Superbowl Follies (1)

Superbowl weekend is a huge event at our house.  This year Superbowl Sunday fell on the day following our regular monthly games night so let me tell you I was a very, very busy person with prep starting early in the week.  We had about 15 for the monthly games night on Saturday starting at 6:30 PM then running into the wee hours of the morning with me putting out food every two hours.  Our Superbowl party started at 12 PM the next day with me providing lunch, dinner and food every two hours for about 30 until they finally wandered home in the wee hours of the morning.  I was and still am exhausted but I have a lot of other irons in the fire.  I was going to make one huge Superbowl post but decided to break it into three posts after realizing how many pictures I had to share.  On the Superbowl menu and most of it homemade from scratch: vegetable tray, fruit tray, cheese and meat tray, banana cake, cheese sticks, BBQ meat balls, moose meat chili, spiral ham buns, cheesy hash brown casserole, baked beans, snickerdoodles, along with a wide variety of snack type foods.  Enjoy!

Superbowl parties are all about junk food but I really do try to make most of the offerings as healthy as possible.  Pigs in a blanket is one dish there really isn't a lot of ways of making it healthier and yet it is a very much requested dish.  I honestly do not care for pigs in a blanket!  They are made by wrapping wieners in refrigerator dough then baking until golden brown.  I cut them on the diagonal into 1 - inch sections then pop a toothpick into each section for serving.   I make them healthier by using all beef wieners.  I could make fresh dough or use puff pastry but the guys would complain the taste is not the same.  While I don't care for them myself, they are easy and inexpensive to make, and always a sure party favourite.

If you recall, I made the meatballs for the Superbowl party much earlier in the week.  The beauty of the way I make meatballs is they freeze nicely for later use and any sauce can be used when rewarming.  I ended up with a total of 11 lb of meatballs made over two sessions.  I froze them until Superbowl Sunday.  Then I put them into my largest slow cooker and poured Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce over then.  I set the slow cooker on low and let them cook until warmed through when I announced to the guys they were ready.  The entire batch of meatballs were devoured that afternoon!

Meatballs are really an inexpensive, frugal Superbowl treat.  They go over well and when made in advance the way I do mine have minimal prep on the day of the event.  You really can use any sauce you want but on the day of a large event like this using a store bought sauce can save a lot of time.  Any Diana Sauce works nicely but you can use pretty much any sauce.  If you want to make one from scratch, the sauce I use on sweet and sour ribs works nicely as well and it is really quite inexpensive to make, something that anyone cooking for larger events will greatly appreciate.