Steeler-style chow

This Sunday, about a dozen family members will assemble at Bob and Robyn Mack’s house.

They’ll wear their Steelers jerseys.

They’ll wave their Steelers banners.

They’ll light their Steelers candle.

And they will cook up enough food to get them through the three or four hours of Super Bowl XLIII.

Rooting for the Steelers is a family sport for the Macks, who now live in North Carolina but grew up around Wheeling, W.Va., about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

They like the Penguins OK, and they’d like the Pirates a lot more if they had a better team. But they love the Steelers through thick and thin.

“I have Direct TV and the NFL Sunday Ticket (satellite package). So we get all the Steelers games,” Bob Mack said. “We joke about it when people say, ‘Have you missed a game?’ My answer is I haven’t missed 10 plays.”

Sometimes they even travel to catch the Steelers live. But Bob Mack said he hasn’t been that tempted to travel to the Super Bowl. “I’ve heard that it’s actually not as exciting. A lot of people aren’t there for the football,” he said.

But he has traveled to see the Steelers play in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Miami, Cleveland, Baltimore and other cities. “I keep saying I want to visit every NFL stadium. But then they keep building new ones,” he said.

Robyn and Bob Mack moved to Winston-Salem soon after college. Bob Mack had passed through the area many times during childhood trips to the beach and loved the idea of living in a warmer climate.
A game-day gathering at the Macks’ house often consists of 10 to 15 people — including family members who followed the couple to North Carolina and brought their Steelers loyalty with them.

“Kids bring their friends at times, but we’re particular about that,” Bob Mack said. “They have to be Steelers’ fans.”

If the weather’s nice, they’ll gather out on the deck, where they keep a TV sheltered in a storage closet. They have another TV in the living room, and one in the basement. “If people aren’t serious about the game, we make them go downstairs,” Robyn Mack said.

During football season, the Macks’ house is covered in black and gold.

A 9-foot Steelers flag flies outside.

All members of the family wear their Steelers jerseys for the games. “And if the Steelers win, we don’t wash them,” Bob Mack said, citing one of the family’s traditions or superstitions.

They have “terrible towels,” which they will wave frantically after a Steelers score or other big play.

They have Steelers rugs, blankets, boas, placemats, a dartboard, even a Steelers popcorn popper.

“We have all kinds of paraphernalia,” Bob Mack said. “We even light a special candle before the game for good luck.”

Mack said that the family’s devotion to the Steelers is partly a matter of timing. Many of them started rooting for the Steelers as children in the 1960s, when the team wasn’t very good. “Then we were all in junior high or high school when the Steelers came into their glory days in the 1970s,” he said. That’s the decade that the Steelers won three Super Bowls.

“We breathe black and gold,” Bob Mack said.

Every game day, the family assembles at one of their houses, fixes a boatload of food and settles in for an afternoon or evening of football watching and family time. “We even start in the pre-season,” Doug Mack said.

Meals for game day are a group effort. Bob Mack may make a main dish, usually someone else will bring an appetizer and someone else will bring a dessert.

The grown-ups will make black-and-gold vodka Jell-O shooters. They’ll use black-cherry or other dark Jell-O to represent black and lemon Jell-O for the gold.

The appetizer may be something as simple as salsa and chips. One of the most popular appetizers at the Macks is the hot-chicken dip that Dolores Mack makes. “She makes that for at least 80 percent of the games,” Robyn Mack said.

The dip could be a main dish if you eat enough of it. It combines cooked and shredded chicken with hot-wing sauce and ranch dressing. “You put it on tortilla chips. The grandchildren go nuts over this,” Bob Mack said.

The main dish might be as simple as hamburgers or hot dogs on the grill. The Macks also make the “Roethlis-burgers,” named after Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback. Different Pittsburgh restaurants serve this different ways. At Peppi’s, it’s a sub loaded with beef, sausage, scrambled eggs, grilled onions and American cheese. At Brentwood Express, it’s a burger with bacon, barbecue sauce, ranch dressing and cheddar and provolone cheese. The Macks make burgers similar to the latter version.

Other dishes might be pulled pork, shrimp cocktail, maybe baked ziti.

“We also do cheese steaks, hoagies, a lot of Italian sausage and kielbasa — stuff people eat in Pittsburgh,” Bob Mack said.

“We’ve done chicken stews. One Sunday we did a big Mexican fiesta.”

One thing the Macks don’t do is pick up takeout. “We almost always cook it,” Bob Mack said.

Asked about their predictions for Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, the whole family shouted “Steelers!”

Talk about the family that plays together. This is the family that roots together.

Hastings is journal food editor for The Winston-Salem Journal.

Buffalo Chicken Dip
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened.
1 10-ounce can chunk white chicken, drained.
1/2 cup (Texas Pete brand) Buffalo-wing sauce.
1/2 cup ranch dressing.
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese.
Chopped walnuts, optional.
Tortilla chips or Triscuit crackers.

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add chicken, and mix well until chicken is broken up. Add Buffalo-wing sauce and ranch dressing. Beat together until well blended. Stir in cheese.
3. Place mixture in a shallow baking dish. Add chopped walnuts if desired. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until hot.
4. Serve hot with tortilla chips or Triscuit crackers.
Ben Roethlis-Burgers
The Macks use slices of Heinz sour dill pickles, which are hard to find in this area. Other sour dill pickles can be
substituted.

1 pound lean ground beef.
1/2 pound milk (bulk) pork sausage.
1 pound cooked bacon.
6 slices provolone cheese.
6 slices cheddar cheese.
6 onion hamburger buns, toasted.
Ranch dressing.
Pickles.
Heinz 57 sauce.

1. Combine beef and sausage in a bowl and mix well. Form 6 thin patties.
2. Grill patties until well done. Melt a slice of each cheese on each patty.
3. To assemble, place a couple of slices of bacon on the bottom half of a bun. Add Heinz 57 sauce, burger, pickles, ranch dressing and bun top.
Makes 6 burgers.

Pleasant Peach Crisp
1 prepared crust for a 9-inch pie.
2 21-ounce cans peach pie filling (about 4 2/3 cups total).
1/4 cup raisins
(approximately).
1/2 cup all-purpose flour.
1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar.
1/4 cup softened butter or margarine.
2 tablespoons sliced, blanched almonds.
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 9-inch pie pan with the prepared crust. Trim edges until pastry is even with the top edge of the pan.
2. Combine pie filling and raisins in a large bowl, tossing gently until mixed. Spread evenly over the crust.
3. Combine flour and brown sugar in a small bowl. Using a fork or pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in almonds. Sprinkle topping evenly over the filling.
4. Bake about 40 minutes, or until topping is golden brown.
Makes about 8 servings.