Super Bowl/Souper Bowl

I think the weeks leading up the super bowl, are often more exciting than actually the super bowl, except when of course the Buffalo Bills are in it– but that hasn’t happened since 1994. The playoff games are full of action and passion. On a side note over two decades ago youth of the Presbyterian Church started the Souper Bowl .The whole idea behind it is, while we are in are in warm home eating lot of food cheering on our favorite team-there are people who do not know where they are going to get their next meal from. The Saturday a week, before the Super Bowl, youth groups have Souper Bowl Service Day and provide service projects at area shelters, dining rooms and food pantries. So the three Saturdays ago a group of young adults from Orchard Park Pres. Church came to the food pantry that I work at and volunteered their time and stocked our food shelves and cleaned our refrigerator. We were able to accomplish so much. Then the day of the Super Bowl the youth hold a collection- they have big soup pots and they ask their members to think about all the people who may not be able to watch the game in a warm home eating everything and anything they want – to donated a dollar, a few dollars or a can soup. This coming Monday, Orchard Park Pres will be dropping up canned soup at our food pantry. Ok back to the Super Bowl… I wasn’t rooting for either team; frankly I didn’t care for either team. I don’t really like Tom Brandy, but I did know that Gronkowski was from Amherst and went to Williamsville North, but he doesn’t even consider Buffalo as his hometown because in his Sr. year of High School his family moved to Pennsylvania and he considers Pittsburg to be his hometown. As for the Giants, I was in NYC the last time these two team went to the Super bowl and I watched the game at the hotel bar in the hotel I was staying at… the party was great. I shopped the entire day before the game started and talked to some many people trying to find a good place to watch the game and feel the excitement after all the Giants are one on NYC teams, I couldn’t find any excitement and that was from the South Bronx to the Village. Then the Giants won the game- and on Monday we shopped once again from lower Manhattan- mid Manhattan through Harlem and at the airport and we couldn’t find one Championship T-shirt - but we did see Tracy Morgan on 125^th street. Coming from Buffalo that was a big appointment,,, if the Bills won there would be T-shirts for sale on every street corner and parties lasting weeks. In our glory days you would see people in Bills gear everywhere you go. ( ok, maybe I am a bit bitter) No city should have two teams…oh by the way if the Jets were in the big game, I would have been rooting for them.

Any ways back to my Super Bowl Sunday, I had a great day… I started cooking and cleaning the night before and in the morning. With my friend Judy I went to a card making Super Bowl party until 4:30 and had some much fun, I made five great cards and had pizza and pop. Then I came home and starting cooking for some great food. I made artichoke dip, taco salad, potato skins, hummus, deviled eggs and my friend Debbie made Chicken Wing dip.

The potato skins I used one of Rachel Ray’s recipes and the Chew demo as a guide- they were great and I didn’t have large amounts of guilt from eating them. I used the potatoes that I bought from the my farmer friend in Oct. (yes stored correctly they were still good). The skins are very tender and thin on fresh potatoes.

Potato Skins

4-5 whole potatoes (depending on how many people you are serving)

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Sour cream

Real bacon bits

1. Poke about five holes with a fork on each potato. Brush olive oil all over the potato and bake on a cookie sheet for about a 45 mins. – to an hour in a oven preheated to 400 degrees.

2. Let potatoes cool, where you can handle them, then take out the insides. I usually save the insides to serve for another meal. You are going to want to leave some potato on the skins esp. when you are using fresh local potatoes since the skin is so tender.

3. Line your skins on the cookie sheet – salt and pepper the potatoes and then sprinkle some cheese on each potato and then had a little sour cream. Then bake for about 5-10 mins. You want to melt the cheese and make sure the potato is warm.

4. Take out of oven and sprinkle the bacon bits on.

5. Serve and Enjoy!

It depends on how much toppings you put on the potatoes – if you need to salt your potato. I didn’t load then up so I felt the potato needed some salt. Do what works best for you.