The Seven Days of Super Bowl in HD
Day Five
Bipartisan Super Snacking

So we're looking for food to feed the warring fans of the year's most celebrated sports contest. To ease the competition, we sought snacks to satisfy and sanctify both teams. In other words, biparty party chow.

Truthfully, the best bipartisan sustenance for this contentious crowd is Gatorade. It was formulated in Florida (the game host), is owned by Stokeley Van Camp (an old Indiana food giant), features an orange flavored version (one of Chicago's team colors), and is the official drink of the NFL. So load up.

Chroma Cookery

Obviously, the most politically correct color in Chicago and Indianapolis is blue - the team color shared by both finalists. As an edible, you have blueberries, blue corn chips, blue jello and blue M & Ms (with its time consuming chore of weeding out the more savory colors). Obviously, the blue food palette is as limiting as the blue taste palate is limited.

You could embellish your spread with dyed foods; but truthfully, blue food makes regrettably memorable unappetizers. Try to forget an azure onion dip or indigo deviled eggs. But were you to pursue this monochrome menu, mind this critical cooking caveat: use food dye or your guests will heave from more than just the sight of the food tray.

More Than a Corny Competition

OK. How about something we recognize? Let's go back to the frontier days, when the Indiana Indians taught the settlers to grow popping corn. Later, it was Orville Redenbacher, an Indiana farmer, who spent decades developing the aerated puffy popping corn that is now the staple for the Superbowl - and all other TV viewing.

Not to be outdone, in 1893, two brothers debuted Cracker Jacks at Chicago's first World's Fair. Popcorn dipped in molasses has an historic relationship with baseball, but why not sweeten the football snackpot with Cracker Jacks?

Horseradish does it for both teams. The horse half for the Colts. Duh. And the radish half for the herb honored by the Horseradish Capital of the World - Collinsville, Illinois. German settlers made it famous.

Also in the 1800's, more Illinoisan agri-businesses emerged as John Deere (of the steel plow) and Cyrus McCormick (of the grain reaper) revolutionized the grain industry. Meanwhile, Elmer Clime of Indianapolis stunned the world with Wonder Bread; he even designed its balloon festooned packaging. But you could have pushed me over with a wheat stalk when I learned that Wonder Bread was the first commercially marketed loaf of sliced bread. So, any sliced bread should suit a bipartisan repast.

The beer issue is not so simply solved. Neither state has a nationally distributed beer that I could find. Two Midwest beers might fit the bill: Leinenkugel from Wisconsin and Samuel Adams, originally conceived in Missouri in 1860, (now based in Boston). The locally popular Goose Island Beer company in Chicago is selling a craft beer through the Whole Food chain; they renamed it Lamar Street Beer (after the Austin street on which the headquarters are located). And, if you can find it, there is also a Goose Island Soda Family of artisan soft drinks, from root beer to orange cream soda.

But, in my cookbook, Chicago may have the last word. No, not for Chicago hotdogs. Nor the Chicago style cheesecake. Not even Chicago deep dish pizza. It's the brownies, stupid.

As a chocomaniac, always on the prowl for the world's best brownie, I have to say I found it in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago appendage. I don't have their
recipe (nor am I revealing the name of the sweetest little bakery I know), but
I am sharing with you the original brownie recipe - that is, if you believe everything you read on the Internet.

Apparently, in 1897 at Chicago's Palmer House Hotel, Mrs. Bertha Palmer asked the chef to create a dessert that her lady friends could eat with their fingers. He conjured up the following delectable confection - the world's first brownie. Here goes:

Light a 300 degree oven

4 sticks of butter
1 pound 2 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 tablespoon Clabber Girl baking powder (from Indiana since 1899)
8 oz. flour
8 oz. sugar
4 eggs
1 pound walnuts

1. Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler.
2. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar and the Clabber Girl baking powder.
3. Thoroughly stir the melted chocolate into the dry ingredients.
4. Mix in the eggs.
5. Pour into a 9 x 12 inch baking pan. (Did they butter the pan in those days?)
6. Litter the walnuts on top.
7. Bake for between 30 and 40 minutes.
8. Cool for 30 minutes; then slice it.
9. Serve with gloves.

Miami, Here I Come

Or just give up on the blue food, on the search for local beers, and on the gag-awful cocktails, and settle for a colorful tantalizing tropical Floridian feast - from seafood to citrus. Cuban, Caribbean, or mainland. It's all great. Season the shrimp with horseradish and spike the key lime pie with Gatorade. Now you have veritable nonpartisan hi def food with a festive fiesta flavor.

And serve brownies, of course.

Day One: Buying the HDTV