Foogos Friday: Let’s Go Texans!

I don’t really have a dog in the Super Bowl race. I guess the Giants are my hometown team, but then so are the Jets. I admire Big Blue’s quiet tenacity, especially in the face of super idiot Rex Ryan’s insanely stupid trash talking, which he somehow managed to do between eating all my art. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, athlete or anyone with even half a brain to realize when you talk kind of smack, the other team is going to steamroll you with everything they’ve got. What’s the term? Bulletin board material? Anyway, that’s old news in the mile a minute world of sports.

The real news is this week’s playoff battles en route to the conference championships. Most of my friends are fans of the G-Men, so for their sanity, go Giants. I’ve got another good buddy who pulls for New Orleans, so I will, too. In the AFC, I loved John Elway as a kid, and I hated the New England Patriots as a collegian in Rhode Island when the Pats finally became relevant, so crossing my fingers for more Tebow magic is a no-brainer. Then there’s the Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens. I’m going to pick a team the way a chick would right here: Houston is Texas, and I love Texas. Baltimore is in Maryland and that place is meh. (I also remember many more episodes of Cops taking place in Baltimore than Houston.) The Texans have classic/sleek red, white and blue uniforms. The Ravens where purple. The Texans are named after… uh, TEXANS! The baddest men on the planet in the 19th century. The Ravens are named after a 19th century poem.

So seriously, let’s go Texans.

For this Foogos, I went some trusty cold cuts. Roast beef for the navy, pastrami for the red, and Swiss cheese (I know that’s not a cold cut) for the star/eye. In honor of Sunday football, here’s a blow-by-blow breakdown of the art:

Trying to open the chastity belts sealing these cold cuts was like Wile Coyote trying to capture the Roadrunner. I finally had to get my knife and stab the plastic. On a related note, how ridiculous is it that Columbus brand lunch emat is a product of… wait for it… San Francisco?

The original plan was to blanket the background with Swiss cheese, but I thought it would be more fun to play with foil. About 4 slices of roast beef get laid into place without a hitch. My only concern is that there won’t be enough contrast with the pastrami. So…

I put it all in the toaster oven to brown the beef. It smelled outstanding and it totally worked. Except the meat shrank in the oven. (Insert joke here.)

Tack on the pastrami, and now it’s time to add the star, which I clumsily cut with my butterfly knife.

I thought it would be cool to cut the cheese (…sigh…) so one of the Swiss holes remained. In theory, great. In reality… ehhhhh.

And then we have this, the final product (also featured at the top of the post).

And this is what it looks like after I’ve ravaged the art and taken a chomp out of it. No time for utensils or bread. It’s all about the hands. It’s the football way. It’s the Texas way. Take a look at the rest of my NFL food art gallery here.

And finally, on an unrelated note, thanks for all the comments on Foogos ideas last week. The Toledo Walleye is one that keeps popping up in my mind. Hmmm…