Yes – I watched the Super Bowl. My wife and the kids and I hunkered down, and we actually watched the freaking Super Bowl. We’re not football fans, but we simply had to watch this one. After all, if you were physically within the borders of the state of Wisconsin on February 6, it was the law.

My four-year-old daughter was pretty excited. We explained that there are football teams from all over the country, and this year, “ours” was one of the best – she actually gasped when I told her that. During the national anthem, as the cameras crossfaded between Christina Aguilera and various star players, we caught a glimpse of Clay Mathews. She said, “Hey, I just saw a girl wearing one of our outfits.”

It was hilarious. My wife told me to put that on Facebook. So I did.

If I was going to sit down and watch the most important football game since the late nineties, I was going to do it while munching on toasty little horns o’ plenty – plenty of salty goodness, that is.

And of course, we had snacks. Before she ran out to pick up a few things from the grocery store, my wife asked me if I wanted anything. With no hesitation whatsoever, I blurted out, “Bugles.” I wanted Bugles in a bad way. We’d just been to Menards the day before, and Menards always makes me think of giant bags of Bugels. After that, there’s nothing I can do to stop the craving. And if I was going to sit down and watch the most important football game since the late nineties, I was going to do it while munching on toasty little horns o’ plenty – plenty of salty goodness, that is.

However, that’s where the traditional Super Bowl snack train came to a screeching halt. Once the kids were in bed and sleeping – right after the halftime show – we busted out the real culinary goods.

We ate spring rolls. Luscious, delicious, homemade spring rolls. My wife had lovingly chopped up bright orange carrots and vibrant spinach. She’d boiled up succulent rice noodles and sliced a velvety smooth avocado. Then she’d wrapped generous piles of all that in ... whatever the hell you wrap spring rolls in – those stretchy, translucent wrapper things that look like big, wet pancakes made out of ... noodle.

See, like many (most?) of you, I was raised on the Wisconsin Trinity – meat and potatoes and casseroles.

She had also whipped up a slightly spicy peanut sauce, one of my all time favorite things “made by the wife.” And there we sat – dunking what are essentially hefty vegetable logs into a thick brown goo. And we were loving it.

At one point, my wife (whose name is Shannon, by the way) asked, “What do you think twelve year old Mikey Paulus would say if he saw you eating this?”

I chuckled (thoughtfully, of course) and replied, “He wouldn’t say anything. He’d run away screaming. Then he’d puke.”

See, like many (most?) of you, I was raised on the Wisconsin Trinity – meat and potatoes and casseroles. And Mom, because I know you are reading this, I loved that stuff. I still do. But now I also love other stuff. Like giant gobs of sliced vegetables rolled into what looks kind of like an alien dog turd.

And I’m not alone. I’m sure many of you, once you got through college and you’d met new people, had your culinary world widened to some degree. I happened to meet a lot of people that liked pulling things from every shelf on the food pyramid to make a meal. They also liked pulling ingredients from an array of spice racks located all around said food pyramid. Like my wife. She loves making that stuff and I love eating it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still always love pot roast and mashed potatoes (as does my wife, thank god), and I’ll always love places like Taco Bell no matter what the government says they can legally call “beef.” But I think I’ve arrived at a happy place where I can munch on spring rolls and watch the Packers win the Super Bowl and not feel weird about it.

I mean, we did have Bugles on the side, after all. We’re not hippies.