Super bowl of soup

It is Sunday, February the seventh, and the Super Bowl will be played in the states in about 15 hours, which means the pregame and pre commercial analysis should be starting at any minute. Yesterday I had the opportunity to watch the pregame and the first half of the Wales vs. England rugby game, if you’ve never seen one, you should catch one. Some observations from an American sports fan. First they had both teams standing in a line for the singing of their respective national anthems. Then a cameraman strolls down the entire line filming, and you see the most surreal examples of the human race, I kid you not, there are normal sized real tough types. Then there are short sparkplug built guys, then there are what I refer to as the Clydesdale guys. Good Christ you see a coach standing there and he looks miniscule, these guys are in peak condition, even their punters could kick a hockey players ass. Then for some reason, I’m not sure why, they get a close up of these players singing their respective anthems. Was it me or did a couple of them just shout vowels, I don’t question their intellect as watching the game it was obvious that this is a game of field position and strategy. Well the game starts and after ten minutes it gives the decided image of World War One trench warfare with out the rifles and bayonets, I think the guys with rifles and bayonets would still have a hard time against these guys. The team from England had all white uniforms on, for the first couple minutes anyway, only these guys could pull off these uni’s. Over their hearts was a single large red rose complete with gold stem and leaf, I mean no one outside of someone skipping a medical dosage would even question these guys walking down the street wearing these shirts. There were no commercial interruptions, maybe at the half, but I missed that and the rest of the game as I was called into duty as “Le Chauffeur pour le petite mademoiselle.” Caleigh had made sleepover plans with a school chum, nice girl, nice family, as a matter of fact when I dropped off Caleigh, her dad was watching the Rugby game. His team England was winning the game handily. Well today Ireland are playing Italy, I believe, in any case if they are it may be a good placebo for Le Boulle de Superb? After watching England, both Ireland and Italy seem to be sporting smaller guys, still rugged, but I can see why England handily beat Wales.
We’re off to dinner at Isabelle and Thierry’s house, our host family. They are the nicest people, he reminds me a great deal of a younger version of my stepfather, same Steve McQueen type looks, and the same dry sense of humor. There will be another family there, always interesting trying to converse in French, but that’s why we’re here. We arrive and meet the other family, they have a vineyard, winery, and pleasant children. We discuss wine in great detail, they bring a half dozen different types of wines and we proceed through the courses. We have a very mild white wine, slightly floral with a dry finish with Soup, butternut squash, great pairing. Then we had another white wine, a 2003 with a delicate punch, that just lingered at the end, It paired with a Pomme de Terre’ that had a melted cheese, man that cheese was virile stuff, strong but cloaking the potato pie nicely. Then, as we relaxed we were poured some of his red wine that was thin, bright, and had hints of red fruit. It paired nicely with a smoked sausage, they worked well together. Then with the cheese platter, we had his bold condensed red, that after breathing slightly opened up so that each sip was different and developing, I’ve never really experienced this obvious a transition. The cheese’s were a pretty serious affair, it must have been the reason for the wines transformation. We each had five different wedges of cheese, not a bad one in the group. Two Comte’, one Roquefort, a Laguiole, and the last one I didn’t catch it’s name, but I liked it. After four hours of speaking my broken disjointed French and having Isabelle translate my puns and jokes, it was time to head out. We were so happy to be again let into the house and confidences of our host family, hopefully they were as well.