Football Widow

A Sports Widow Football Season Advisory

August 4, 2008 8:44 PM | 0 Comments

I am so exhausted today because I stayed up until 1:30pm contending with a culinary UFO, one of those situations where you unwittingly encounter the paranormal in preparing a very basic dish. Bear with me, there IS a Sports Widow message here.

Our story begins with a 6-pound pork loin I forklifted into my cart from Costco several weeks ago. I defrosted it a few days ago and, unless we wanted to use it as a door stop, we needed to cook the darn thing. But there was NEVER a convenient time. So, after returning home from 14-year-old Kit's family birthday celebration, my sports fan/chef husband, Bryan, prepped the pork using a basic rub recipe from Joy of Cooking, which incorporated some herbs from our garden. Then, we stuffed the pork loin in the oven. What we didn't factor in was how long it would take for that sucker to roast. When I periodically jabbed the roast with a meat thermometer, it refused to reach the required 150-degree internal temperature. As the night wore on, I insisted that Bryan go to bed and offered to babysit the pork loin. My rationale was that I had the next day off from work, so sleep was not as critical to me. I know; I'm a saint.

In those lonely evening hours, delirium set in and that's when it hit me. The pork loin was a metaphor for football and the upcoming football season. That 6-pounder was approximately the size of a football, and each time I jabbed it with the meat thermometer, I pictured myself deflating the proverbial pigskin. It got to be pretty comical, because each puncture caused the juices to spout up in a way that seemed fake. Everything reminds me of movies, and these moments reminded me of the fake gore that's a hallmark of the 1975 film comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Think Black Knight: "It's just a flesh wound."

Anyway, it was cathartic. Does this mean I'm strange? Does this mean that, at times, I can be an Avenging Sports Widow? Oh, the horror…

The message: My pork loin took a lot longer to roast than I anticipated AND you can bet the upcoming NFL and NCAA football season will take a lot longer than you think. Here are the sober facts.

NFL Football Season Advisory
This week- NFL Hall of Fame Week
Thursday, August 7 - Preseason begins, lasting four weeks
September 4 - The Regular Season kicks off, lasting 17, count 'em 17, weeks - we sink into the yawning abyss
February 1, 2009 - Super Bowl Extra Large III occurs in Tampa Bay, FL

Hey, you Football Widows, how do you feel about all of this? Got any tips for surviving football season?

Life is a Contact Sport. Roast the pigskin.

(Oh, and please don't worry about me - I promise you won't see me on the next episode of Snapped.

The Sports Widow
(aka Nan Hall)