Superbowl Party 2011

Every year J and I through a huge Superbowl bash.  Over the last few years it has really taken on a life of it's own and grown exponentially.  The first year it was just us and 3 or 4 close friends.  This year we are expecting around 30 people.  People talk about it all year and the closer it gets, the more we hear about it.  "What food are you going to serve this year?" "How many kinds of beer will there be?"  We put alot of work into this party and it seems to pay off in spades.  I love playing the hostess.  I'll give you a little preview of what will be going on Superbowl Sunday.

Kick off may be at 4:30, but things get started early here with a ton of food prep.  As one of my guests put it, it's best not to eat for a week before coming just so you have enough room for all the food.  Guests will start arriving about 2 and the fight for seating begins.  We don't have a huge place, but everyone makes room for each other.  Beer roulette has become a staple game at the party and everyone loves it.  We fill 2 large tubs with about 30 varieties of beer and cover the tubs.  You reach in and grab a random beer and the rule is you must drink it completely before pulling another.  The variety of beers included range from popular brands to foreign weirdness and plain old crap.  Everyone seems to stop what they're doing whenever anyone pulls a new beer to see what they might get.  We divide all the flavors evenly between the tubs and at half time the tubs switch side of the room to shake things up again.  But the big thing for me is the food.  I love putting it all together and try to mix things up and serve different dishes every year to keep things fresh.

My menu this year was a little hard to pin down because of the teams that made it in.  I usually try to find a theme food and do a cook off between the two cities involved. Last year I did a Indianapolis Hoosier Chili vs New Orleans Chili Con Carne and it was a hit.  Unfortunately Pittsburgh has a serious lack of good cook off style foods.  Did you know that the foods Pittsburgh is best known for are Heinz ketchup, Klondike bars and some strange sandwich with fries and coleslaw in the sandwich?  Not stuff that really lends itself to Superbowl foods so I decided to go a different route and we are doing sausage vs sausage.  Bratwurst for Green Bay and Kilbasa for Pittsburgh.  I am doing 20 of each served on s mini hotdog buns with a slice of pepper jack cheese on each and I am stacking them into the shape of a football stadium with a "field" in the center made of bean dip with sour cream lines on the field.  One half of the stadium will be the Brats and the other half the Kilbasa.  This will probably arrive at the beginning of the second quarter.  To start there is a cheese and cracker platter, potato skins with cheese and bacon, taquitos, bacon wrapped cocktail wieners baked in a vanilla burbon brown sugar and my nephew's famous cheese bung.  What is that you ask?  It's an amazing cheese dip baked in a sour dough loaf.  The sausage stadium will be accompanied with Heinz ketchup and a homemade hot mustard.  At half time I start cooking chicken wings usually about 15 different flavors and if I'm lucky, I'll see the last minute or so of the game.  It's fun though and I can't wait to do it again next year!