I just can’t believe how well the Packers are doing this year. Now, granted, the game on Sunday was a close one. Like, so close we were yelling and screaming at the TV. But hey, it was exciting. In the end, they got the win, which is all that is important. They stayed undefeated and we celebrated with lots of high fives, hugs, and sandwiches. Does life get any better than that?

This week’s sandwich was cold cuts on bagels. We wanted to make something “New York-ish” and bagels were the answer. I had a turkey sandwich, and it was deeeeeelish.

I also made some seafood chowder too. I’ll admit, I’m missing the soups we usually make on Sundays. This particular recipe came from Real Simple, so it was easy to make and done in an hour. It has scallops, potatoes, corn, and some other good stuff. Very good and added some balance to the sandwiches we made.

We also found out that the Packers have already sealed up the division. Now we’re playing for things like home field advantage in the playoffs. Go Pack!

I’m almost too afraid to say what I think: that the Packers are going to go all the way with an undefeated season. I know. ***slap*** I’m trying to slap myself out of that line of thinking.

But I can’t help it! Sure, our defense gives up points, but then they made 14 points on Sunday. And sure, our offense has some holes, but then we do have so many positive points, like outscoring any other NFL team right now.

***sigh***

We have a great team and yet we’re worried. That’s Packer fans for you. Then again, maybe we’re just cautiously optimistic?

Anyway, we played San Diego this week (and I was reminded of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy [Blu-ray] when he would say “You stay classy, San Diego.) The Chargers really gave us a run for our money, and if we continue to play like we have, we will drop at least one game. So we’ve got to step up.

For the game this week we made meatball sandwiches. Don’t they look yummy?

We chose these for no other reason than convenience! haha – We had the ingredients and that was that. No theme for this week, but they were as delicious as that Packer win.

The Packers are 5-0! Can you believe it? Man, that feels good. To celebrate the game this week, we tried to think of what went with Atlanta, and immediately we thought: BBQ. So I decided to make my root beer and pulled pork BBQ sandwiches.

This recipe is an easy one for a lot of reasons. First, it goes in the slow cooker, so you can buy a cheaper cut of meat. We got some pork cutlets from Aldi. The slow cooker also lets the flavor get into the meat. I take the pork cutlets and salt and pepper them, then I squeeze just a little bit of Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce over the top. And I mean, just a little. So squeeze a small squiggle over each cutlet.

Then, pour enough root beer (I always use A&W and definitely do NOT use diet for this – regular works best) to cover the cutlets. Then I cook it on low for 8 hours.

At the end of cooking, I shred the cutlets while still in the slow cooker, and mix it all up. Then I take a slotted spoon and remove the pork to a bowl. I lightly toast the buns in the oven, and squeeze a little bit more BBQ sauce onto the bun. Then I place the pork on top of it. Viola!

The root beer really adds a nice sweetness that goes with the BBQ. This dish was so cheap to make. We got all the ingredients at Aldi except for the root beer. But that’s just a buck at Wal-mart. Cheap and easy – can’t beat that. Oh wait, yes you can! A Packer win makes it even better!

I’m working on a Packer scrapbook to commemorate all the soups we made each week while we watched the game. Of course, we never expected the Packers to actually go to the Super Bowl. I have a bunch of photos from newspapers last year left over, and wanted to make a kind of mixed media page to put in with the other scrapbook pages.

I took some pictures of the team from magazines and newspapers that we saved from last year:

and some other mixed media materials:

and started pasted them on a scrapbook page.

Then I added paint a couple other things, like a fortune that said, “A sweet surprise awaits you.”

A sweet surprise did await us as fans! Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that same thing this year? I liked being able to use up some of the pictures this way, and I think I may even make one more before I call the scrapbook done.

Who would have thought, that when I started scrapbooking at the beginning of the football season, I would be able to include the Packer’s participation in the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl. Wow, not me. I knew our team was good, that we had some great players, but I did not know it would lead to this. What a fun year.

Of course, with the Packers going to the Super Bowl you know all of our Packer stuff is still up, which includes the action figures, gnome, and Packer tree.

I know, we’re goofy. But if you can’t be all goofy about your team, what can you be goofy about? This week we really took a long time to figure out which soup to make. We’ve been trying out some great ones, but since this was an “important game” we wanted an “important soup.”

Dorks. I know.

We settled on split pea and ham, because….. guesses anyone?…… it’s green! And that’s good luck in these parts. Also, we hadn’t made it yet so it was one more we could add to our collection.

The recipe was a basic one… split pea, ham, thyme, marjoram, yadda yadda. Nothing special but it did hit the spot. Or was it the Packer victory combined with our first Super Bowl appearance since 1997? Yeah, I think that was it.

Well… needless to say this weekend was divine. A Packer win… in the playoffs… against the number one seeded team…. yeah, that calls for some celebration. We did our usual soup thang this weekend but somehow it all just tasted so much better. Was it the soup or the win? Hmmmm….

I especially liked this photo, which we took off of our TV.

That just says it all, doesn’t it? I’m really glad Aaron Rodgers is getting these wins, because with all the “elite quarterback” talk that was the only thing really holding him back. Next week is really going to be something. The Packers play their hated rival, Da Bears, in Soldier Field. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

This week, I again tried a new recipe. I took it from the Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, which I got for Christmas. This was the book I also got that awesome Italian Wedding Soup recipe from. I’m really enjoying this cookbook, it has so many great things to make. At first I was hesitant to make this, because I figured we had already made potato soup earlier this year and it would just be a re-run. But I was wrong. This tastes nothing like your average potato soup! I never thought of actually roasting the potatoes and leeks first, but that’s exactly what you do with this recipe. You give them a nice long roasting, then you add the greens to the top of it all to wilt it. Doesn’t that look beautiful:

Ha! Not! Who would think by looking at those ingredients that a wonderful soup would come out of it all. After this comes out of the oven, you put it in a food processor and puree it all, along with some chicken broth. Then you add some additional ingredients and that is what makes up your soup. You also put some crispy shallots on top of the whole thing.

Ina suggested five to six shallots for this. I used three and you can see how many it made, so you could easily cut back. The shallots add a bit of flavor and some nice crunch. I have to say overall this was one of the most delicious soups I’ve ever had. When I first read that you pureed the ingredients, I thought how the heck is that going to taste? But it was delicious.

This Packer season was a wild one, in the fact that it was never quite what we (as fans) expected. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great season. (Anything that is a departure from the 70s and 80s Packers is a positive thing in my opinion.) I blogged at EveryJoe about why I think there are some very positive things to take from the season, so I won’t repeat it all here. I will say that as a fan, it’s always a let down when you lose. But Green Bay fans can take some solace in the fact that we had a very good season, and all indications point to more of the same for next year.

Dave Begel had a great column today on OnMilwaukee.com about the Packer game, and more specifically, the play of Aaron Rodgers. I enjoy his take if only for the fact that it has more truth in it that most fans are willing to admit. The media has had a real love-in with Rodgers, almost to the point of making him out to be the second coming. I made a case on EveryJoe a few weeks ago that the stats are very misleading this year for both the Packers as a team and for Rodgers. I even predicted (shock!) that the Packers would come out jittery and end up losing. I got ripped apart for this assessment. Someone emailed me and told me I should never be allowed to predict another game ever, while another fan left a comment that told me I knew nothing about football, and that “Sorry the stats show Packers winning and not Arizona.”

Too bad, folks. I was right. The Packers might have been ranked as the second defense but they gave up 51 points. The sad part is, the loss isn’t on the defense alone. The whole team didn’t play up to the level needed to win. Stats don’t tell the story on everything, especially when it comes to the Packers. Interestingly enough, I made this same argument when Jay Cutler joined the Bears. I said the stats showed him as the player you want in your fantasy league, but on a real team he’s a wildcard and a gun slinger. (I got ripped for that too…. but my, how quiet people are now about it.)

Back to the Pack, however, it isn’t that I wanted them to lose. I was very nervous watching the game on Sunday because while I was cheering on my team, I had a feeling that they would fall short of winning. When Rodgers threw that pass that could have won the game, I didn’t even hold my breathe to see if Jennings would catch it. I already saw that Rodgers was keyed up and would overthrow it. He could have won the game right there but didn’t.

Does that mean that Rodgers is a bad quarterback? Nope. He’s a good one, but not the great, second coming, type quarterback that many in the media (and fandom) seem to believe. Time will tell with him. One thing is sure, having the experience of this game will help him down the road. It all adds to maturity and experience, and I have to believe Rodgers will take every lesson he can from playing in this game against one of the greatest (and my favorite) quarterbacks of all time. Speaking of which, can you believe Kurt Warner threw more touchdowns than he did missed passes? I can!

To sum it up, Packer fans, don’t be sad about this year. We’ve got a lot to look forward to and next year the team will be better able to handle the tougher schedule that they will now receive. In the meantime, I’m still having a hard time taking down the Packer tree. Sniff! Think it’d be okay if I left it up until after the Super Bowl at least?

Actually mulligatawny has been the word for about five days now. My husband saw this fabulous recipe on Guy Fieri‘s show and said, “Hey Babe, let’s try this.” It was made with ingredients we happen to have around our house every day, and it was cheap to make besides.

In case you’ve been out of the loop, I’ve been making a soup or stew recipe every week for the Packer game. This week it was the mulligatawny soup, and it was so good! Inexpensive to make and delicious besides. Also, it made TONS of leftovers. The soup was a hit, the game was a win, but the injuries of Al Harris and Aaron Kampman have left me very sad.

They’re both out for the season. This week we’ve got the Lions (on Thanksgiving – YES!) and to be honest, I’m not sure how this one will go. Thanksgiving games tend to be somewhat unpredictable anyways, and then with our two key injuries and the Lions performance from last week… I think it could go either way. I’m going to edge toward the Packers only because Matt Stafford could possibly miss the game with his shoulder injury.

Speaking of which, have you seen the very funny video about Stafford now? Someone is spoofing his newly found he-man status after toughing it out with that shoulder only to go back in and throw the game winning hail mary touchdown. Check it out:

Oh… silly sports fans! (And yes, I count myself in that mix.)

Which reminds me, I went to see Packer legend Forrest Gregg at one of our local bookstores last week. What a story this has turned out to be! I wrote about it on my EveryJoe column, but let me tell you that this visit is truly one of my favorites in terms of Packer memories. And not for the reason you’d think.) Gregg spoke about his new book, and we all politely listened, asked questions, and laughed. You know how it is with a bookstore appearance – you want to be polite and accommodating. Gregg, now in his 70s, talked about the Lombardi years, days of old, Brett Favre, and the kinds of things players used to do that now get called for a penalty.

Before and after his appearance, he was gracious about posing with the guys in the audience. As he came to the table to sign copies, I asked if I could have a picture with him as well. He looked me in the eye and said, “Let me tell you a sad story.” Since he had been standing for an hour, I thought he was going to tell me that he needed to sit down, that he was an old football player and his knees were bad, or that he has to draw the line on pictures somewhere. Anything would have been better than what he said.

Instead he told me about Bart Starr getting sued by some woman who had a picture of them together. The only thing I remember about Starr was that an 80-some year old woman tried to extort money from him a couple years ago and had written threatening letters to him. She pleaded guilty and we haven’t heard a word about it, but at the time the woman was claiming that she had a relationship with Starr.

I’m not sure if this is what he was talking about or not. But Gregg said ever since this happened to Starr, he doesn’t pose with women. We all laughed and he sat down. Our laughs were the kind that happen when someone says something stupid and you don’t know what to say in return. The bookstore lady looked a bit taken back, and even said, “Well what if she poses with you and her husband?” Of course by this time Gregg was seated. Discussion over.

He then asked me who he should sign the book to, and I was going to be a smarty pants and say, “Well you better sign it to my husband or else I’d probably try and sue you” but I didn’t. Why bother at this point? He’s an old football player that obviously thinks he’s charming enough to pull off a sexist comment and not have anyone think better of it.

On our way home, of course, my husband and I laughed our heads off. What a dippy thing to say! I still think perhaps Gregg really did have to sit down and was just tired of taking pictures. But whatever. This story is a way better Packer memento than actually having the picture. We’re taking the picture we did snap of Gregg alone while he was giving his speech, and are making it into an ornament for our Packer tree. I’m going to write “I don’t pose with girls” underneath Gregg’s photo.

The life of a Packer fan. You never know what’s going to happen next.

But remember, the word for today is not Forrest or Packers or even chauvinist but mulligatawny!

Are you kidding me? Boy did I envision this game differently. We lose to the WINLESS Bucs? Winless… not just for this season but for ONE YEAR!

Not only did we lose, but we lost SOLIDLY. We lost to a quarterback who started for the first time EVER today. We lost to a team that averaged 13 points a game, but today managed to get 38. As NFL Fanhouse said:

Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw three interceptions and completed less than half of his passes. The combination of his penchant for holding the ball too long and Green Bay’s lackluster offensive line just proved to be too much…

Too much indeed. This was a game we were supposed to have WON, people! You know those teams that remained winless for a year or more? You’re supposed to beat those.

I don’t know what else to say, except that it was nice to hear the old “Battle of the Bays” line that I remember so well from my youth, and the Bucs have an exciting young quarterback that I’ll keep my eye on. He showed an incredible level of maturity for someone 21 who was starting for the first time ever.

The game ended with an interception, which seemed fitting given how the rest of the game was. The commentators have taken to putting a timer next to Rodgers to show how he hangs on to the ball too long, and it is nice to see Ahman Green again, even though he now wears a different number (and thus my Ahman Green action figure is no longer accurate!)

We had bean and sausage soup from a very old Campbell’s soup recipe book I have. Every once in a while I like to make a recipe that is straight out of the 1950s. For some reason, this makes me extremely happy. (And on a day when my Packers lose like they did today, a little bit of happiness is definitely appreciated!)

Well, on the plus side, it is my favorite day of the year: daylight savings! Oh if we could just gain an hour every single week. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It was a lovely day except for the Packer loss today. I actually had some hope that we might pull it out, but that was foolish fan logic and nothing more. Still, it’s nice to know that Brett Favre not only comes back to Lambeau and kicks our butts but also ties yet another NFL record (that of the most games throwing four or more touchdowns. He tied Dan Marino today.)

Not surprisingly there were a smattering of both boos and cheers for Favre. Also not surprising was the overconfidence of the Packers. Didn’t I just mention this last week? Johnny Jolly costs us deeply with his first quarter illegal headbutt, and Rodgers was on the ground more than he was upright.

Favre was emotional in the end, and no kidding. Personally, I don’t have it in me to hate him. I don’t have it in me to spend too much time thinking about him. He’s a great player, on a great team, and is fun to watch. But what I’d really hoped today was that we would just shut up and play and beat ‘em. Sigh…

Even when we hold Adrian Peterson to low yardage the Vikings still have some major weapons. Speaking of Peterson, did I tell you what my favorite commercial is these days? You’ll understand why in about five seconds. Behold:

Yeah. Nice.

Anywho, I looked over the rest of our schedule. The Vikings have the toughest second half schedule (in my opinion) in our league. We have a very easy schedule and I’m hoping that means we can at least have more wins than losses. That’s what it’s come to people!

Our hamburger soup turned out fabulous and we’ve even got leftovers for the week! Bonus. It’s on to Tampa Bay next week. They are currently 0-7. I’m thinking we should be able to win that one, what do you think?