I confess: I am not a fan of Game of Thrones or football. I am more of an Ozark and basketball kind of girl. I mean I get it, the whole bloody Roman Colloseum, helmets and body armor and charging armies kind of thing, with half-naked, long-haired ladies cheering from the sidelines. But I prefer a sport or a television series with less pomp and more intrigue, with baggy shorts and headbands, and funeral home money laundering schemes.
Yet I find myself surrounded by football lovers, including my Texas-born best friend and my wife, who only watched college football until we moved to Dallas 13 years ago. Coming from a state (Ohio) where no one claimed the Bengals or the Browns as their own, that was instead united by the scarlet and gray, it took her about three days to adopt the Cowboys as her forever team.
So what’s a lone football hater to do? Cook.
Chili is an obvious choice. Not to brag, but I’ve often made my award-winning recipe. And after Zeke joined the team, I started making Cincinnati chili and Buckeyes in tribute. But Zeke needs to get his act together, and I needed a new menu worthy of what may just be a Super Bowl season. So I picked the brains of Nancy Nichols, Eve Hill-Agnus, and Catherine Downes, and they in turn bugged the city’s top chefs, and we put together a menu in our August issue that is simple enough to make ahead if you actually want to watch the game or slow-cooking enough that you can hide out in the kitchen with your Kindle and Jason Bateman for a couple of hours if you, like me, prefer.
As an added bonus, there’s this: a few random recipes from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and Tony Dorsett that I found in the 1980 HER Realtors cookbook. From Ohio. Because the Cowboys truly are America’s Team.
