Happy Football and Food Day! (And Happy American Thanksgiving if you celebrate it!)

Happy Football and Food Day!  As Canadians we celebrated Thanksgiving back in October, so for us today is all about watching Lance’s Detroit Lions, my Dallas Cowboys and eating more food than we should!  TV sit-coms have taught me this is pretty much what American Thanksgiving is about for a large portion of Americans anyway. 😉

It’s sort of exciting that all three games today matter as far as the standing go!  I don’t think that has happened in a long time, or at least since I started paying attention to the NFL.  Not that I pay too much attention other than to ask if my Cowboys won and if Detroit lost, but I digress.

Food-wise, I like to make up a veggie tray, we’re going to be eating a fair amount of junk food over the course of the day so if I can sneak in a carrot or two (even drenched in ranch dressing) I’m going to call that a win.  If I’m feeling particularly virtuous (or maybe optimistic) I’ll make up a fruit tray too.  If when I’m doing my shopping the pre-cut bowl are a decent price I will usually pick them up — healthy snack, no more effort than a bag of chips!

Since the first game starts around lunch our time, we usually make nachos!  Nothing fancy, just brown up some ground beef, lots of cheese, some salsa, corn chips and layer them all together, toss it in the oven to melt the cheese and you are good to go.

About halfway through the second game tummies start to get a little rumbley again so it’s time to head back to the kitchen.  One of my favourite game day recipes is garbage bread.  It’s basically a Stromboli that isn’t folded as neatly, and man are they good!  I use this recipe and it is super-easy to customize so let your imagination run wild!  The Buffalo chicken in the original is really good but you cannot go wrong with any of the standard (or even more inventive) pizza combinations.  Canadian pizza (mozzarella, pepperoni, bacon and mushrooms) is one of our favourites but I don’t think we’ve ever made a “bad” one.  Go wild!  And if you come up with something you think is amazing let me know!

It also keeps fairly well for the next day if you wrap up the cut end, so don’t feel that you have to eat the whole thing!  😉

Near the end of the third game we start wanting something a little sweet.  If I didn’t serve the fruit tray earlier, I’d bring it out now, maybe with a yogurt dip, or chocolate sauce.  A plate of cookies or something else small that can be made up ahead of time is usually a good bet.

What are some of your favourite game day dishes?

Comfort foods

With the fall weather, there has been some definite nesting going on over here.  And food-wise that means a lot of soups or stews, bread or biscuit and peanut butter cookies.

We don’t have an actual recipe we follow for our soups, just a general idea.  Depending on what we have on hand, we either put in a beef soup bone or a package of stew beef, beef broth if we have a box open, a couple of cans of vegetables, (usually mushrooms and until we use them up, corn — we accidentally bought a second case from Costco before we used up the first one!  Oops!  Good thing we like corn!) if we have some we toss in a few potatoes and fresh carrots and then whatever is in the fridge that sounds like it might be good in the mix we have going on.  It is never the same twice but always good.  Oh, and the main difference between my soup and stew — how thick it ends up being.  On the very rare occasion I’ll add a thickener like corn starch but I usually don’t worry too much either way.  Throw it all in a crock pot on low for an afternoon and ta-dah!

For bread and biscuits we have two main recipes we like.  This potato bread is great because the amount of potato is flexible, an important consideration in our house.  My all time favourite biscuit recipe is this (NSFW language) one I found on Pinterest.  It makes cheddar biscuits like at Red Lobster and they disappear so fast!  Just thinking about them makes me want to make up a batch… maybe later this afternoon….

Anyway, I have never met a peanut butter cookie that I don’t love.  Kraft has a fairly standard recipe that I use most of the time.  It’s adaptable so if you want chocolate chips or such, you can toss them in,  if you’re feeling particularly ambitious I can highly recommend tossing in about half a cup or so of chocolate chips and another half a cup or so of mini marshmallows for a s’mores cookie.

What are some of your favourite fall cozy recipes?