Gross Football Lunch – NFL Week 10, 2023

Recipe of the Week: Black Beans

Ingredients:

• Dry black beans
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Onion
• Salt
• Bell pepper
• Jalapeno pepper
• Garlic
• Ground cumin
• Ground coriander
• (Smoked) Paprika
• Dried oregano
• Cayenne pepper
• Bay leaf
• Red wine vinegar

Method & Analysis:

This week, I’m going to show you how to make a giant fuck off pot of black beans from scratch, starting with nothing more than a bag of dry beans and some seasonings. This recipe isn’t meant to constitute a Gross Football Lunch all its own (although you absolutely could go to town on nothing but some black beans and come away full and happy); rather, this recipe is meant to serve as a foundational piece for whatever grease pile you can dream up that can benefit from having a pile of beans slopped on it. Yes, you can always used canned beans for that purpose, but when you cook the beans yourself, the final product will be tastier and more vibrant. And quite frankly, cooking beans is a good skill to learn. It isn’t that hard and it behooves you to know how to do it. It just takes time, and for most of that time, you’re just letting things sit.

First, it’s time to do all the boring but necessary crap that the bag of beans tells you to do. Open your bag of dry beans and empty it into a strainer or colander, then rinse your beans off. I have forgotten this step more times than I can count without severe consequence, but rinsing the beans will make life easier once they start simmering. Next, empty the rinsed beans into a large bowl, and fill this bowl with 8 cups of cold water, and let the beans soak for 7-8 hours. As your bag’s instructions no doubt suggest, yes, you can let the beans soak overnight, but try not to let them sit too long past the 8 hour mark.

Now, once those 8 hours are up, you can simply dump the beans and soaking liquid into a large pot, get the pot to a simmer, and let them sit until they’re done. But I much prefer to cook my black beans with a bunch of aromatics and spices, because they will yield beans tasty enough to eat on their own, and I’m not going to use these beans in any context where these flavors will get in the way. So, a bit before the beans are done soaking, finely chop up one entire medium-to-large onion, and throw it in the pot on medium-low heat, and toss it with some olive oil and a polite sprinkle of salt. (If you have any bacon drippings hanging around, you can use those instead of oil; make sure to melt the drippings in the pot before adding the onions).

While the onions start cooking, finely chop up an entire bell pepper, and add the chopped pepper to the pot once the onions are really starting to soften. Once the peppers are getting sweaty and fragrant, do the same thing with a jalapeno pepper or two. If you want spicier beans, include the jalapeno seeds; if not, remove as many from the seeds from your chopped pepper pile as you can before adding to the pot. Let everything cook together and stir occasionally. Just how cooked you want these aromatics to get is purely a matter of personal preference, and I encourage you to experiment. I usually give everything a good 20-30 minutes. If you’re in a rush – I mean, if you’re in a real rush you picked the wrong thing to cook, cuz this takes at least a good hour or so – you can put the heat on medium to speed this process along.

Once the onions and peppers are cooked to your satisfaction, mince up 3-6 cloves of garlic and throw those in the pot. Give it a quick stir, and once it smells like garlic, it’s time to start cooking the seasoning base. Dump in a bunch of ground cumin, ground coriander, paprika (I recommend using smoked paprika if you have any, but if you just have the regular stuff that’s perfectly fine), and dried oregano, as well as some cayenne and a decent sprinkling of additional salt. Even if you don’t like spicy food, do include at least one polite shake of cayenne (trust me). If you want your beans to pack a bit more punch, remember that a little cayenne goes a long way, so you’ll still only want to use a few shakes. Once all the seasonings are added, stir them around for a minute or two while they become fragrant. During this time, they will also start to coat the aromatics and form a nice crust of seasoning at the bottom of your pot.

Now it’s time to add the beans. Dump the beans and soaking liquid into the pot and scrape off any and all seasonings stuck to the bottom of the pot. Add a generous amount of salt, bump the heat up to high, and give everything a stir. While you’re waiting for the pot to come to a boil, add a couple of bay leaves and a few glugs of red wine vinegar. As the pot heats up, a certain amount gunky foam will start to rise to the top of the water. Rinsing the beans will minimize this amount but not eliminate it entirely. Grab a sturdy spoon and skim this foam off, then discard it.

Once the pot is getting close to a full boil, reduce the heat to medium low and let it simmer; if the pot stops bubbling, bump the heat back up to high for a minute or two until is starts bubbling again, then turn the heat back down to medium. Let the beans sit and simmer uncovered until they’re done; this could take anywhere from 30-60 minutes. Feel free to do whatever during this time, but try and remember to give the pot a stir or two every 10 minutes or so. Once 30 minutes have passed, it’s time to start checking for doneness. Pull out a couple of beans, let them cool slightly, and taste. The beans are cooked once they have a firm but also smooth and creamy texture, with no crunch whatsoever. If they’re not done yet, check again in another 10 minutes; also check the seasonings, and add more salt if necessary.

There’s one last bit of actual work to do. It is quite likely that there will be a bunch of liquid remaining in the pot once the beans are cooked, and you’ll want to get rid of it. You could simply dump then into a strainer, but this would put your delicious aromatics at risk, so I recommend cooking this liquid off. Bump the heat back up to high, and once it reaches a full boil, stir frequently. The liquid will thicken into a thin dark coating, and once it has, you’re done. Turn the heat off. You must believe me when I tell you this coating is delicious, however, you can always rinse it off of your beans prior to deployment.

Congratulations, you have a pot of beans! You can use them for just about anything. They’re great in salads, they’re great in chili, and frankly, they’re great in most things. They’re so much tastier than the canned ones, right? I thought so! You have gained mastery over bean cooking skills; use it wisely!

Week 10 NFL Confidence Pool

Oh boy, I am really dreading these Week 9 results. It really felt like every game was a coin flip, and that both my picks and my assignments were pure guesswork. If I’ve learned anything about confidence pools, it’s that my results improve drastically when I make my picks and assignments for real, tangible, football-related reasons. When I lack concrete, considered, football-based reasons, I reach for any narrative-based or vibes-based reason I can find, and hell, I’m not above leaning on the gambler’s fallacy from time to time. In Week 8, I had sound reasons for my picks, and I came out with my biggest week of the season. In Week 9, I had nothing but barely-educated guesses, and I can only assume my results will reflect that.

Enough stalling. Time to check on Week 9.

Oh. Oh! Oh my!

Someone needs to bust in here and knock me down a peg or two, or else there’s gonna be no way to prevent this absolute triumph from going straight to my head. It might be too late already; I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I have solved the puzzle that this season has put before me, and thus claimed the reward of Total Knowledge of the league and its teams. My ego balloons more and more with each passing second. Within a matter of moments, I will believe that I cannot miss another pick for the rest of the year, and a matter of moments after that, I will have utterly internalized this belief. And, since I’m not seeing any of you, my seven loyal readers, busting the door down to set me straight, I suppose I’m going to have to thanklessly let the air out of my own tires.

Blessedly, this is still an easy thing to do. It was not even a month ago that I swore off picking the Patriots for any reason, under any circumstances; and yet here I am not only picking the Patriots already, but putting 5 entire points on them! If points were dollars, that would be, like, I dunno, half of a Chipotle burrito, probably! The point is, surely there is someone in every pool smart enough to hold firm in their refusal to take the trash-ass Patriots, no matter how openly their opposition is tanking! And what, did I think Matthew Stafford was starting for the Rams or something? I feel like if I were serious about making my picks for real reasons, the very least I could do is make sure I’m not putting points on The Brett Rypien experience. Dude couldn’t even hold down a job with the Broncos. And whatever possessed me to declare the fucking Panthers worthy of 2 whole points? I sure as hell didn’t pick them because I thought they’d actually win; this pick appeared to me a dream.

Is this nitpicking? Isn’t it enough that I only whiffed on 3 picks, for a total loss of 8 points? No, it’s not! If you, one of my three to five loyal readers, submitted my exact week 9 picks for your own confidence pool – with the ostensible goal of winning the weekly prize and not pursuant to your vision for some sort of performance art installment – the lack of those very same 8 points would have kept you from said prize. Even if your pool only has four participants, three of them were smart enough not to take New England, and let’s face it, even you knew the Panthers and Rams picks were a bad idea.

The bar is higher yet! It is my sincere goal to get you – the hypothetical reader I just made up, and who is smart, savvy, and cool enough to find my barely coherent holistic ramblings charming yet also credulous enough to parrot my frequently massively screwed up picks week after week – a weekly prize here and there, and maybe even a season prize. However, I regret to inform you that my Week 10 picks are unlikely to bring you much of anything, save the occasional chuckle. Three of the very best teams in football have their bye this week, and the remaining contenders have either division rivals or fraudulence allegations to overcome. The picks are easy; the assignments are a mess.

Phew, think I busted myself down well enough to stave off a bout of tragic hubris. Thank you for not helping. To the picks!

Week 9 Correct Picks: 11/14 (0.786)

Season Total Correct Picks: 101/136 (0.743)

Week 9 Points: 96/106 (0.906)

Season Total Points: 872/1,102 (0.791)

Bye: Chiefs, Rams, Dolphins, Eagles

14 Points: Cowboys over Giants

13 Points: Ravens over Browns

12 Points: Bengals over Texans

11 Points: Seahawks over Commanders

10 Points: Lions over Chargers

It is, of course, a break from established principles to assign max points to a division rivalry game, but c’mon. The Giants are an unsympathetic British sitcom protagonist of a franchise. They have horrifically screwed up every single aspect of the sport of football that falls under their control, both on the field and off, and now get to spend the rest of the season watching every single aspect of the sport outside of their control go against them, too. They couldn’t beat the Cowboys on their best day, and I see little to suggest Sunday will be their best day.

The Browns are much better opposition than the Giants, of course, but the Ravens are themselves a good deal better than the Cowboys. Cleveland’s offense remains largely putrid; they only have a chance of winning if their defense can make this game as ugly as possible, and the last few decades of Ravens football have me doubting they would mind getting dragged down into a rock fight all that much. We are all impressed with C.J. Stroud and the Texans, but let’s face it, we also thought if they got 4 wins all year, it would count as a success. You cannot convince me that they have anything resembling the juice necessary to take down the Bengals. There is a cogent argument for flipping the Seattle and Detroit assignments, but for all of the Chargers’ disappointments, they are still a good deal better than Washington, and therefore, less of a mismatch.

9 Points: Bills over Broncos

8 Points: Steelers over Packers

7 Points: Jaguars over 49ers

This time I mean it: the Bills are not to receive double-digit points again this year. They’ve lost too many guys on defense and their offense has the same problems as always (too much Josh Allen hero ball, not enough secondary receiving threats, no run game to speak of). I say this as a reminder for myself; it was tempting to go as high as 12 for a while there. That would be a huge mistake, though. The Bills are in disarray and the Broncos have quietly clawed their way out of the bottom of the sewer, and now reside in the sewer’s comparatively luxurious middle layer. It’s not much, but improvement is improvement. Hell, If I could guarantee the Steelers could score any points whatsoever, I would jump at the chance to give them those 9 points. But I can’t, so I won’t.

Nor can I pick the 49ers again until they’ve proven to me that they can right the ship after their 3-game skid. I’m pretty sure I picked the 9ers to win all three of those, so if I have to lose another 7 in order to be shown they’re back, so be it. I’m not picking them against quality opposition again until they actually pull out a win against a good opponent, they put a win streak together, or Trent Williams comes back, whichever comes first. So yes, this pick is based solely on vibes and recency bias, but at least I’m being self aware about it, I guess? That means it’s going to work out in my favor, right?

6 Points: Titans over Buccaneers

5 Points: Vikings over Saints

4 Points: Colts over Patriots*

3 Points: Raiders over Jets

2 Points: Bears over Panthers

1 Point: Cardinals over Falcons

The problem with all of these crappy games with crappy teams is that, if making sound picks requires knowledge of each team’s strengths and weaknesses, it follows that in order to make sound picks regarding these teams, I have to pay more than zero attention to them, that I may know what their whole deal even is. Are you telling me I am to watch any more seconds of the Raiders, Bears, Panthers, Colts, Patriots, and Cardinals than those withering few RedZone deems fit to show me? Am I to form opinions regarding these teams that can’t be inferred from checking the standings and consuming my regular punditry diet, consisting entirely of smarter, cooler, and more ball-knowledgeable persons?

That sounds horrendous, and a good reminder of why I’m grateful no one is paying me to do any of this crap. I could be playing Elden Ring, you know! That Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast isn’t gonna fell itself! And, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure that I’m gonna be able to fell it, either. Even though I can stomp through everything else on Mt. Gelmir, none of my weapons do significant damage to it, and to make things worse, you only get 21,000 runes out of it! Really!? I’ve permanently lost more than double that multiple times and it’s been fine. I’m no completionist so maybe I skip this one, but it also drops 5 Smithing Stone [6]s and I want those a little too much. Maybe it can be easier if I do it on horseback? No, Torrent gets killed after one hit. Darn it. Back to the drawing board.

Anyway, special congratulations to anyone remaining with the Las Vegas Raiders who had to deal with Josh McDaniels, for any reason or for any length of time. It’s OK, he can’t hurt you anymore.

Enjoy the games, everyone!