The Comfort Brothers had a large time on Saturday night springing a conspiratorial surprise 50th birthday party on a somewhat unsuspecting target, one Mr. Scott Oostdyk, also known as “Scottie O!” to his Princeton roomy CB Jim. I say “somewhat unsuspecting” because Scott is a lawyer, a damn good one, and when’s the last time you heard a barrister admit you pulled one off on him?

There might really be something to the connection between the food and the teams of the Super Bowl. As the game was a tale of two halves, so it was with the food. There was the consistently good, familiarly reliable versus the uncertain, upstart, new and different. The big plays went to the Saints and to my surprise and delight, it was the same with the food…

While the teams are making late preparations, so are we. They’ve assessed their health–who can go and who can’t, how they match up with their opponent, what works and what doesn’t and how they see it all unfolding. Simultaneously, we have pondered our menu, checked on available ingredients, what goes with what and what doesn’t, matched up main dishes with sides, and also assessed what works and what doesn’t and how we see it all unfolding…

Manning puts corndogs on the table…New Orleans a huge early favorite…

So, we got 1 out of 2 of our picks for the Super Bowl.  The Cinderella Jets were a stretch, admittedly, but when faced with the prospects of “corn casserole,” and other classic Indiana foods, we had to root for New York.  Thank God; and it was divine intervention, wasn’t it, that put the Saints in the big game and New Orleans food on at least half our Super Bowl table.