Category Archives: cheeseheads

>Everyday Packers Decor

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Decor? Heck, this is just part of the household. Nothing is fancy. Readers, were you wondering why I hadn’t posted any Packers pictures? I mean, you know I hang green and gold ornaments on my Christmas tree. You know I sip coffee from a Lombardi mug that sits on a cheese coaster. With the Super Bowl and my Green Bay Packers in mind, let’s take a brief tour.
This title towel keeps my new bread machine dust free in between uses.

Nap time means Packer blanket throws and green & gold Happy Feet slippers!

Let’s head upstairs.
In the bathroom, I can wash up with a classic and well-used Green Bay washcloth.

In Amigo’s room, tiny rabbit Krumpet hangs out in a Green Bay Packers bean bag chair.
And last but never least, Amigo sleeps in classic Green Bay Packers sheets.

These are just a few examples of the way the Packers infiltrate our lives every day – or simple evidence that yes, we are true fans in this household. Any questions? There will be a quiz on Sunday night.

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>Super Burgers for the Super Bowl

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>We’ll be “eating the opponent” as always on Saturday night. Tentative plans are pierogies & kielbasa sausage with Pittsburgh-made Klondike Bars for dessert. On Sunday night, we’ll have Super Burgers!

Daisy and Chuck’s Super Burgers
1 1/2 lb. ground beef
1 egg
1/8 cup bread crumbs
assorted spices or herbs (varies with seasonal availability)
splash of Worcestershire sauce or steak sauce
Combine egg, bread crumbs, sauce, and spices in medium bowl.
Add ground beef. Mix thoroughly.
Form into burger patties.
Grill – if you have access to a real charcoal grill, do them up in true tailgate style! If not, a George Foreman grill or a skillet on the stove will do.
Serve on a hamburger bun with your favorite Super Toppings. Here are a few of ours:
ketchup, mustard
cheeses (use good cheese, please, not that fake “cheese food” stuff)
pickles or pickle relish
swiss cheese & mushrooms
lettuce & tomatoes
Enjoy! And of course, Go! Pack! Go!
If you’re looking for another easy Super Bowl dinner idea, check out Organizing Dinner Blog’s Super Bowl Chilis. She offers a Pittsburgh style chili and a Green Bay style.

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>Winter decor

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I was watching one of the morning news shows and they blew me away with their decorating feature. They were talking about SPRING and FLOWERS and putting away the winter decor!
Sorry, people. Martha Stewart doesn’t live here. We still have a few holiday items up. The “Dream” tree is a gift from an artist friend; it’s staying up for a while.

The snowmen are out now. We save them until after Christmas each year. Behind the S’mores snowman is one of La Petite’s vases. The results of her ceramics class are scattered around the house; they’re not seasonal. They’re year-round special.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, we have a few (ahem, cough, cough) Green Bay Packer items gracing the house along with the snowmen.
“My” Packers may be playing in Chicago, but they’ll bring their Frozen Tundra experience and cold weather attitude with them on the field.
We’re decked out in our Green and Gold, planning our “eating the opponent” menus, and getting ready for the Big Game. This one may be bigger than the Super Bowl.
Go! Pack! Go!

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>Apple Confit

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>I used the wrong kind of apples, but it still tastes wonderful. From Taste of Home’s Eating Well in Season, here’s a simple and delicious way to use up extra apples.

Peel 3 pounds of shapely apples (see note at end), and slice 1/4 inch thick. You should have about 9 cups. Place the apples in a 4 quart or larger slow cooker. Add 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and toss to coat well. Cover and cook until the apples are very tender and almost translucent, but not pureed. 2 to 2 1/2 hours on high of 4 to 4 1/2 hours on low. Stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Transfer to a bowl and let cool slightly. Cover and refrigerate until chilled. Can be stored in refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Makes 8 servings, about 1/2 cup each. My family liked it warm with whipped cream on top, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon sugar for garnish.
Oh, the apples? Here you go.
Saucy apples cook down to a saucelike consistency. Varieties to look for include cortland, Empire, McIntosh, Crispin, and Paula Red.
Shapely apples hold their shape after baking. Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Jonathan, and Northern Spy fall into the shapely apple category.
If you were wondering what we chose for our “eating the opponent” series, it’s like this. The Green Bay Packers played the Washington Redskins, so the tailgate party lunch looked like this.
  • Potato “skins” made with red potatoes
  • Cherry pie
  • And for a main dish, in honor of all the hard work that happens on Capital Hill: Pork.
Miami is next. Maybe a Cuban sandwich….

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>Hush Puppies and Collard Greens

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>Eating the Opponent met a challenge this week: the Packers faced the Detroit Lions. We knew nothing about Detroit, so we had to do a little research.

Internet searches showed us the chili dog and/or the Coney Dog; La Petite doesn’t like hot dogs, so she wouldn’t like that.
Another Internet search found many different dishes that featured onions – sausages slathered in onions, onion rings, anything onion. We hypothesized that too many years of losing teams had led Detroit fans to hide their tears behind the cutting of an onion.
We asked my stepfather, a Detroit area resident for many years: he suggested hush puppies and collard greens. The research began again. Traditional hush puppies are deep fried. We don’t own a deep fryer and don’t plan to buy one. I did, however, find a simple recipe for baked hush puppies, so we pulled out the cornmeal and got to work. Here it is, Packers fans and blog readers: our game day meal vs. Detroit.
Baked Hush Puppies
2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/3 cup milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 Tablespoons butter, melted
Preheat oven to 450. Lightly grease (or spray with nonstick spray) a 24- mini muffin pan.
In a medium bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt & pepper.
In a separate bowl, mix together the onion, milk, eggs, and butter. Fold the egg mixture into the cornmeal mixture until just moistened.
Spoon one Tablespoon of mixture into each mini-muffin cup. Bake for ten minutes, or until the hush puppies are firm to the touch and golden brown around the edges.
I resisted adding cheese. Maybe next time.
Whatever will we cook when the Packers play the Minnesota Vikings? I’m sorry, but lutefisk is out of the question.

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>NFL Season: what do you cook?

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>Game Day meals can be so much more than pizza or bratwurst. What’s a bratwurst? If you’re not from the Midwest, you probably don’t want to know. It’s kind of like really knowing the ingredients in sausage – a little too much information.

Last week Chuck made his version of Philly Cheese steak on French bread. Our Green Bay Packers proceeded to beat the Philadelphia Eagles on their home turf for the first time in nigh on 50 seasons.
This could become a tradition or even a superstition, if we’re not careful. The second weekend of the NFL regular season, Gang Green and Gold lined up to play the Buffalo Bills. What to make? Buffalo burgers? No, Chuck isn’t fond of bison meat. Buffalo chicken wings or nuggets? I’m not fond of nuggets, and Chuck didn’t know what to do about the sauce. Well, that’s never stopped us before, has it? Time to search the cookbooks and the Internet!
Chuck bought our Buffalo wings this time, but I did a little research so we could make them next time.
We found a Taste of Home recipe for chicken nuggets from scratch. I could handle these.
Then I looked into one of my go-to cookbooks, 70 Meals, One Trip to the Store for a buffalo chicken recipe. She had a buffalo chicken sandwich, and it looked easy enough for a game day lunch!
Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches
Ingredients;
4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup hot sauce
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup butter
4 rolls (or hamburger buns)
4 slices lettuce
4 slices onion
Combine flour, garlic salt and pepper. Coat chicken well in the flour mixture. Heat butter and hot sauce in a small pan on stove just until butter melts; turn heat to low, cover and keep warm on stove top. Heat oil in large skillet, and cook chicken breasts for approximately 15 minutes, turning once or twice until browned and cooked through. Drain chicken briefly, then immediately toss in buffalo sauce mixture and remove. Serve on rolls with lettuce and onion.
In my house? On game day? Serve with tomatoes and cheese, of course!
As for the hot sauce, I like to play it safe. I’m not a huge fan of spicy food, so I’d use a regular barbecue sauce. Chuck is still looking for something better. Let him know if you find something perfect for Buffalo Chicken.
This is not a sponsored post. Kelly Donlea sent me the cookbook for a review last summer, and I continue to use it. You can find her web site and blog and even order her books here. And if you’re wondering, The Packers beat the Bills, 34 – 7.

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>Survivor: NFL

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>Actual conversation with Chuck and Amigo:

Commercial comes on TV for the fall edition of Survivor and its gimmick of old vs. young, featuring Jimmy Johnson as one of the Oldsters.

Me: See? I wasn’t kidding. Jimmy Johnson is on the next Survivor.
Chuck (jaw dropping): I see.
Amigo: Brett Favre should do Survivor. He’s 40; he could be on the “old” team.
Chuck: No way. They’d vote him out and he’d bounce right back again saying, “I’ve changed my mind!”

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>Yet Another Favre Post

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>And on it goes, the never-ending saga of Brett Favre’s retirement – or not.

Let’s see. He debated and thought it over and, for a few years, made his fans happy with One More Year. In the off season, we called it the biggest non-story.
Then he took a deep breath, shed a few tears, and called it quits. Packers fans waved goodbye, paid tribute to the quarterback and the man, and started looking ahead to the future with Aaron Rodgers.
Then Brett panicked. Without football, who was he?
Let’s jump ahead, past a season with the New York Jets and one with the (hated) Minnesota Vikings. Let’s look at the big picture.
Brett Favre has always played football. He doesn’t remember a life without it. Even his childhood revolved around the game.
Brett Favre, bless his heart (my Southern friends know what that means), never really had a chance to grow up without that pigskin in his hands and in his heart. Dare I say it? Yes, I do: Brett is still a kid. He still hasn’t grown up. Think about it.
He’s 40 years old and he works out with the local high school football team.
When he doesn’t get his way, he blames others (Ted Thompson, Green Bay general manager, can vouch for this).
After it’s clear that he won’t get in, he badmouths those who supported him in the past.
He has trouble making decisions. This has made him a laughing stock, even as it’s gained endorsements (Sears television commercials, anyone?).
He publicizes his decisions or pseudo-decisions by text message. Text messages, people! In any field, sports or business, text messaging is not a serious form of communication. I don’t even want to know if he abbreviates his spelling teen-text style.
For years, we fans have praised the gun-slinger, the play maker, the childlike athlete. It’s time for that youngster to grow up. What will he do now? Here are a few suggestions:
  • Open a bakery and specialize in turnovers!
  • Join the BP management. They could use a good ole boy from Mississippi to handle PR.
  • Cell phone company spokesperson: for plans with unlimited texting, of course.
  • Waffle maker.
  • Shoe manufacturer, specializing in flip-flops
Other ideas, people? Suggest in the comments, please!

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>The Bar Crowd; does it include your kids?

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>I read a featured blog titled “Babies in Bars” on Work It Mom. The blogger talked about bringing her baby to bars to hear her husband’s country band perform. She talked about putting ear protection on the baby to muffle the din, nursing a young baby in a discreet corner, bringing an older baby’s own tippy cup for juice or other beverages, and in general, taking care to make the trip safe and appropriate for baby and for other customers.

It’s Lent, season of the Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry. Fish fry events can be in supper clubs, family restaurants, church halls, and yes, taverns or bars. I’m sure there are little ones following their parents into the pubs and the taverns or waiting in the bar areas for the fish fry to be ready.

Is there a deep meaning to all this babble? Maybe, maybe not. If I go to a downtown bar for lunch with Amigo (now age 18), we’re not drinking. He’s too young, and I’m probably driving, so alcohol with our fish fry or cheese curds doesn’t make sense. Would we mind seeing a baby at the table next to ours? Not a bit.

It’s all about responsibility, really. If the parent at the next table is exercising moderation and good judgement, is taking good care of the child, and both parent and child are behaving well, it’s not a problem – at least in my neighborhood.

And isn’t the main responsibility of anyone present in a drinking establishment just that: responsibility?

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>Playoffs? Are you kiddin’ me? They matter in our home.

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>Playoff standings matter not just because we’re Packers fans, but because Chuck’s workload and work schedule and potential travel schedule all depend on the playoff picture. He and his boss have become regular visitors to NFL.com to see the playoff pictures develop. Now that the postseason is finally here, we’ve bought our chips and pizzas and we’re ready to watch the game. I mean, now that postseason is finally here, the folks in Television Land are working out the possibilities and charging up the camera batteries.

With a win, the big, bold men in Green and Gold will stay in the running to play a second game. This game could be in Minnesota or possibly at home against Dallas. Sorry, Philadelphia fans; I feel your pain. I do.
The location of the next game matters because Chuck’s station would send him to the Metrodome with the satellite truck to cover pre- and post-game shows. If the game happens in Dallas, they’ll get their video from a Dallas station. If it’s played in Lambeau Field, he’ll have to work, but he call stay at home instead of hitting the road.

But then….then what? I’m glad you asked. If Aaron Rodgers calmly leads his team to Miami for the Main Event, my dear husband (bless his heart) will have to drive the station’s satellite truck to Florida to cover not only the Super Bowl and the build-up, but the Pro Bowl as well. He could be away as long as three weeks, perhaps more.

On the positive side, I plan on sending a Flat Stanley with him. My class will love it.

On the negative side, it’ll be lonely around here with just me and Amigo. La Petite will be back at school, very likely hosting her own Super Bowl party, faithful cheesehead that she is.

If the Packers (gulp) don’t win, Chuck may have to change an appointment on Tuesday in order to help record the coach’s show. It would be a minor inconvenience.

But we won’t talk about the L word. Go Pack Go!!

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