Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

Knowing us, of course we saved our wildest tailgate recipe of the season for last. Yes, even wilder than making pork poppable, like we did with our Kielbasa Tots creation.

Hear us out:

Peanut Butter.

Chocolate.

Chicken.

Yep, you read that right.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

As the days grow shorter, the nights turn colder, and as the holidays loom on the horizon, it’s once again time for us all to build up another Teflon-tough mental callus necessary for watching football alongside your dusty, sweater-clad relatives.

Oh it’s coming…peanut gallery comments spewing from your Werther’s Original, don’t-touch-the-thermostat, Matlock enthusiast grandparents about how today’s players are Charmin soft — what with their concern about their brains, earnest off-the-field interests, facemasks and forward passes.

As you turn to roll your eyes without detection, they’ll harken back to the Sepia Tone days of One-Platoon Football when guys played BOTH offense and defense, sucked on salt tablets when they were thirsty, then put in 14 hours mining iron ore and captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British as soon as the final whistle blew.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

Last 42 minutes of my life (I counted) are gone, wasted away, circling the drain of curiosity, incapable of escaping the Marianas Trench of Internet wormholes.

And who (or what) is to blame? Why it’s the title of this week’s tailgate recipes: Drunk & Blacked Out Shrimp.

I let out a faint chuckle when this creative culinary concoction arrived in my Inbox thanks to the good folks and Blue and White bleeders at the 409 Tailgate Club. It certainly paints a picture, doesn’t it? An inebriated shrimp, keeled over, his shrimp buddies stacking empty red solo cups on his head or taking a Sharpie to his little shrimp face…which got us wondering, ‘Do Shrimp drink? Heck, do shrimp even have mouths?’

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

Preaching to the choir here, but the Penn State Whiteout is truly a sight to behold – as ABC announcer Chris Fowler said a few years ago, an unmatched display of “monochromatic mayhem.”

For us, the festivities begin well before Saturday and extend through the night as evening turns to morning. Like those 1980s Energizer commercials, the party keeps going and going and going…the only interruption occurring around 7:30 p.m. with a 4-hour, 110-decibel intermission.

Of course, the Whiteout isn’t all fun and games, especially for sticky-fingered, sauce-centric grill guys like us. In fact, our typical tailgate menu is basically kryptonite for pristine Whiteout attire. Sizzle, splatter, spirits and sauce = stains.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

You know, we don’t hamstring ourselves with a ton of rules when it comes to grilling, tailgating or life, in general. Our best creations, best ideas, best decisions arise when we color outside the lines a little, guesstimate our measurements, and add a shot of alcohol to pretty much everything.

But there is one ironclad principle from which we never waver. It is our day-to-day culinary compass:

PORK > POTATOES

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

How’s that saying go? The best-laid plans of mice and something-or-other? Sorry, even though our typical blog posts are longer than a CVS receipt and wordy as all get-out, we’re not big readers.

Anyway, earlier this summer, Penn State brass formally announced their plans to conduct an in-game alcohol sales “trial run” at Beaver Stadium for the Central Michigan game this Saturday – a long-overdue decision that delighted everybody except the fat cats at BIG FLASK.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

When you think of Penn State, what indelible images/mental snapshots come to mind?

Racing to finish two scoops of Peachy Paterno as it melts under the merciless sun of an Arts Fest weekend…Saying hello to the extrovert squirrels frolicking across the Old Main lawn…Choking on the musty smell of books sandwiched within the Pattee Stacks…Baking on Beaver Stadium’s metal bleachers as Penn State toys with a non-conference pushover to open the home slate.

All good choices.

But, for us anyway, there’s another image – an off-the-radar Penn State image – that always warms the cockles of our heart every time we spot it in Happy Valley.

It’s a bottle of Old Grand-Dad whiskey, proudly positioned on a shelf (not the top shelf), iconic label staring you down from behind the bar.

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Editor’s Note: Before each Penn State home game this season, our friends at the 409 TAILGATE CLUB will offer up unique grilling recipes for your gameday menu.

At the precise moment when meat meets mouth and this succulent steak recipe takes your taste buds on pregame joyride, please, don’t thank us. Thank ‘That Lady.’

Which lady?

Honestly, we’re not quite sure. And though we never got her name, we’ll certainly never forget her. Therefore, she is and will forever be known as, ‘That Lady.’

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