Stick A Fork in the Eagles

JORI KLEIN/Daily News (Eagles image only)

"In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport." Julia Child

I made my world famous brisket for dinner Sunday night. If you're unfamiliar with brisket, it's basically pot roast cooked in the oven. Done right, however, it tastes like no pot roast you've ever eaten. It's the ultimate comfort food.

For the record, my brisket is ambrosia. Like buttah. Surrounded by gravy-drenched potatoes, carrots and pearl onions, it cuts with a fork, melts in your mouth. And it can literally lift your spirits.

Brisket takes at least 4 hours to cook. So maybe you can see where I'm going with this culinary tale when I tell you that around 2 PM yesterday I stopped stewing at the TV and headed into the kitchen to preheat the oven and start cutting potatoes.

Thanks to Andy Reid, Donovan McNabb and the rest of the Eagle meatheads getting roasted by Tennessee, my family was going to need as much comfort as I could provide. While a case of beer, a bottle of Scotch or a handful of Valium might work for other decimated Philadelphia fans, I chose to lighten our load with food.

I have a feeling other mothers got busy over hot stoves Sunday too. And I'm willing to bet nobody in Philly served Mama McNabb's Campbell's soup.

Which brings me to a theory I've been noodling about Philadelphia's dubious status as the second fattest city in the country. Psychologists have been telling us for decades that many people define their own and their town's success or failure by the performance of their sports teams. And also--the icing on the cake--that when people are unhappy, they eat.

Put those two facts together and there you have it, in a nutshell -- Philadelphians are doomed to be pie hole stuffing foodaholics. It's not their fault. Our half-baked teams are forcing disappointed fans to eat themselves into oblivion.

If only the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers and (well, forget the Flyers) could just get cooking and win some hot games, their fans would be too busy cheering to eat.

I'm telling you, we'd all be a lot fitter--and happier--if Philadelphia could just get one taste of victory.