Super Bowl XLIII Party

Tonight marked our 4th annual Super Bowl party. We tried some new ideas this year, a make-your-own quesadilla bar and football shaped rice crispy bars; this in addition to the old-standbys of meatballs, little smokies, veggie tray and spinach artichoke dip.

We prepared a bunch of ingredients for quesadillas and placed them in labeled containers on the bar.

Rich also made an awesome sign to go with the quesadillas filled with recipe ideas and a small shout-out to Napoleon Dynamite.

Rich and I ended up making all of the quesadillas. I had thought people would get into making their concoctions, but I suppose it was easier to have them made for you. Plus - that way people only ate one section and got to try a number of varieties. All in all, the quesadillas were tasty! My fave was the buffalo wing-dilla. (I made two.)

The football crispy bars were new this year, too. They were basically standard rice crispy bars, made with CoCo Puffs, in the shape of footballs with white chocolate laces. I used a 1/2 c. measuring cup to pack the mixture and then formed them into footballs. The laces really made them, though. These may make a repeat appearance at tailgate parties to come.

We ended up with a bunch of extra quesadilla supplies and a 9x9 pan of spinach artichoke dip. Suprisingly, the veggie tray went the fastest of everything and even needed to be refilled.

We also walked away with some lessons learned for our next Super Bowl party:

1. Don't suggest people bring things to share. This really puts a kink in the planning process. It was SUPER nice of everyone to bring something, but now we are left with lots of extra quesadilla supplies. Next time, if you want to suggest people bring something to share - emphasize a drink.
2. Make an earlier start time. This will allow people to arrive casually but before the game (commercial) begins.
3. As Rich said - the make-your-own quesadillas idea was a good one, just poorly executed. It was too hard to have people make their own food, when prepared food was ready and waiting. If we were to do this again, the quesadillas would need to be the main event.
4. If possible, have a bigger space to entertain. This fits nicely in our plan - but it sure would be nice to make it a reality.

All in all - it was a fun party with good friends. Here's a photo of the crew just before the 3D portion of the half-time show.

And because I wasn't in that one - here's one of me and Rich. :)