tailgating -

by Emily

Super Bowl Snack Zone: Baked Buffalo Cauliflower

One of our favorite eating holidays of the year is here! Well, almost here. The Super Bowl is THIS SUNDAY! If you’re a dedicated snacker like the rest of the ES team, you’ve probably been making some extreme Super Bowl party eating plans, so I respect the fact that your football food may already be decided. But but BUT! You should make a little bit of time to include this buffalo cauliflower in your Sunday Funday.

I’m not telling you to make this recipe because it’s healthy, I’m telling you to make it because it’s GOOD. So good it could replace the wings in your menu. There, I said it. I think the trick to making this particular kind of buffalo cauliflower especially amazing is the double-baking method. You coat the cauliflower bake it once, baste it in delicious sauce, then bake it again to seal in the flavor and texture. The result? Seriously binge-able finger food that everyone will be raving about the whole game. Trust me on this one.

**Note: these cauliflower bites are pictured with another absolutely delicious football app we recently made: baked almond chicken nuggets. I can’t claim any credit for the chicken recipe, but those lil’ guys are perfect for serving alongside your cauliflower and I highly recommend adding them to your snack spread as well!

Baked Buffalo Cauliflower Bites

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by Emily

Endless Super Bowl: Top 10 Recipes for Your Football Party

Yeah yeah YEAH SONS!!!!! This Sunday is the Super Bowl and the Seahawks are BACK, BABY! Loyal ES readers may remember that I am from Seattle and loooove me some Hawks and made this ultra-handy Super Bowl Snacks for Seahawks Fans last year, and that post still stands because OBVIOUSLY THE SEAHAWKS ARE BACK IN THE ‘BOWL.

(If you want me to stop typing in all caps, SORRY NOT SORRY I CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP because I LOVE THE SUPER BOWLLL)

This year, though, to add to my Seahawks-centric list, I thought I’d share a Top 10 list of general football recipes guaranteed to please any Super Bowl partiers. There is NO shortage of Super Bowl recipes online but these are the tried-and-true snacks we’ve successfully made in the past, and/or new (to us) recipes I’m excited to try this weekend. Need even more inspiration? Take a gander at our Endless Super Bowl Pinterest board.

Big Popper Hot Buffalo Chicken and Bacon Grilled Cheese from Half Baked Harvest

What… even… ARE YOU? Once again, one of my personal favorite food blogs, HBH, comes through with an amazing recipe and gorgeously mouth-watering photos. I want, no, NEED this sandwich in my life.

Baked Garlic & Swiss Dip from Endless Simmer

I developed this recipe two years ago and it is GOOD. Your breath might smell, but so will everyone else’s, so you’ll be just fine.

Buffalo and Blue Cheese Lil’ Smokies from Inspired by Charm

Lil’ smokies are one of Rob’s favorite football snacks (and one of mine, and one of probably most of America, let’s be real…) so obv they’re a Super Bowl staple. The addition of creamy buffalo dipping sauce and blue cheese inside the “blanket” ?! A stroke of genius.

by Emily

Bacon, Spinach, Swiss & Caramelized Onion Dip

I know the Super Bowl is over (GO HAWKS OMG!) but I see no reason why I can’t share my latest dip recipe with you. I mean, DIP! Who doesn’t love it? It’s not like you can’t eat dip just because football season is over (*sob*). After all, we still have basketball, Oscars, random Saturday nights when you feel like staying on the couch with a box of wine, Costco-size bag of chips, and bucket of dip all night, etc… So here we go.

This isn’t anything revolutionary, but it’s all of the best snacking kind of flavors combined into one. Salty bacon? Yep. Sweet caramelized onion? You know it. Refreshing spinach? Heck yes, you’re getting your iron, son! Savory, cheesy…cheese? YES! I tried to keep it kiiiinda light by incorporating some lowfat ingredients in my Creamy Dip Trinity (cream cheese, mayo, sour cream) but let’s be real. You’re eating bacon pulverized into a dairy base, so “light” is pretty relative in this case. But it’s worth it.

Bacon, Spinach, Swiss, & Caramelized Onion Dip

in Bacon / Cheese / Recipe 2 comments

by Emily

Gridiron Grub: Southern Seven-Layer Dip

The beginning of fall is always bittersweet for me, because I love summer with all my heart. The silver lining to this new season, though, is that fall equals the return of football, which equals daydrinking, snacking, and of course, tailgating!

I love tailgating. Lounging outside in the sun, downing beer, and chowing down on indulgent snacks? Hell yeah. Now that I’m a Texas transplant, I have fully committed to the southern tailgate lifestyle, and I am here to tell you it is way more intense than anything I experienced in Washington. Here in Austin, a city with no pro sports teams, college football reigns supreme. It doesn’t matter if you attended UT or not, on game days you proudly sport all the burnt orange you can muster and hook ’em horns with the best of ’em. My boyfriend, Rob, is a born-and-raised Austinite and a huuuuge Longhorns supporter with a reserved tailgate spot and season tickets to all the games, so I knew it was important to make a strong “I’m committed to this, y’all!” statement among the other fans at my first UT tailgate.

Mulling over all the traditional choices got a bit tedious. Chips, queso, pulled pork, chili, salsa… I couldn’t make up my mind and didn’t want to just settle for one of those cliché (albeit delicious, don’t get me wrong!) choices. Suddenly it dawned one me: why not combine all my favorite fatty football foods in one epic dish?! If people can do that with Mexican food, why couldn’t I do that with Southern food?! And thus, the Southern Seven-Layer Dip was born.

Southern Seven-Layer Dip

in Cheese / Pig / Recipe 3 comments

by Borracho

Gridiron Grub: Peach Bourbon Wonton with Gorgonzola Mornay Sauce

If you saw the first post in our Gridiron Grub series, you know that I am a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. If the fact that I am writing about football food once a week doesn’t turn you off, the fact that I am an Eagles fan might.

Philadelphia sports fans get a pretty bad rap and only some of it is deserved. We’ve been accused of throwing snowballs at Santa, cheering when opposing players get hurt, throwing batteries on the field and earlier this year, there was coverage of this disgusting incident. Particularly well known is Section 700 of the old Veteran’s Stadium. It was home to a group of especially rowdy and inebriated fans.

I have had a difficult time getting excited about this year’s team considering we traded one of the most respectable guys in the league and are now starting the infamous Ron Mexico. Because of this, I have been reminiscing about some of the great times I have had with friends at games through the years.

This week’s recipe I put together as a testament to the 700 Section and all the other fans out there like me. Fiery and sweet; fun and a little boozy.

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by Bliz

The Top 10 College Football Tailgating Foods

With college football season finally upon us, perfect Saturdays are here again. We can return to making grand efforts to relocate couches and televisions outside, justifying midday beers with collegiate loyalties, and of course, the very best part of football…pre-game tailgating! Without further ado, the Top Ten Tailgating Dishes any food or football fan can’t live without.

10. Wings

There’s just no substitute for a perfectly cooked, crispy wing drenched in hot sauce and dunked in ranch dressing. Sure, you can go for chicken fingers if you don’t like bones, but where’s the fun in that?

9. Vodka Soaked Fruit

I’d like to think our great, great, great, great ancestors figured this one out, but let’s be honest; this is pure drunk college ingenuity.

8. Dip

Salsa, guac, 7-layers, mango, hummus, etc, etc, etc. Those chips aren’t going to dip themselves people.

7. Fried Chicken

Hey, at least it’s not fried in transfats anymore. I mean I’d still eat it if it was.. but that’s gotta count for something, right?

in Drinks / Fowl / Lists / Red Meat / Top 10 Lists 17 comments