Oh, back to the food. The Super Bowl is the second-largest day for American food consumption after Thanksgiving. Thus the year-long recipe hoarding we mentioned in last week’s expose, Semantics Play a Big Role in This Year’s Super Bowl, which Aaron Donald liked so much he had his agent broker a deal for a reprint in Harper’s. Still, as usual, our receptionist fumbled the ball as it were and lost the paperwork because she had just “got her eyebrows done,” and apparently, they screwed it up. She was just a mess that day, emotionally, despite our genuine attempts to assuage her fears by pointing out we didn’t even notice the change to begin with, so it couldn’t possibly be that bad. This, in turn, led our CFO, who knows a lot about the beauty industry, nails and eyebrows and such, to take us aside and point out we’re entirely unhelpful, “ham-fisted Neanderthals.” That definitely hurt our feelings, but Sharon is again pretty hardcore. Like most CFOs.
We recently sat down with our executive chef, Tom “Stop Making Irish Joes” O’Shannusey, since he stays on top of food trends in general, and Super Bowl party food trends in particular because he loves football, to offer guidance on what our beloved, extremely attractive and likely nice smelling readership of approximately 472,233.34 people should make for the forthcoming game. To further their status in society and stuff.
Tom, it turns out, leans heavily on “Google Trends” – a website that analyzes the popularity of queries in Google Search across the planet – for his information. But apparently, Tom, who’s 52, also secretly relies on his 16-year-old niece Samantha to both do the actual work in Google Trends and decipher the graphs that compare the search volume of different queries over time because graphs and charts and data visualization are all confusing and Lord knows we don’t understand them either. It’s okay, Tom.
Thus we didn’t know Samantha was the cornerstone of his research operations. If we had known, we wouldn’t have put Tom on the spot during last week’s board meeting, where we spontaneously pitched the idea for this story to both our Board and their/our Taiwanese investors. A pitch that required Google Trends and the graphs and stuff to make a case for giving us the green light by showing how we would benefit from associating ourselves with an already trending topic which, of course, increases awareness of our operation and potentially establishes us as a “thought leader” in the space, the first step toward driving more advertising revenue and by proxy getting additional foreign industrialists to invest cold hard cash and/or Dogecoin in our fledgling operation so we can buy bigger houses.
Instead, Tom just stood there on the podium like a lump – probably trying to figure out how to surreptitiously call Samantha, but she was in class – then just started sweating. We thought he was maybe having a medical emergency until he began frantically mashing on his keyboard to get PowerPoint to work and cussing like a sailor. Like, really offensive, almost weird profanities. Ah, there’s the Tom we know and love! He ended up displaying a series of charts that had emojis on them – no actual numbers – so everyone got pissed, and the meeting fell apart, and apparently, we can expect a call from some Taiwanese lawyers. Oh well, at least he didn’t have a heart attack. We’ve all been there, Tom, it’s okay.
Some of the stats he would have hit include numerical evidence of our nation’s drastic uptick in bathroom water usage on Super Bowl Sunday, thanks to robust beer consumption. That’s the kind of interesting tidbit Tom typically proffers to “warm up the crowd,” at least conversationally, to get them to kind of relax, which would have been helpful. Boards and foreign investors are so uptight it’s crazy. Then he probably would’ve hit them with Google Trends Most Popular Super Bowl Foodstuffs Facts across each of our “51 states.” Last year during a similar presentation, Tom got real flummoxed and mad because he thought Puerto Rico was a state. When we explained it was an unincorporated territory, he said we always come off as “pedantic,” which we had to look up. Anyway, here’s what Tom would have presented if we hadn’t accidentally sabotaged him; it likely would have included cool pictures and stuff – always a great move to paste screenshots into PowerPoint… they’re a real crowd-pleaser, like the following recipes.
Oh, we didn’t cover every state here because there are just too many. Most of these are real/we didn’t make up or exaggerate.
Also, this is one of those fun games where the reader gets to anxiously look up both the state they hail from and where they currently reside to see how cool they are or feel relevant. Prepare to be disappointed, Oregonians and Vermonters.
Beef Dishes
Alabama – Squirrel, there are no cows in Alabama.
Arkansas – Tri-tip, which is what they call squirrel.
Alaska – Stew, because they live in shacks in the snow with wolves closing in, and so everything in Alaska is about basic survival.
Cheese Dishes
California – White Castle-ish cheeseburger slider things, with sides of cocaine and diet pills.
Nebraska – Some weird yogurt cheese called labneh. Good grief.
Ohio – Hahaha, old school cheese ball with all the weird nut giblets coating the outside and crackers. Kill us. Apparently, in Ohio, it’s permanently 1981. Can you imagine the conversation that happens walking into a Super Party in Akron? We can:
“Oh, thanks for inviting us, Dave. Where’s Carla?”
“No problem. Thanks for coming. She’s in the kitchen getting the food ready.”
“Great! Mmmmmm, it smells like…. Nothing. What’s on the menu, my man? Say, we really like your coat rack. Super nice.”
“Thanks. We’re having a cheese ball.”
“I’m sorry, I kind of blanked out for a second. It sounded like you said, ‘cheese ball.'”
“That’s what I said.”
“Is it big?”
“No, just regular sized.”
“Well, wait, what exactly is this cheese ball?”
“You know, it’s kind of crumbly soft sharp cheddar, coated in slivered almonds.”
“Sorry, I kind of blanked out for a second. Did you say, ‘slivered almonds?'”
“Yes…but they’re kind of crushed slivered almonds coating the outside.”
“Weird. Is it because your grandparents are here?”
“No.”
“Oh. In that case, is the whole thing deep-fried or something and served on top of a burger?”
“No. We serve it with Ritz crackers. You’ll love it. Say, can I get you something to drink? We have water, or Dr. Pepper, maybe some orange juice… no beer, sorry.”
“Uh, no thanks, Dave. We all have to go to the bathroom.”
-Exit by shattering the bathroom window and jumping into a nine-foot snowbank on the driveway.
Chicken Parts
Hawaii – Huli Huli chicken and weed.
Maryland – Deep-fried wingettes, which may be the best thing on here.
Florida – Probably something lame. We stay away from Florida.
Chips … That’s Right, Chips
Maine – Nachos. Wat the hell goes on in Maine where someone goes, “Super Bowl is coming up! Let’s have nachos!” That’s a Thursday night in a normal state.
Dips
Washington – 7-layer dip (yawn). Since we live here, we want to sub in beer cheese dip, applicable to virtually any foodstuff, including vegetables, as follows:
- 1 block cream cheese
- 1 package shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 container sour cream
- 1 package premixed Italian dressing
- 2 cans of light beer
Mix it all together and heat in the microwave while drinking 1.5 of the beers. Take it out, add the remaining .5 beers, reheat, then go to the mini-mart to buy more beer… ah, have your spouse or someone not drinking do that.
Iowa – Crab Rangoon dip. Where do they get the crab? Anyway, sounds pretty good. Suck it, Ohio!
Kansas, Missouri, New York – Buffalo chicken dip. Which explains why these gastrointestinal-distressed states are responsible for 75 percent of the massive uptick in bathroom water usage nationwide on Super Bowl Sunday.
Pasta – What A Terrible Idea
New Hampshire – Lasagna. Never go to New Hampshire.
Oregon – Pasta Fagioli. A.k.a. pasta and bean soup. With lots of vegetables. This is why Oregon is consistently voted the lamest state in the union outside of Vermont.
Pork Products – Thank God Somebody Is Doing This Right
North Carolina – We’d think pulled pork, naturally. Instead, these confederates favor pigs in a blanket. Which, upon review, is a great idea.
Vermont – Chow Mein. See? Lame. Does this really happen? “Here come sit down and watch the game with this huge bowl of pork chow mein! Hey! Where are you going? Do you want to take some maple syrup with you?” Chow mein is delicious, of course. It’s just the sports-watching food equivalent of going to church.
Well, we’re disappointed in the pork thing. How about chili? Nope, chili is a cop-out unless made with something like brisket, as are sandwiches. Skipping those too. Looking at you, Colorado, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania.
Seafood
Illinois – Cajun Seafood Boil with the crawfish and the shrimp and the crab and mmmmmmmm… way to go Illinois. Granted, Illinoisians serving up seafood is pretty weird, given all the water is concentrated around the Chicago waterfront, which wouldn’t be our number one spot to harvest shellfish.
Delaware – Prawn Toast. Sounds potentially awful, yet we are intrigued. Send us some.
Desserts (LAME/PASS. The Super Bowl Is 100% Fueled By Salt And Alcohol)
Super Trendy
Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada just smoked the competition: Birria Tacos.
Birria is a type of stew that’s traditionally made with goat (relax), but contemporary recipes (i.e., Americanized recipes) call for beef (see? Just relax) slow-cooked in adobo, a mixture of chiles, onion, garlic, vinegar, and spices oh hell yes.
Birria tacos typically serve up that stewy beef in crisped-up tacos that… God, we love tacos… have first been dipped in the adobo liquid (yes), then topped with onion and cilantro and served with a side of — yes — more birria liquid. The red birria gives the tacos their signature bright orange-red hue, and they can be crunchy, almost like a hard-shell taco. (Faint).
Well, there it is. Make birria tacos this weekend and the subsequent 46 weekends or whatever is left in 2022. If anybody out there really nails the birria – like the freshest ingredients, just the right amount of crisp – let us know, and we’ll provide our address for overnight shipping. We’ll pretty sure they’ll keep. We’ll try the prawn toast and wingettes too. Enjoy the game.
