe both.

Whatever the case, ultimately this healthy canvas is going to turn into an unhealthy treat, because I got myself a big wedge of smoked blue cheese from Chester’s. My secret shame is that I crumble up a bit of that cheese into a glass bowl, cover it with a tablespoon or two or four of Frank’s Red Hot, and melt the cheese into the hot sauce with a few seconds in the nuke box.

That smoked buffalo blue cheese sauce goes on pretty much anything. Pizza crust, vegetables, leftover pasta, potato chips, fingers… you name it.

There is also a full jumbo-sized bottle of Frank’s Red Hot on hand, so I can buffalo my face off. The only limiting factor is the cheese, and I have more of that than I should eat in a sitting, even if I wasn’t tempted to try and eat moderately.

We may have tater tots in the freezer. But we might not. And if I was serious about trying to pull off the Philly Cheese Steak Tater Tot Nachos, I’d need a trip to the store for whiz. And, you know, some kind of steak. The onions I’ve got covered. Plus I should check on our supply of tots.

What I’m going to need to think about is the beer. I’d like to get something from Philly and something else from Boston. But we may need to expand those circles a bit to push beyond the cities.

My kids don’t care about any of this. They are thrilled with just being able to eat in front of the television set. Their Super Bowl routine consists entirely of barbecue Pringles, organic grassfed all beef hot dogs, and soda. For them that’s a huge treat. Those poor deprived souls.

Oh man. The more I’m thinking about cheesesteak tater tot nachos, the more I really feel like I need to make them. I’ll keep you posted. But that cauliflower is still totally getting eaten with the Chester’s buffalo blue cheese dip. Mark my words.

Hey, just because it’s the Super Bowl doesn’t mean you can skip out on eating your veggies.