Confession: in 72 years I have never watched a football game from start to finish. And no matter how many times my husband explains the basics, it goes right through me like a bullet hitting no organs. For spectator sports I am dedicated to baseball, tennis and ice skating. Football just makes no sense to me and I am at a loss to understand how so many people are so fanatic and energized by it. To me football players might as well be WWI soldiers fumbling around in a fog of mustard gas. The coverage of those partisan football bar events makes me happy to be anywhere else.
In the past we have traditionally gone to popular movies during the stupor bowl, but this year we were home. I watched more ads than total game time. But we did have special food. I made the Roast Chinese Pork on Garlic Bread sandwich recently featured by the NYT. The history of this sandwich is quite amazing, a mash up of Italian and Chinese, and for some reason a big hit in the Catskills in days of yore. Or maybe still, I have no idea. Growing up in NY I never heard of it; you went to a deli (no pork to be had) or out for Chinese (lots of pork.) There was a chunk of pork belly in the freezer, so I used that. A really good sandwich, accompanied by a slaw mashup: sort of Asian, sort of pickleback, for a worthy side. Coleman's mustard was used to make a facsimile of the stuff that comes in a little packet, and, as suggested, apricot jam and vinegar was combined to make a pretend duck sauce, It worked.
