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Health & Fitness

B.Y.O.S.F.S (Bring Your Own Sunday Football Snacks)

Not everyone is thrilled! If you want something to nibble on at my house, you might want to bring your own chow.

I realized I’m not 100 percent cut out for having the neighborhood gang over to watch football on Sundays when, one time as I was bringing the beer in from the garage, my first guest showed up carrying a platterful of pigs-in-blankets.

It was Riordan (an alias — my neighbors still refuse to allow their names to appear in this blog), who lives across the street and trades corporates at Morgan Stanley. "Yo, Bucko!,” he said to me. “Mind if I pop these in the oven? Twenty minutes at 350 [degrees]. Do you have a timer?"

After I found the damn timer, Harrelson (ditto on the alias) showed up. He’s two houses down, sells some sort of industrial-design software he can never quite explain — and bore with him a brick of Velveeta and a can of chili peppers. He immediately asked for a beer and a saucepan and not even in that order.

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But it wasn’t until Tepper (ditto again — from around the corner; Goldman) arrived with the party tray from that I finally got the message: my prior efforts at feeding this crew during football watchathons had had been weighed and found wanting. They’d taken matters into their own hands.

I can't say as I blame ’em. My philosophy for planning marathon, hyper-sedentary events such as watching seven or so hours of sports on TV at a stretch is marked by what's called, in portfolio-management terms, an "unbalanced approach." I emphasize first things first. On the one hand, I'll lay in all the cold beer anyone can drink, along with plenty of (and why not? The stuff doesn't go bad) whiskey, wine, vodka and gin. On any given Sunday, as the old football saying has it, you never know what people will have a hankering for. But on the other hand, for food I keep things simple. One time, all I had in the house was one of those Mondo-Paks of Doritos from Price Club and a bag of Utz pretzels. I served them in cereal bowls. Now that I think back on it, people weren’t thrilled.

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I’m not sure when exactly I developed my aversion big game-day spreads. It may go back to college. I remember one of my fraternity brothers warning me once that I shouldn’t eat much while watching football, since food “will just take up space in your belly where the beer’s supposed to go.” But the habit’s ingrained. To my way of thinking, if you want to gorge during the game — and there’s nothing the matter with that — that’s why God gave us

Our group still gathers most Sunday afternoons. It’s a movable feast, but now, by tacit agreement, if people want a feast at my house, they know to bring their own.   

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