Game Night

My all-girls Superbowl party, held at the house of a friend, included some activities that probably would have faced ridicule had there been men around. In the afternoon, we played Hearts and drank Malbec. My friend cooked up fresh sausages, nabbed from her downtown restaurant. We wrapped them in biscuits and topped them with mustard, relish, sauerkraut, and ketchup.

Phase two involved a Mexican dip, courtesy of another friend. It seems my red meat-free diet was torn to shreds in the face of one whopping pound of ground beef, topped with melted cheese, sour cream, taco seasoning, black olives, tomatoes, and scallions.

Luckily, we had the whole afternoon. Next up was a mean game of Taboo accompanied by shrimp lettuce wraps, host's courtesy. She poached a pound of fresh shrimp in hot water and chopped them into bite-sized pieces. She then added a can of drained, crushed pineapple, one chopped scallion, red bell pepper, a few tablespoons of light sour cream, sriracha, cilantro, lime juice and tossed the mixture together with a few ripe and sliced avocado. We put the spicy shrimp mixture on wide leaves of iceberg lettuce and rolled them into miniature burritos.

My chili was a hit, as was the end product of project healthy cookie. When those chocolate chip monstrosities failed to meet my admittedly high standards, I decided to convert them into a bread pudding. I whisked together one egg, a cup of skim milk, some ground nutmeg, and ground cloves. I crumbled the cookies and put them in a glass baking dish and poured the egg mixture over them. At 350, I let the cookies re-bake for about 20 minutes, until I was sure the egg had cooked through. I then added sugar-free vanilla pudding to the dish, mixing the whole thing together in the pan once it cooled. It came together nicely and the whole-wheat flour actually offered nice textural integrity to the dish. My one complaint was that the chocolate chips melted on the second bake, which meant that the desired crunch of chocolate was absent from the final product.

We were all rooting for Arizona, but they lost. Of course, the entire day was nothing more than an excuse to hang around in sweatpants and eat our faces off, which, in my estimation, was a resounding success.