Sports Widow Journal

The Sports Widow’s Super Bowl Highlights

February 2, 2009 11:00 AM | 0 Comments

I hosted my annual Super Bowl party to celebrate the 2009 Super Bowl featuring the Arizona Cardinals vs. the Pittsburg Steelers. I decided to root for the Cardinals because a) I like the color red and b) I like underdogs (unlike the Steelers, the Cardinals had never won a Super Bowl). Well, my team lost, but here’s how the afternoon went.

Staging & Décor
• The game-watching, primarily adult viewing area was in our basement where we crowded chairs, a futon (yes, I still have one) and an 11-year-old fossil TV. The Puppy-Bowl-watching, primarily kids viewing area was in our livingroom on the main floor.

• Thanks to my friend and business partner, Dave Sharp, our dining room table was festooned with a couple of fine gifts he’s presented me with over the years, including an M&M sitting in a recliner and a plastic, hollowed out snack football. The reclining M&M dispensed pistachio nuts when you pressed the kick-back lever. When you pressed the button on the snack football, it magically opened to the tune of the NFL Sports theme song, revealing the snack contents inside. My kids were playing it over & over again at breakfast this morning, got into a fight about whose turn it was to play with it, and I nearly threw it out the back window. This is NOT what I want to hear at 7:30am.

Menu
Our Contributions
• Balsamic chicken wings with bleu cheese dressing with big chunks of bleu cheese – my 11-year-old son Austin, who has chef impulses, insists that they didn’t have enough heat, but you should have seen the 12-alarm, hot pepper-laden recipe he originally proposed
• Carrot & celery sticks with ranch dressing
• Molasses cookies, which were hugely popular and are an old family recipe
• Blonde brownies with chocolate chips that sunk to the bottom, which were largely ignored due to the popularity of the Molasses cookies
• Salt & vinegar chips
• Pretzels
• Assorted soft drinks, beers & wine

Guest Contributions
• Homemade, microwave caramel corn that got devoured immediately
• Taco bar
• Guacamole & chips
• Salsa relish
• Cheese & cracker platter (I'm eating the leftovers for lunch all week)

Self-service
The great thing about this event is that we don’t include any dishes that require fussing, so I can just socialize. We strategically placed soft drinks in a cooler near the food, and kept the wine/beer in a second fridge in our laundry room, which is adjacent to the adult viewing area. I used the dryer as a hospitality station, complete with festive tablecloth, openers, small bag for bottle caps & corks, and plastic cups and markers.

The Actual Game & Half-time Show
I watched a fair amount of the game and even yelled a few times, once when the Cardinals guy ran for a long time and made a touchdown, and once at the very end when the Steelers guy made that amazing touchdown.

I was thrilled that Bruce Springsteen was the half-time entertainment, but a few of the teenagers in our group commented that he was too old to be rocking out like that and that it was gross. Personally, I felt The Boss was characteristically nimble and I never tire of his voice and his lyrics, but then I’m almost as old as he is. But there was one comical shot when The Boss went flying toward the cameraman, sliding on his knees, and it looked like he could have got hit in the crotch with the camera lense. The teenagers thought this was pretty hysterical.

La Fin de Football
Whether you watch the Super Bowl or not, it’s a happy day for football widows everywhere. It’s over: The fat lady sang or, in this case, an aging rocker, and we won’t have to think about football until August. Ah… a reprieve.

How was your Super Bowl??? If you had a party, what did you serve?
The Sports Widow
(aka Nan Hall)

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