Gross Football Lunch – NFL Week 12, 2023

Recipe of the Week: Peanut Butter & Gochujang Sandwich

Ingredients:

• Sliced Bread
• Peanut Butter
• Gochujang

Method & Analysis:

The peanut butter and jelly sandwich needs no introduction, nor does it need any improvement. It’s perfect just the way it is; salty, crunchy, fatty peanut butter and smooth, sweet jelly (or jam, or preserves, or whatever you’re into) contrast each other perfectly, which means they each enhance each other perfectly. This is how food and cooking work. The best meals are made with ingredients that compliment each other. Your task, being the worldly and curious glutton that you are, is to look for ingredients that compliment each other and techniques well-suited to cooking those ingredients.

As you learn these things, the worldly and curious glutton will naturally start choosing to experiment. Variety is the spice of life, and sometimes you just want something different. Even the most perfect recipes in the world are perfect because they are perfect for what they are, not because they have attained The One True Universal Standard of Tastiness or whatever. A chicken roasted with lemon, thyme, salt, pepper, and garlic cannot be improved upon as far as roasted wads of poultry go, but if all you want is a giant pile of General Tso’s the roasted lemon chicken will only scratch so much of that itch.

All of this is to say that while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, there’s also absolutely nothing wrong with tweaking recipes and experimenting with new and interesting flavor combinations. Not every cooking experiment you conduct is going to work out (may I never forget the Mustard IPA Pan Sauce Disaster of 2016), but the successes will prove to be total game-changers. To that end, I present my most successful experimental creation to date: the peanut butter and gochujang sandwich.

(Quick note: if you aren’t sure where to find gochujang at your local supermarket, there are a couple of places to check. The first, naturally, is the international aisle among the other east Asian condiments. The second is in whatever cooler section also houses the tofu and kimchi; this may be near the produce section, but it also may be somewhere else entirely. Happy hunting!)

Obviously, this recipe barely clears whatever threshold is required for a set of instructions to fit the term ‘recipe’. You take two slices of bread, toast them if you wish, then spread one of the slices with peanut butter and the other with gochujang. For a standard PBJ, I like to pair a generous spread of peanut butter with a a thin but solid layer of jelly, but for this particular sandwich I use a slightly thicker layer of gochujang for the same amount of peanut butter. Put the two slices together and cut them if you can be bothered, remembering always that triangle-cut sandwiches are invariably tastier.

Tasty, right? Gochujang and fruit jelly are not entirely dissimilar substances; underneath the spicy and smoky exterior lies a substrata of pleasant, jammy sweetness. It might not be an actual PBJ, but it delivers the same visceral satisfaction of peanut butter but with a exhiliratingly different yet not-at-all dissimilar compliment. In other words, it’s the perfect Gross Football Lunch for Thanksgiving weekend! Come 1 PM Eastern on Sunday, your insides are gonna be screaming for something that is relatively light but can also hold things down as you plunge headfirst into your fourth consecutive day drinking session. The peanut butter and gochujang can do this, and it pairs well with both kinds of alcohol – beer AND whiskey! Now that’s a lunch to be thankful for!

Week 12 NFL Confidence Pool

After the highs of weeks 8 and 9, I suppose it’s only natural that weeks 10 and 11 have been a slumping streak all their own. This is to be expected. I lurch into all of my confidence pool slumps the same way I lurch into my chronic depressive episodes; actually gradually but seemingly without warning, because the last time I was feeling good about how things were going I convinced myself I had finally solved all of my underlying problems, even though I understand that’s not how it works. Self-improvement is always a non-linear process.

To that end, even though I missed more picks in week 11, I still netted more points and therefore did better than I did in week 10. It’s nice that I got each and every double-digit pick right; what’s not nice is that I missed every pick of 5 points or fewer, and a couple of higher ones, to boot. Still, better to get more points and fewer picks than the other way around; if I can’t tell the difference between a mediocre team and a bad one, at least I can still identify a legitimately good one.

That skill can’t help me this week, though. Not only is almost every game a divisional matchup, it is also imperative that I deliver these picks to you, my three to five loyal readers, by Wednesday morning, so that you can get your picks in to your pool’s organizer before they either sneak out of work or become too day drunk to do anything other than sit at a desk and pretend to look busy. This means that I’m picking and assigning based on the best information available on Tuesday, which isn’t terrible for the Thanksgiving games but may as well be from week 15 of the 2002 season when it comes to informing my decisions on the Sunday games. Speaking of which, I’m being told Jerry Porter took limited reps this afternoon despite being listed as a full participant in practice.

As such, these picks do not constitute any sort of informed predictions, nor do they even clear the assessment thresholds required to count as vibes-based. I am hastily scribbling these picks on a cocktail napkin, and I don’t care who knows it. In a season where each and every game has the potential to be a low-scoring slug fest (the most inherently chaotic and unpredictable style of game), all I can do is size up each game, decide which of these two teams is more likely to thrive when the game becomes muddy and unwatchable, and reflect on how much I believe in my largely made-up narrative justifications before I assign my points. As long as I pretend to put some thought into my assignments, I’m making my picks responsibly. Right?

Week 11 Correct Picks: 7/14 (0.500)

Season Total Correct Picks: 117/164 (0.713)

Week 11 Points: 74/106 (0.698)

Season Total Points: 1,005/1,318 (0.763)

16 Points: Ravens over Chargers

15 Points: Eagles over Bills

14 Points: Dolphins over Jets

13 Points: Lions over Packers

12 Points: Cowboys over Commanders

11 Points: Chiefs over Raiders

10 Points: 49ers over Seahawks

I complain about all the divisional matchups this week, and make no mistake, the increased chaos potential makes almost every pick worthy of infinite second guessing. This means that if I’m to get my picks in at all, I will need to decide to simply stop listening to whatever strange bullshit my brain tells me, and my brain already loves second guessing every choice I make as soon as I make it. But it’s not all bad news; the only good division in the entire league this year is the AFC North, and the only real contender in the AFC North is the Ravens. The Ravens are not only blessed to not play a division rivalry game this week, they face the Chargers, a team without a run defense and quality skill position players. For all my whining, putting max points on the Ravens is a pretty easy choice. The Eagles might not be as good as their record, but the Bills can only look good against the Jets. Two down!

I hate to backtrack like this, but the obvious upshot of the fact that there’s only one truly good division and that there’s so many divisional matchups this week is that really, when you think about it, none of the other contenders are facing particularly tough opposition. The picks are easy; the assignments are not. These assignments, from 14-10, are derived from the results of a mathematically perfected formula that quantitatively assesses the relative quality levels of each picked team, then sorts them according to a proprietary sorting algorithm. It’s science. What’s that? Whaddya mean, if it’s science why do I miss a bunch of points every week? I dunno man, ask your mom, I hear she catches all kinds of points in the bathroom of the Casey’s on Lookout Drive! This shit’s hard and I’m under a lot of stress, stop hasslin’ me!

9 Points: Jaguars over Texans

8 Points: Steelers over Bengals

7 Points: Titans over Panthers

6 Points: Vikings over Bears

5 Points: Browns over Broncos

4 Points: Buccaneers over Colts

3 Points: Saints over Falcons

2 Points: Cardinals over Rams

1 Point: Giants over Patriots

Not much to say about the rest of these games. Like I said, this week’s operation is a shambles, and I’m just trying to make sure no one gets mad at me for not publishing before their weekly submission cutoff. That said, none of the Jaguars, Texans, Steelers, or Browns count as contenders, so whatever you do make sure you’re putting your higher points on all of those better teams up above, first. I absolutely would’ve put double digits on the Vikings this week if their loss hadn’t brought me back to reality, so big thanks to Kareem Jackson and the rest of the Denver Broncos for saving me from myself, there.

And finally, I want you all to take a look at the game in that 1 point slot. Just look at it. Marvel in its splendor. This might be the very worst game of the past decade. It might make the 6-6 Seahawks/Cardinals Sunday Night tie look like the Epic in Miami. It might be so ugly that it forces the league to enact immediate rules changes. It has the makings of an historical event, for each and every one of the wrong reasons. No outcome is off the table, except any entertaining ones. One of these asshole teams might try to score a rouge. It’s gonna be unwatchable sicko shit of the first order. Can’t wait!

Enjoy the games, everyone! And Happy Thanksgiving!