Super bowl

This year's super bowl is exciting not only because the home team is playing, but also because I actually have the day off! In the past six years, I have worked every super bowl Sunday. I chose to celebrate having the day off by hosting a little get together at my apartment for the game.

In traditional Julie fashion, I planned a hugely elaborate menu, sticking mainly to hors d'ourves/snack-y foods and desserts.

I started a few days early by making the sweet and spicy candied nuts, the jalapeño-cheddar scones (which I didn't get to serve), and the roasted and shredded beef. Then, I made some of the chocolate lollipops. My original intent was to make football lollipops as well as helmet lollipops in the colors of the teams playing, but finding/making navy chocolate proved to be harder than I thought it would.

Then I pared down my menu. Pretty substantially. It was way too much food for the dozen or so people who were expected.

The day before I started with the remaining foods on my now-paired-down list. Greek lamb meatballs, buffalo chicken mini meatballs (the original recipe called for mini, it wasn't my doing!), my grandmother's hot dog appetizer (which I also didn't get to serve), spinach dip (which I also didn't get to serve), and macaroni and cheese. I took a short cut with the salsa, hummus, jalapeño poppers (from the freezer aisle), and buffalo wings (from a local bar) and bought them.

Dessert was chocolate lollipops, nutella cupcakes in football wrappers, and cookie-and-brownie "burgers" (idea taken from this blog, but I made everything from scratch). Why nutella cupcakes, you may wonder? Because tomorrow is Nutella Day and I promised a friend I'd make Nutella cupcakes for Nutella day!

Congrats to the Giants on an awesome win!

Some of the spreads