Of Rats and Snakes
[Note from the profussor: The following was written immediately after last night’s big game.]
My belly is tight. Yes, I’m full. But this is different. The skin on my belly is taut. I believe what I am suffering from is commonly known as a food baby.
The Super Bowl plans went surprisingly well.
With nobody around, I was able to focus on both the game and commercials. And without that kind of singular focus, I might have missed the botched national anthem and probably the subtle power of the best advertisement in the game. It was the only spot that ran in the 21st break (towards the end of the 3rd quarter), and it was for a car company.
I could talk a lot about the commercials, but this is not my advertising blog. So instead I’ll share something a little bit personal which might help you to understand how I got into this situation to begin with, and how I keep on doing this to myself year after year.
And it has to do with the stars….I think.
Manly
Super Bowl Sunday is a very special day for me. I suspect my reasons for celebrating this day are different from most. The below was originally posted February 7, 2010. You can click here to see the original comments.
I’m not the most manly man. I’ve never been into cars or sports. I do not own any tools, and I cannot fix things. The great outdoors has little appeal to me. And I am very satisfied with my monogamous marriage.
That is not to say I do not have any manly interests. I have always enjoyed action movies, and will watch just about anything with Bruce Willis (another handsome bald man). Videogames have been a part of my life since the invention of the Atari 2600. And I have never picked up an issue of Playboy for the articles.
Truth be told these are the few exceptions in an otherwise not-so-manly lifestyle.
So perhaps I’m not the best person to be declaring what should or should not be manly. But that’s not going to stop me.
A Different Kind of Fussy Giveaway
Happy Super Bowl Sunday! Later today I will repost my missive to manliness that ran last year at this time. But now let me tell you about a fussy little game that is all our own. It’s a giveaway of sorts, but just a little different from the ones I have done in the past. CSN stores is sponsoring the grand prize of a $45 gift certificate for use on any of their sites and for any of their products. So if you want to buy a swing set or a coffee grinder or almost anything else on God’s green Earth, they’ll likely have it.
Why is this giveaway different from all other giveaways? Well, I’ll tell you.
Less Meat, More Meat
I love meat. I do. One of my greatest food adventures brought me to a sheep farm, where we met the farmers, toured the barns, and watched a sheepdog herding demonstration while enjoying an amazing lamb cookout. The farmers were grilling several lamb legs over hardwood and rosemary sprigs as we were looking out over the green pastures that fed these tasty animals.
We drank red wine from plastic cups. And it was divine.
These were no ordinary sheep. They were a part of Niman Ranch, a business whose animal husbandry practices were superb. There was no doubt in my mind that these were very happy animals.
Regrettably, in the world of meat production today this is the exception rather than the rule. And I recently decided that I’d prefer to avoid conventionally raised meat as much as possible. This is why I started logging my daily meat consumption on The Meat Sheet. The goal was to have a baseline understanding of how much unhappy meat I was eating. With that knowledge, I could then try and do better.
How did I do in January?
The Best Winter Breakfast. Period.
There must be some Toros in the atmosphere. I fully expect to be shoveling snow all day today, because this year winter is making an effort. This is the kind of year when I would really benefit from owning a pair of snowshoes.
It’s serious.
This kind of weather brings out the cook in a lot of people. Some will stay home and bake. Others will make stock or soup. I may engage in a little soup making myself later today. I have a few winter squash that are just dying to be simmered with some Thai seasonings and enriched with coconut milk.
But before any of that can happen, you have to have breakfast. And a winter breakfast can be serious too. Eggs with bacon and toast will certainly give anyone enough energy to tackle the tasks at hand. But they say people have heart attacks while shoveling snow, and I don’t want to tempt fate.
Instead, allow me to recommend the greatest oatmeal you’ve ever had in your life.
One Wing, Two Pieces
Philly isn’t exactly a wing town. But I went to a bar there all the way back in my college days that had a wing special. I cannot remember the details of the deal, but I do remember their wings. Their wings were remarkable because when they gave you a wing, they gave you the whole wing.
Officially, a wing contains three pieces. For argument’s sake, let’s call them the drumette, the flat, and the tip.
Generally, they are separated into two pieces, the drumette and the flat (which may or may not remain attached to the tip). But at this Philly dive, the lazy bastards in the kitchen just took the whole thing and threw it in the fryer. Honestly, it wasn’t bad, and it certainly ensured that every patron got an equal distribution of wing parts.
True wing fans will insist that every part of the wing has its benefits. Even the tip that contains no meat can still get really crispy around the edges, and provide not just a good grip for the flat, but a few more nibbles of fried substrate for hot sauce.
Maybe I’m not a true wing fan, because I absolutely have one piece of the wing that is far and away my favorite of the two. And I’m curious how many of you are with me.
Let’s start with some criteria.
Precious Wine
There is expensive wine and then there is precious wine. The two of them are very different things. Precious wine may be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. A precious wine is any wine that one deems too special to drink unless one is celebrating some momentous occasion.
There is a problem with that though.
Momentous occasions are few and far between. And let’s say you have a precious bottle of Champagne reserved for a special occasion. You may find that when this event rolls around your wine is neither chilled nor do you have any tasty accompaniments to really make it sing. So you decide to leave the cork in the bottle and let it sit for the next one.
In the meantime, that bottle is getting older and older. And that is not always a good thing. Too much good wine goes wasted, as it sits in people’s closets waiting for just the right occasion to open it. Does this sound familiar to you?
I’m no stranger to this phenomenon. Which is one of the reasons I love John & Dottie’s Open That Bottle Night. This year will be the twelfth annual, and it is celebrated on the last weekend in February. Anyway, I was just thinking about the most precious bottle of wine in the house, and what I’m planning to do with it on February 26th.
The Unfussy Cocktail
TV is wonderful stuff. Most of the commercials are crap, but there are really some great shows being made these days. The thing is that I rarely ever watch them when they air. It’s a combination of many factors, none of which need to be addressed right now.
Instead of watching TV live, for serialized dramas I like to bide my time and wait. Then I can watch multiple seasons in the span of a couple of months. It saves me from counting down the days to the next episode and dealing with the disappointments of reruns and preemptions, not to mention the annoyance of commercials.
That said, I’m in the middle of the third season of Mad Men, and really enjoying the hell out of it.
There was one scene where Don was mixing himself a drink at Roger’s wedding. He was making an Old Fashioned. And for the most part, it was an effortless affair. Sure he had to muddle a sugar cube with some bitters, but the drink was quick to prepare, and he could hold a conversation while assembling it.
This is the gold standard of cocktail making, and it’s within your grasp.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 