Superfat Superbowl

As you guys may remember, I was asked to "cater" (air quotes indicate I didn't know what I was doing) my friend Eric's Superbowl Party. I was told about 20 people would be there. While I was super excited about the opportunity and slightly flattered that they asked me, inside I was quietly crapping my pants.

I spent about a week scouring Food and Wine, Epicurious, and Bon Appetit. Thankfully, all the websites had a list of delicious sounding finger foods I could pick from. I narrowed down my many many options to 5 dishes: Bloody Mary Cocktail Meatballs, Warm Piquillo and Crab Dip, Alsatian Potato and Bacon Tarts, Three-Cheese Mini Macs, and Spinach and Pepper Jack Pizza.

Word to the wise, when planning your menu, go for minimal ingredients and check to make sure you can prep in advance and heat up easily. I actually checked the "Make Ahead" filter in my Food and Wine search because I knew I would have to do a lot of prep work and transporting the food to another apartment. Also, this may be obvi, but DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE GO TO WHOLE FOODS AND TRADER JOES RIGHT AFTER WORK. WORST IDEA EVER. The store was so crowded and I got so overwhelmed, I just pushed my cart into people around the meat section waiting for my friend Eric to help me.

Much of the shopping included me going "What IS that?!" For example, piquillo peppers? What the eff makes a pepper Piquillo? I don't know and I never will. I just bought roasted red peppers in a jar. Yeah, that's how I roll.

In any case, my friend Jessie (from the Chinese Hot Pot situation a couple posts below) generously offered her cooking savvy to me for the day on Sunday. We had a couple of hiccups, (broken pizza crusts, where the hell are my serrano peppers?!, and oops, too much bacon!) but I think our food came out great in the end.

I'm going to follow up these post with my superbowl foods and recipes lest this post be too long. Enjoy and definitely try these for your future parties!