XLIV

jesse and i spend superbowl sundays alone, together, in our house. it's glorious. i am pretty sure all 4 of our married superbowls have gone down this way. it started out unintentionally, with us flaking out on some party, but after the first one, we enjoyed it so much that now we do it on purpose (though it wasn't that hard this year since we were invited nowhere!). it's great that there's only one person in the room that you have to shhhsh if you want to hear a commercial and since your married to them you can be super blunt about it. also there are no groups of dudes having verbal "whip it out and measure it" contests based solely on their knowledge of the stats and players. it was extra fun with a baby boy in the house to dress up and make him pretend like he knew what football is.

pregaming with daddy. just a little watered down bud light (redundant!) in the sippy cup.( false. it's juicy juice)


yay for appropriately-themed pajamas (buttoned up incorrectly by daddy!) and a forced prop

one stiff-arm away from the heisman pose...though he seems a little nervous


dropping back in the pocket. there's the eye of the tiger cub

the pj's slogan plus the pose here lead me to believe he's trying to tell us something. "daddy sucks balls?" (don't hate the captioner, i'm just interpreting.)

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now onto the food! this was a banner year. usually we just go straight bananas and make an orgy of the most delicious nutritionally-void combinations of meat and cheese and fried cancer we can get our hands on. this year we went another route. my mom had emailed me some article about healthy super-bowl eating that won't derail your weight loss (um, offensive!) and after i got over the effrontery of such an email i started slobbering all over my monitor at some of the items they were suggesting and decided to give it a try, promising myself that if it was bad, it was my right, nay, my duty to eat a half block of pepper jack to make it up to myself.

first up is one that's not on the public menu. my parents came over for lunch with us and the appetizer was this 8 layer mediterranean dip my mom made. holy snickers meatballs, y'all! it was unreal. it had feta, olives, hummus, spinach, and 4 other somethings that made you want to devour the entire grecian coastline, minotaurs and all. i had to drop a beatdown on my dad to be able to keep the leftovers for ourselves. it took the place of a healthy version of 7-layer mexi-dip that i had planned to make.



next up: Parmesan Zucchini Sticks with Smoky Roasted Romesco Sauce. again, don't fear the squashies, folks, these were crisp and firm and not at all slimy. we did not come close to eating all of these pictured. recipe here.

the final item was Oven "Fried" Chicken Fingers with Honey-Mustard Dipping Sauce (recipe). these didn't get a picture of their own because they were last out of the oven and i was so hungry there was no time. i would cook these on a wire rack next time like the zucchini instead of a pan because the bottom side was not as crispy as it could have been if it was open to the air/heat.

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i didn't tell jesse what i was making and i made him go and wait in the living room to watch kickoff and then i brought him in this delightful display...naked. ha, not. so close to the ultimate man dream (minus the purple lightening of stretch marks and the month worth of unshaven legs). also we didn't have beer because that would have required us to think ahead by one whole day since GA doesn't sell alcohol on sundays (because jesus would be pissed, duh).

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i deem the lighter fare a success overall since it was scrumptious AND i still posted a weight loss for the week. in case you were curious (aka, so that i can brag) i have lost 20 pounds since i started trying 20 weeks ago (with a 4 week recovery period in there to overcome the christmas regain). numerically, i weigh about 3 lbs. less than i did when i got pregnant. shape-wise, things are far from back to normal. about 2 pounds of what was once perky, full-boobedness has migrated south for the winter (of my maidenhood) to become a frothy 2 lbs of hip and ass-fattery. in addition, at least 1.5 pounds of brain matter has transmogrified into double-chin and jowl-meat leaving me far dumber and squishier than before. but it's still oh-so worth it:

"excuse me, trying to watch the game here."

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play on, playa. play on.