Wow that was a boring football game.  Thumbs down.

We actually went out Friday night for a change.  Gabe was sacked out from being at daycare all day, so we figured what the heck.  We hung out at the Brooksider for a while, then the Martins joined us for dinner at Jalapenos.  (Like we haven’t seen enough of THEM in the last few weeks…)  After a good over-feeding, we went back to the house and threw a few hands of 10 point pitch.  Haven’t played that in a while; Good game.

Saturday Donette woke up rather early and flew out to Texas for some kind of insurance convention.  Sounds like a hoot.  That left Gabe and I on our own… We were so perplexed by the situation we just kinda sat around all day.  We did go out to the park for a little exercise.  Played a little catch, did a little “practice” on his commands, that kinda stuff.  Around 6 or so, I figured I’d better get started prepping food for Todd’s Superbowl Fiesta.  He signed me up for cooking some ribs, so I picked up a few slabs of spares at Pricechopper.  I got them all peeled and stuff so I wouldn’t have to mess with that Saturday morning.  And, I figured we might need some soup too, so I made a huge pot of turkey broth.  By then I was sort of in the prep-cooking mode, so I went ahead and chopped up a big ol’ bucket of mirepoix for the soup.  (How ’bout THAT word…)

Sunday I got up early and fired up the smoker, and had the ribs on by 8:00.  I used the apple wood from a tree I helped cut down a few months ago;  It burned just famously.  While the ribs were cooking I decided to make a huge pot of “Clean-Out-the-Freezer Gumbo.”  I used up a bunch of leftover brisket and turkey, and some smoked sausage.  It came out pretty well, but I didn’t get the roux quite as dark as I usually like.  Got a bit impatient, what can I say.  Next time I think I am going to try using my immersion blender, maybe that will be easier.  I whisked that pot for a solid 40 minutes and it STILL wasn’t dark enough.  Anyway, I hauled everything over to Todd’s around 3:00 for his little fiesta.  He drew a remarkably good crowd considering the venue… I can’t believe how many people (myself included) left their 50″ TV’s so they could huddle up in Todd’s kitchen around his 19″ TV with rabbit ears.  Old school, man.  Belanger and the Munkirs came up, the young ‘uns (Mike and Ed) came over, Ivicak, Susan… An honest-to-goodness mob.  We sat around and watched the game in it’s boring entirety, and that wrapped up the weekend.  Gabe and I are bacheloring until Wednesday, so if you got any action for me let me know.  (Assuming it doesn’t require traveling over a mile or so.)