More Bowl Game Food

I'm always looking for an excuse to make food for an occasion and there's no better a reason for me than football.  For me, bowl games provide a much needed opportunity to think creatively in the kitchen.  This year, however, BYU played in the Miami Beach Bowl at noon my time.  Not exactly the ideal time to whip up something special.  After realizing I couldn't combine the bowl game with a nice Christmas dinner, I had to change my line of thinking; quickly!  I eventually landed on the idea of doing bagged lunches.

THE MENU:

Turkey, Bacon, Avocado sandwich

Cucumber and pepper salad

Chips

Soda

Black bottom strawberry parfait

First into the bags were the salads.  I actually had my mom make them because she's the one who first introduced me to this salad.  It's super easy and super tasty.

It's basically a mix of sliced cucumbers and bell peppers tossed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar with feta cheese mixed in.  Again, it's amazingly simple and the flavors blend beautifully.  Around here we love it as an everyday side dish and it makes a perfect item for any potluck gathering.

After my mom made the salad I put dished it into smaller containers to be put into the bags.  These little containers are the perfect size and for $1 per 4-pack they're pretty irresistible.

Next up were the desserts.  I made a black bottom strawberry and whipped cream parfait.  It would have been easier if I had picked up ready-made whipped cream at the store, but I prefer home made whipped cream.  I also used hot fudge sauce on the bottom of the parfait and as a little embellishment on top.

On a snowy December day I was amazed at the freshness of the strawberries I was able to find.  These beauties made me feel like it was a warm Summer day and made me forget for a minute about the howling wind and falling snow outside.

No bagged lunch would be complete without chips.  Ideally, I would have made the chips from scratch, but I ran out of time and ended up just grabbing an assortment of bagged chips from the store.

Next up were the sandwiches.  I wanted to get mini baguettes at the store, but they didn't have any so I ended up with ciabatta bread.  It ended up working out well and the sandwiches tasted amazing!  I got some hickory smoked peppered turkey from my local deli and used provolone cheese.  I also used pre-cooked bacon.  Lettuce, tomato, avocado and sprouts topped the sandwiches.

After finishing the sandwich, I wrapped it in wax paper and added a BYU label before putting it in the bag.

Once the sandwich was in the bag, I used BYU napkins to wrap up a set of silverware and attached them to the bag using baker's twine.

The silverware, bags, plastic tumblers (what the dessert is in), and the salad containers all came from the dollar store.  The rest of the other items (wax paper, labels, baker's twine, etc.) I already had around the house making it a relatively cheap food experience.

Once the bags were finished I let everyone choose their drinks and they were able to enjoy their lunches and the game!

Bowl Food

Football just isn't the same without good food.  When it comes to big games I like to go all out, so when my team made a bowl game appearance I had to go big.

When doing event food, I find it necessary to keep a theme in mind.  A theme could be anything from a flavor, a color, or regional.  For this event I went with a Concession Stand theme.

Popcorn bags from the dollar store provided excellent serving containers.  Regular popcorn is in the bags on the left, and caramel popcorn is in the bags on the right.  I got the recipe for the caramel popcorn here.

Next option from the Concessions Stand is pizza.  We ordered the Perfect Pizza from Papa Murphy's, which is half pepperoni and half Hawaiian.  

No Concessions Stand fare would be complete without fries, corn dogs, and soda.  The fries are ranch parmesan oven fries from a recipe I found here.  The recipe says it takes an hour and a half, but with cooking time it took me just over an hour.  The corn dogs were purchased from Costco.  Various soda cans were also put out.

The pretzels we bought frozen from the grocery store.  They're the cinnamon sugar variety of Super Pretzel, and were super delicious.  The icing/dipping sauce, however, came from a pack of Rhodes Rolls cinnamon rolls that we never used.  They paired well with the pretzels.

Overall it was super easy (I needed it to be with the game being right after Christmas) and it was a lot of fun.  Everyone enjoyed the offerings.

Also, all the decorations came from the dollar store.  These are: the tablecloth, balloons, balloon anchors that were used to separate the different foods, the crepe paper, and the poster board used to make the concessions banner.