3-2-1 Dip

It's SUPER BOWL Week!!!!  

Do you know what this means?  It means that Sunday night during the game, that hopefully involves superflous salsa dancing, there will be an awesome Doritos commercial that will make you want Doritos more than you ever have before in your life:

Dope Zebra

This is in no way food related but it makes makes me entirely happy.  Giddy Even. 

Happy Thursday!

Banana Bread Goodness

Can you believe this loaf of banana bread started out all because we had some scary looking bananas hanging around?  Personally, I think Jamie sometimes doesn't eat the bananas so that I'll make some bread because I can't stand throwing away that many bananas.  Let me just say: This bread is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Salsa!

We're in that tricky part of the year where college football just ended and college basketball isn't interesting yet.  Leaving us to choose between NFL and the NBA for our weekly sports fix.  I haven't watched an NBA game in forever and I'm not likely to start now.  Fortunately the NFL playoffs are well underway. Today the NY Giants face the Green Bay Packers and I have no idea which team to root for.   I was a long time Packers fan until the Brett Favre retirement saga happened.  All of the "will he stay?" or "will he go?" was unbearable.  When Favre finally retired I found myself without a professional team. During law school this was actually for the best-- I would take Saturdays as my day off to watch my Tigers play and then study on Sundays.  Now that my Sundays are free, I find I don't care enough to pick a new team.  I could adopt the Washington Redskins in an attempt to acclimate to my surroundings but  I despise the Redskins.  No offense to the Redskin faithful-- I am very impressed with the immense loyalty, but I just can't get excited about them.

I could easily re-establish my Packers fandom.  Aaron Rodgers is the Brett Favre heir and he's doing a hell of a job.  I mean the kid's won a Superbowl, established a notable TD dance and most importantly he had that handlebar mustache at the beginning of the season: 

   

Husband Jamie and college roommate Jaime are big Giants fans.  It's crazy that after almost ten years of living with a Jamie/Jaime that I haven't been converted.  Recently I feel like I could see myself becoming a Giants fan.  The sole reason: Victor CRUZ.  A man that can salsa like that deserves our utmost respect.  The first time I saw the endzone dance I almost signed husband Jamie up for dance lessons!   

In honor of Cruz's Salsa dance, I made salsa for the game today :)  I am dying for reasons to use that new food processor and I feel like this dance is reason enough.  If the Giants don't make it to the next round, don't worry, I have a fondue set that I got for Christmas a couple years back that I have yet to use. 

Maiden Voyage of the Cuisinart Food Processor

Santa apparently thought I was a good person this year and left me a Cuisinart CH-4 Food Processor under the Christmas Tree!   I was so excited you would have thought that this was the "it" toy of the season.  Even with all of my excitement I managed to wait a whole three weeks to test this baby out!  I made baked spaghetti and was so grateful to not have to spend any time at all chopping onions or garlic.   Since that Bobby Flay corn muffin fiasco, I've been using less garlic for fear that my hands would have that horrible smell.  It wasn't really that the garlic smelled that bad, it was the combination of garlic and the flowery hand soap that I used to remove said garlic smell.  Shudders.  I got rid of that hand soap and now I have a food processor.  That'll never happen again.

Pulled Pork

Jamie and I  love barbecue. We just can't get enough of it! Since we moved to the DC area we've tried to find a few places to get our barbecue fix: Rocklands, Red Hot and Blue, Famous Dave's and Old Glory.  They're all okay, but they don't come close to Melvin's down in Charleston, SC.    If you're not from SC then you should note that Melvin is the more progressive brother of Maurice.  Despite the shady family history, Melvin's is honestly the best, well technically it is probably the same sauce as Maurice's, but you have to give Melvin credit for leaving politics out of the pork. Barbecue aficionados are already fiercely loyal, and in my humble opinion, adding extra politics to the very serious matter that is barbecue just doesn't make sense.    Simply stating that I think mustard-based sauce is the best could cause a serious debate that Rick Perry might actually be able to comment on intelligently.  Okay, maybe not.  All barbecue, no matter where you get it has it's own special "calling card' you just have to find the one you love.

• Memphis bbq = tomato-based sauce
• Texas = no sauce preferably served on butcher's paper
• St. Louis= lots of sauce because the sauce is the boss. 
• South Carolina = mustard based sauce

Hoppin' John and Collard Greens

Hoppin' John. What in the world does that mean? I honestly have no idea where the term comes from, what I do know is that if we're talking about Hoppin' John then it must be New Years Day.  The traditional New Year's Day meal consists of Hoppin' Johns, collard greens and corn bread.  You're supposed to eat the greens for wealth and Hoppin' Johns for luck in the upcoming year.  Some people even eat 365 (or 366 for 2012) beans so as to have luck every day of the year.  I don't really subscribe to the luck aspect of the meal, rather the tradition of having the same meal every New Years Day.

TREAT. YO. SELF. Spartanburg 2011

Every Christmas we head down to Spartanburg, SC where Jamie's family lives.  We usually only have a few days down there so we try really hard carve out time with our friends from home.  Jamie is really lucky to still be best friends with two friends from high school, Kieran and Zeynep.  We normally make an appearance at Waffle House followed by the Wal-Mart that bought out their former high school.  It is humorous to be standing in the produce section knowing they may have had classes at that spot.   Anyway, after watching the episode of Parks and Recreation where Donna and Tom introduce the concept of Treat Yo Self, we decided that we should truly step up our efforts and appreciate all that Spartanburg has to offer, within in the confines of our budgets.  We don't know how those government employees afford the luxury of a Benz or fine leather goods but we managed to have an amazing day.