Barbara Young Editor-in-Chief The National Provisioner

After everything that went down last year leading up to the election of a new president and the selection of a new national administration, I think we deserve a break from the constant barrage of bad news and dire predictions.

Call me shallow, but I am looking forward to something on TV other than the talking heads dissecting the so-called $800-billion-plus financial bailout package, failed government policies, more foreclosures, the Big Three automakers whining about their problems and on and on.

Do I care about these issues? I most certainly do. I am after all on that ship hoping it won’t sink right along with the rest of the working world. If I were a wizard (OK, so I am female but stranger things have happened), I would have led us all to safety by now and we’d all be living in an economically-sound economy and the world would be whole again. But alas wizardry is not my specialty – at least not in the magical sense.

Who needs magic when the biggest football game of the year will light up the tube this Sunday? Yep, Super Bowl Sunday -- which has become sort of a de facto U.S. national holiday -- this year starring the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburg Steelers. The AFC North Champions (Steelers) face off against the NFC West Champions (Cardinals). The Steelers want to make history by winning Super-Bowl-game honors for the sixth time. Meanwhile, the Cardinals just want to put the team’s name on the board of achievements from where it has been absent since its 1947 NFL Championship win.

 Me, I just want to party in the company of people I love, admire and enjoy. As the songwriter says, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, or something like that. I subscribe to that. We American people need each other more than ever in these challenging times. I don’t have magical answers to fix our nation’s problems, but I can do a people happening. You might want to follow suit.

Now, let’s talk food.

Super Bowl Sunday reportedly is the second-largest day of food consumption behind Thanksgiving. There will no doubt be lots of pizza deliveries, although it might be more fun to make your own like my friend does. The National Chicken Council predicts that Americans will consume more than 1billion chicken wings or the equivalent of about 90 million pounds worth over Super Bowl weekend.There will be plenty of recipes available on the Web and such, but I wanted to hear from a food expert. As much as I appreciate the power of the Web, nothing beats getting information from real people. So I talked with Jill Houk, one of Sara Lee’s corporate chefs.

But first let’s take a commercial break.

Hillshire Farm, a division of Sara Lee, recently introduced its first eBook “to help make entertaining more enjoyable, less overwhelming and, most importantly, less expensive for Americans.” This comes just in time to deliver creative ideas for game-night snacks that won’t devastate regular food budgets. It’s called "The Supermarket-Mani-Feast-O," and can be downloaded free of charge from GOMEAT.com. You’ll find two recipes Chef Houk shared with me for Jambalaya that can be prepared for $1.79 per serving and an appetizer I’m planning to make called “Big Game Snackers.”

Besides recipes, Chef Houk talked about how to get in and get out of the store in no time; money-saving coupons; and details on the shelf life of groceries – all of which also is available on the Web site.

Speaking of shelf life, perhaps the most useful tip from Chef Houk is directly related to food safety – and not product contaminations this time but the importance of storing food in a refrigerator with a “perfect temperature zone.” Besides the professional credentials to back her up, Chef Houk also has personal experience about the matter. She is a bit chagrined about allowing her own home refrigerator to fall into the danger temperature zone, something she would never allow on the job. A bit of detective work led her to a discovery that made her cool her heels. She explains:

“I’m a chef, so I work around the refrigerator all day long, right,” Chef Houk says. “Here in the city refrigerators are inspected once a year and we have to keep a temperature log, which means three times a day we check the temperature of our refrigerators. I didn’t think about doing that at home until my dairy products were not holding up as well as they used to.”

For safety, the refrigerator temperature must be no colder than 34°F, with 40°F being the absolute highest temperature, Chef says. The perfect zone is 36°F to 38°F.I think we have taken this party to the starting line. One final thing, remember friends don’t let friends drink and drive.