It's embarrassing how impressed I am with myself.

But let's be honest, Dan is responsible for most of the artistry.

The formative stage:

Indeed, this is the heath bar cake I made for Dan's birthday a couple of years back.   He brought it in to work today so I had nary a bite but he said it all went before the end of the day despite the array of leftover treats that others brought in.  I won!  I won!

I'm glad not to be one of those people whose mood plummeted after the Patriots screwed the pootch.  Let' be clear, I didn't miss a Pats game all season.  I have deep and abiding go-to pocket fantasies about many of the players.  But I'm not batshit---it's just football.  Still, the Super Bowl is a big whoop in our household and the reason extends beyond the binging which transpires in its honor.  When I was a kid I was the only one in my household of six females and one male who cared at all about football. (I would argue that my dad cared even less than any of my sisters and they cared about it not one bit.) My mom knew I liked it though, so each year when the Super Bowl came around she would make it a special night for me.  She'd buy all my favorite snacks---pepperoni slices topped with chunks of cheddar, a plate of nachos just for me, Hostess cupcakes---and set me up with a tray table in the family room where I was able to watch the game without interruption.  I love this little memory now because I see it as her way of celebrating my individuality---not an easy thing to do with five kids.

So it reminds me of her now, Super Bowl Sunday.  And in her honor, we celebrated.  And ate.

And drank:

Classy bitch with my plastic minis of red, eh? Dan picked them up because I never seem to finish a bottle of wine before it goes bad. (For all my talk, I'm really not a very accomplished drinker.) I'll give a bottle two nights and then I'm sketched out and afraid that because I have such an unsophisticated palate I won't know if it's bad or just wine. So Dan picked up these little guys and you know what?  Not bad.

Kick-off apps:

Dan makes the best guacamole this side of Mexico.  The beer---Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat with an orange wedge, my fave.  

Then, on to the main course:

Meatball subs and pulled pork sandwiches. Dan and I couldn't decide which sandwich we wanted so we had a half of each. Note beer number two: a Shock Top Belgian White

Those are my mama's meatballs. With some help from GiG in the kitchen yesterday, I stirred up some of her homemade tomato sauce and fried up some of her meatballs. Just a few months before she died, she walked me through making them. It was the same day she came out of the bathroom crying and said, "Okay, Laura, I'm starting to lose my hair. I need you to hug me." And in the middle of the kitchen I held my mom as tightly as I could and smoothed her hair and told her that I loved her and loved her and loved her.

And somehow we ended up laughing.

And then we made meatballs.

 At first she was in the kitchen next to me, guiding me through the sauce. But then she felt tired and I started rolling up the meatballs as she offered instruction from the couch. Even though I had watched my mom roll meatballs my whole life , I brought them to her in the family room to be sure they met her approval. Yesterday it was like I spent the whole morning with her. I felt her with me offering warm encouragement, warning me not to be too be too perfectionistic (as she knew I can be), and gently nudging me to not overwork the meat. While not quite GiG's meatballs, I'm getting there. I could feel my hands becoming hers as I made them.

The star of the day, however, was Dan's pulled pork. I don't think he'll mind if I post the Anne Burrell recipe  he worked from. (We're big Anne Burrell fans in this household mostly because we love the way she growls a deep and throaty "BIG MEAT!"  every time she works with a slab.) You guys...you guys.  Wowza.  Good stuff.  Dan tinkered around with the sauce a bit, cutting it with more tomato paste (and some this-and-that) to diminish some of the apple cider vinegar's potency, but otherwise he stuck to the recipe.  Do yourself a favor and get up on this pulled pork.  Fair warning---you will be dealing with a piece of meat that looks remarkably like an actual pig, skin and all.  Would you believe it?  A pig!

Dessert:

Much hoopla has been made over Dan's fudge and of course his peanut butter balls. I'm hear to tell you that his brownies take the cake.  


Okay, there's actually nothing finer than the first three pieces of the season's fudge enjoyed with a glass of red wine.  (After three though, your sugar buzz turns into a crash that will leave you feverish and scratching your arms up 'til your next next fix.) Still, his brownies are fantasmo and this from a person who normally would not look twice at stupid fucking brownies no matter how prominently they are featured on the dessert table.  They're usually dry and flavorless and burned and so disappointing that a pouty, "stupid fucking brownies," always follows my trying them.  But with Dan's, it's a different story. All I know is that there are fudge packets involved plus a healthy portion of chocolate chips. And he bakes them for the perfect amount of time---a numeric figure that he must  have gone all Good Will Hunting to figure out ("Whatever it says on the box," he's told me)---so that they come out rich and moist and chewy and not remotely resembling a charcoal briquette. We ate them with vanilla ice cream and then I thanked Gawd for inventing brownies and inventing Dan.

I remember lots of food.  I remember lots of drinks.  I remembers Madonna's soldiers and the Pats blowing it. After that, my friends, it's all a little hazy.

Apparently Dan was alert enough to keep tabs...at least he didn't draw on my face.