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!

Third time's a charm?

So my nail art doesn't seem to be the lucky charm I thought it would be, but I'll keep rocking their colors on my fingernails anyway.  Here's the latest design.

This one is super cute and super easy!  It's just layers of polish placed strategically.

Step one: Paint all nails with silver polish

Step two: Starting at the base of the nail, paint about half-way up with black

Step three: Paint entire nail with small glitter polish

Step four: repeat with small glitter polish, but begin about 1/4 of the way up the nail

Step five: switch to chunkier glitter polish and apply where the black polish meets the silver

Step six: Add one more layer of the chunky glitter polish from 3/4 of the way up the nail.

Nail Art Part Deux

I'm showing my Raider love again this week with more black and silver nail art!

For these nails  I painted a coat of silver paint on each of my nails.  On all but the ring finger I used a black crackle paint over the top.  For the ring finger, I cut a 'v' shape out of masking tape and placed it on my nail.  Then I painted a stripe of black on a postcard and used a makeup sponge to soak up the paint to put on the nail.

Hopefully at some point my nail art will be a good luck charm and my team will start winning a few!

One small step for women, one giant leap for womankind

As the Ray Rice situation is taking a new turn I feel it is too important for a self-proclaimed female sports fan not to comment on.  Along with other sports fans, I too was outraged when I heard that Rice's original two-game suspension was so trivial, especially when compared to Josh Gordon who was suspended for the entire season for drug charges.  The NFL, whether intentional or not, sent a very clear message to its female supporters; violence, even violence against women, is fine but drugs are the real concern.

In recent years the NFL has made a big push to increase its female fan base.  I didn't understand how a league could even begin to attempt expanding their female fan base when they seem perfectly fine letting those fans get knocked unconscious.

Female sports fans have finally begun to find some footing and a place to call their own in the arena typically filled by men, but incidents like this remind us what a man's world it really is.  Not only fans but the wives, girlfriends and reporters have felt the misogynistic undertones of this incident.  The original two-game suspension of Rice was like a slap in the face to every female in the NFL world.

With the new vido evidence released today and a much harsher punishment doled out to Rice, I finally feel like the NFL really has embraced its female supporters.  I feel like the league is now as loyal to me as I have been to it.  While there is still a lot of work to do this is a huge step toward equality in the sports world.

A shout out of praise should go to Roger Goodell and the Raven's organization for understanding how serious domestic violence is and that they can help change the way our society thinks about these issues.  To have revered and prominent leaders begin to put their foot down about these issues not only empowers women and helps begin the healing process but also hopefully makes men realize how wrong their actions are.  It was long overdue, but Goodell did well in enacting a new domestic-violence policy.

Should Ray Rice ever be allowed to play another down of football?  Is this punishment too harsh?  Tweet me and let me know what you think @felicelilly

NFL Nail Art

With the NFL season kicking off this week I decided to do my nails honoring my favorite football team; the Raiders.  

The final product:

For my main nails I used the ombre technique shown here.  You may, however, notice that the orientation of the ombre effect is reversed from the directions shown.  I tried it both ways and I like having the top color near the base of the nail rather than the tip.  If you haven't clicked the link, the directions are basically as follows.

Step 1: Paint nail the base color

Step 2: On a piece of wax paper or a shiny surface paint a stripe of the base color and the ombre      color.  Using a toothpick or orange stick swirl the two colors together where they meet.

Step 3: Use a makeup triangle to pick up the the polish colors.

Step 4: Place the triangle with the polish on it onto the nail.

The ring finger was done using the technique found here.

Again, it's really easy but makes a statement.  And if you don't feel like opening this link either, the steps are shown below.

Step 1: Paint nail the base color

Step 2: Paint a stripe in the middle of the nail about half way up

Step 3: Paint another stripe to one side of the middle stripe, but a little farther up

Step 4: Paint another stripe on the empty side of the first stripe, but not as far up.

Step 5: (Not shown) Repeat steps 2-4 with another color, but not as far up as the first color

Super Bowl Food!

This post is almost as super late as the bowl itself is super...That was a bit of a stretch, yeah?  Bottom line-I know it's late, but I wanted to still get this up.  So here it is.  The big game is often tricky for our family because we have to figure out how to make and serve dinner before kick off while still attending church.  This year church let out at 4:00 pm, giving us exactly 25 minutes to get home and get served.  So anything that could be made ahead of time, or cooked while we were attending services was on the menu.  

I first decided to build the menu around slow cooker pulled pork.  

The recipe for this can be found here.  It's a sweet pulled pork and has lots of steps, but is so worth it.  The recipe calls for a bone-in piece of meat, but we found boneless cuts at Costco so we used that instead and increased the recipe by 1 1/2.

The pulled pork recipe also calls for serving the meat on hamburger buns, but we thought the pretzel rolls (also from Costco) would compliment the sweetness of the meat nicely.  We were right. :) But we also provided regular steak rolls (from Wal-Mart).

You can't have barbecue without some baked beans and mac and cheese.  The baked beans simmered in a smaller crock pot while we were at church, then I added some brown sugar and bacon pieces (from Costco) to the top before broiling for a few extra minutes.

The mac and cheese was prepared using a basic roux with some cheddar jack cheese melted into it.  The macaroni was cooked, the cheesy roux poured over it, then sharp cheddar cheese and bacon pieces (the same as the ones used in the baked beans) then broiled in the oven for a few minutes.

As you can see, it was quite a hit, with most of it getting eaten before I could get a picture.  I also sliced some green onions for anyone who wanted to put them on the macaroni.  They were an excellent addition.

Not to forget that this should be a somewhat balanced meal, a veggie tray (yes, from Costco) was also put out.

For dessert I wanted to do something that would show my allegiance to the Seahawks.  All right, I'm not really a Seattle fan, I'm just really not a Broncos fan.  But I thought, what better way to celebrate Seattle's road to the Super Bowl than to pay homage to Seahawk's Running Back Marshawn Lynch?  Thus, I give you a Skittles cake.

And the Skittles theme continues on the inside.

All in all the food was great, and was much appreciated by everyone at our Super Bowl party!

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.