Super Bowl snack rituals: For sure, one winning menu item is going to stick this year

As you’re celebrating the amazing Kansas City Chiefs with over-the-top Super Bowl parties on Sunday, I’ll be doing something a little bit different. Don’t worry, I’ll still be watching the game, but it’s going to be in an environment of angst, superstition and prayer.

This is because my husband, who takes his Kansas City Chiefs football very seriously, won’t be able to watch the game in a party hearty atmosphere. Oh, no this man requires a Super Bowl habitat that will have zero distractions so he can concentrate 100% on the action taking place on the field via his big screen TV. It’s as if he harbors the fear that if he doesn’t give the Chiefs his entire brain space, they’ll somehow lose.

As for superstitions, discussions have already taken place on me replicating exactly what I served on Feb. 2, 2020, when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. I’ve been asked not to repeat any of the snacks present when they lost the Super Bowl in 2021. This presents a big problem, because who remembers what they served as Super Bowl snacks two and three years ago? Not me, that’s for sure.

The one thing I’m certain about is that pigs in a blanket were on the snack table for both of those Super Bowls mainly because I love pigs in a blanket. Is it even a football party without pigs in a blanket? I don’t think so. And just to be clear, I’m talking about the real deal pigs in a blanket. Meaning tiny smoked sausages wrapped in dough from a container that you open by relentlessly banging it on your kitchen counter.

Have you noticed how every Super Bowl some chefs and other fancy pants try to class up pigs in a blanket with puff pastry and la-di-da cheeses that are hard to pronounce, like butterkase? OK, we can all pronounce butter, so this may not be the best example, but you know what I mean.

The real culinary crime though is the audacity of upgrading the grocery store tiny teeny smoked sausage into uppity gourmet pork, like mortadella. I have tested this version of pigs in a blanket and it was a very sad experience. (Sorry, not sorry, to lovers and purveyors of fine Italian meats.)

If there’s one thing I know in this world, it’s that pigs in a blanket are the perfect Super Bowl food and don’t require an upgrade. It would be like saying Patrick Mahomes needs an upgrade — and that’s just pure blasphemy.

If you’re now logically thinking, “Well, girl, at least you can enjoy the halftime show,” you’d be wrong. The Super Bowl halftime for me will not be about the song stylings and magnificent and probably controversial wardrobe choices of Rihanna. It will be 30 minutes of quiet reflection, meditation and prayer that the Chiefs either hold on to their lead and/or start getting more touchdowns.

If the Chiefs are losing at half you can count on my husband needing to take two baby aspirin as a preventative measure to ward off a heart attack and going outside to take a walk to calm down. If this happens, I’ll be in my kitchen self-medicating with, yep, you guessed it, pigs in a blanket.

The bottom line is I will gladly and eagerly follow through with all of my husband’s Chief’s Super Bowl rituals if it somehow in the football cosmos of luck, superstitions and positive thinking brings home a win. But I’m thinking our amazing Chiefs have got this and all they need from their fans is to yell loud and enjoy sausages wrapped in canned dough.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.