Annual Steelers Tailgate

Once a season, my two brothers, their wives, Norm and I and a rotating group of Steeler-fan friends get together for a big tailgate and go to the game. Good time, good times. There's always lots of food, even more beer, and even more trash-talking. This year was no exception!

In preparation for the Steelers vs. Browns game, emails were flying fast and furious...tailgaters mapping out the all important details for the day. Lots of discussion about what kinds and how much beer and what we could bring that we could toss in the turkey fryer. My brother, Mike, brings his turkey fryer and makes a giant batch of wings with his homemade wing sauce (and won't give us the recipe)...and thought this year would be good to fry up whatever he could put into there. Peirogies were the extra of choice for the year. How fitting for a game in da 'Burgh! My other brother, Matt, brings his old Weber grill...that only gets trotted out for this annual tailgate. Sometimes it's more for heat than actual cooking - especially after the game - but always comes in handy!

Little did we know how much it would come in handy. There were so many problems with the fryer, the oil never got hot enough, the gas tanks, well....tanked. One ran out, the back up never had a good enough flow to keep the heat up. All the while, the wings were just boiling away in a big vat of not-quite-hot-enough oil. Mike pulled some wings out and put them on the grill, hoping that would do it. They just fell apart. (not that it stopped people from eating the pan full of disintegrating wings...the sauce is THAT good).

So the guys put the pot on the very hot grill, hoping that would work. That didn't work either. Mike was more than a little heartbroken about the whole thing. At least he had Browns fans to make fun of...and thank God the Steelers won!

Anyway....I had made bbq pork sammiches, bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers, potato salad and smore brownies (recipes to follow!)...and we had hot dogs and other munchies (danni's chicken dip), that kept us plenty satisfied until game time!