The last few days have been a whirlwind of jet-setting and a true taste of la dolce vita for yours truly.  Electrolux appliances requested food blogger submissions to win a trip to NYC and help raise awareness for ovarian cancer research via Foodbuzz a while back.  I have reasons close to home for entering the contest, and I was over-the-moon when I found out I would be amongst the pool of 15 bloggers selected to go.  As details of the event unfolded, my excitement grew.  Hang with Kelly Ripa? Check.  Stay at the über-chic Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking district? Check.  Get ferried from place to place by an amazing chauffer service during our entire stay? Check.  Attend a private demonstration at the Spotted Pig by their world-renowned head chef  April Bloomfield? Also check!  A couple of days before the event it was revealed that TLC’s Cake Boss himself, Buddy Valastro, would give us cake decorating tips, choose themes, and help us to decorate five cakes that YOU can vote on for free, and every time you vote Electrolux will donate a dollar to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.  What an adventure! 

The event day run of show reads just like something out of a trendy novel about a girl getting whisked into the NYC adventure of her dreams for a day.  I woke up at 6:45am (mind you after a night cavorting with meatpacking glitterati at the Spotted Pig and Gansevoort rooftop lounge) which is 2:45am Seattle time.  After sloshing on a few strokes of makeup and munching a hurried breakfast hosted by Electrolux, a fleet of SUV’s shuttled the 15 of us to the “Live with Regis and Kelly” studio to attend a taping.  By a stroke of dumb luck, I happened to get the best seat in the house, front and center, and thoroughly enjoyed watching Kelly Ripa make chocolate-dipped strawberries and Regis do his comic thing.  After the taping we had two free hours before we were required for cake decorating, and what’s a girl to do with extra time in NYC? You guessed it, I hit up the divine shops peppered about the Meatpacking district.  Sales abound since apparently someday soon winter will give way to spring, so I managed to pick up three dresses in 10 minutes flat at Scoop.  I was really on a mission for boots since winter blizzards were all anyone could talk about and I’d only packed Manolos and Louboutins, but a few new dresses couldn’t hurt, right?

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chocolate chili with homemade polenta crisps

Consider yourself warned: my inner foodie snoot may rear her ugly head in this post; I’ll try and keep her at bay but she’s a fierce bitch when she wants to be unleashed so just ignore her puzza sotto il naso banter. 

I don’t typically participate in hyper-American activities such as super bowl parties.  What’s so super about it besides the billion-dollar commercials advertising products you’ll rarely find in my kitchen, anyway? I know, I know, there are countless hundreds of you who will argue with me ‘til you’re blue in the face about the merits of the game diminutively referred to by the rest of the planet as “American football.”  I prefer proper football myself, and have been justly rewarded by the fact that Seattle now proudly boasts a football franchise known as the Seattle Sounders Football Club.  The games are not quite up to the snuff of Juventus games back in the motherland, but give us trailblazing pioneers a few years and we’ll elevate the Americas to global standards. 

piloncillo cane sugar boiling down for chili

That being said, as most of you know this super bowl is historic for good reason. The New Orleans Saints have not been to the super bowl, and this is a success story most of our country wants to get behind, football or no football.  It’s as if the Saints embody the phoenix rising from the ashes of Katrina and for the first time since the disaster the city is rallying with the fervor of its original spirit.  It’s an infectious spirit, since the rest of the country seems to have caught it as well.  I couldn’t just blatantly ignore it and attend super bowl deep discount shopping events all day, so I decided to buck up, rsvp to a super bowl party and make something worthy of the occasion: chocolate chili over polenta crisps.  Not sure what that means? In layman’s terms, frito pie.  If you’re still not sure what that is you’re probably a Northerner or from outside the boundaries of our fair country, so let me break it down.  You put some fritos in a bowl, smother them in chili and top the whole shebang with a generous lot of shredded cheese. 

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I instantly shape shifted into Gollum at Pike Place Market the other day.  You would have done the same thing too if you had seen it though. My precioussss, my preciouss, precioussss, precioussss.  My primal nature kicked in and I furtively, possessively glanced about, assessing the threat from all angles.  It’s mine, all mine, mine, mine, I thought in my suddenly Australopithecus brain.  Ok, maybe most of you wouldn’t have gone quite so nuts over it, but the ambrosial delights I knew I would find inside that little parcel really had my blood all in a boil.  Wondering wtf I’m talking about? Why all the suspense, Linda, you’re bordering on psycho here? Just go seek one out and try it for yourself; then tell me I’m wrong to be so instantly awestruck. 

Ok, ok, the object in question is a goose egg.  Not the kind you get on your noggin after a particularly inebriated night involving five 30somethings and a tetherball, either.  This goose egg called out to me from its cushioned perch at The Creamery in the market, “Linda- bye, bye Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry.”  Why was the goose egg singing that song, you ask?   Let’s revisit Homer’s Odyssey for a moment, shall we?  You recall the Sirens of Titan luring unsuspecting seamen with their enchanted voices? Well American Pie would be the song they would sing to me.  It’s like dangerous nectar to my ears every time I hear it.  You could talk me into anything with that song.  Anyway, the goose egg beckoned me to her with my inescapable song, and there was nothing I could do but buy her, and her little buddy behind her too. 

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