Buffalo Wings

Happy Birthday to you! Seems like only yesterday, but it has been 50 years since the Buffalo wing was invented. The story goes that a Buffalo, New York diner owner had left over wings and decided to dip them in sauce and sell them to late night diners. The rest is history.

During the next few days leading up to the Super Bowl, chicken wings will be flying out of the grocery stores and restaurants in Monticello.

Say it ain’t so, there could be a chicken wing shortage. Will there be lines wrapped around stores and restaurants waiting for the doors to fly open?

According to statistics gathered by who else, the National Chicken Council, last year on Super Bowl Sunday, approximately 100 million pounds of chicken wings were eaten. On that Sunday each year, wing consumption increases 8-16 million pounds over normal days.

And just what is our favorite sauce for dipping those wings?

#1 is ranch dressing, #2 is BBQ sauce; hot sauce and bleu cheese follow closely. Eight percent of us are purist, translated, no sauce required.

Even if you are not a champion eater like Joey Chestnut, who downed 144 wings in 10 minutes, there is an art to eating wings and it always includes plenty of napkins and wet wipes. The drumstick portion of the wing should be held between the thumb and forefinger and eaten similarly to the chicken leg. The “flat” portion of the wing is more difficult to handle, it requires one to bite and drag the meat in one direction while turning the “flat” to grab more meat. Finesse indeed!

Will the Broncos gallop or the Seahawks fly away with the victory?

Non-partisant, politically incorrect polls predict…well, the Falcons aren’t in it, so who cares.