Gluttony and Conservation

A couple of notes for the Monday morning blog.

First of all, just like millions of Americans, I participated in one of the more gluttonous days of the year . . . the Super Bowl. I will leave the breakdown of the game to other websites and blogs, but I can tell you we had a pro NY crowd.

Not sure if Thanksgiving or the Super Bowl has more excess, but for those who track these things the experts say that the Super Bowl is the second most caloric intake day of the year, but personally I tend to eat more fat related items on the Super Bowl. From an article in Time Magazine they wrote: “From Thanksgiving to Super Bowl Sunday, the average American gains 5 to 7 lbs” and I think that I tried to gain all seven yesterday.

The wings, guacamole, chips with onion dip were all were all very tempting. I have a soft spot for Ruffles, and rarely eat them on any other day except for built in excuse like the Super Bowl. American’s do love their chips and eat them by the pounds. Frito-Lay, the nation’s largest chip manufacturer, said they must increase production in the weeks leading up to the event by more than 10 million pounds of chips just to meet the demand for Super Bowl Sunday.

So when I saw the commercial, I think somewhere in the third quarter, as I was heading to a sodium induced coma from the Ruffles, I had to stop for a 10 seconds. The ad, sponsored by the United Way, featuring the voice of Tom Brady asking users to donate via SMS to a campaign fighting childhood obesity, “You don't have to be an NFL player to help kids get fit in your community. Do your part, text FIT to "United" to give $5 to United Way's youth fitness. A little "U" goes a long way.” I would be interested in how much the United Way raised since most people would have difficulty texting with a beer in one hand and the grease sliding over the tiny buttons in the other.

My favorite Ad was the Coke commercial with James Carville and Bill Frist. The kids loved the Coke commercial with the Macy’s Day Floats. I think that has to do with age, the election tomorrow and the lack of any real good commercials. The Thriller Ad for some water product was the worst.

We did have a great bottle of wine from Du Vin Fine Wines in Alameda. It was a 2006 Bodegas Borsao called “Tres Picos” for $15.99. Dan told us it goes well with paella so we thought it would also go well with chili and cornbread, and it did a very good job of complementing the halftime food.

A note from Saturday: Went to the Ocean film festival and saw some terrific short films, really enjoyed the evening. The Ocean Film Festival, did something very interesting this year, they used YouTube to create the SFOFF Bay Oil Spill 2007 Video Project. The project was created to understand what the effects of the 810-foot-long Cosco Busan hitting the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7, and released 58,000 gallon of oil into the Bay. You can see shorts from Bay Area residents about the response and the clean-up effort.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9BEF9D7D7E9DF87E