Super Bowl Sunday

This was only my second year to actually go to a big Super Bowl party...big is a relative term as there were only 8 people there but it's more than just me and my college roommate eating pizza on the floor of our dorm room. Anyway, last year was a big hit, I made homemade chili cheese fries. I took potatoes and sliced them in half and then quarters then coated them with Canola cooking spray and shook seasoned salt over them and baked them in the oven. When they came out of the oven I dumped them into a bowl and poured cheese sauce over them and then dumped homemade chili on top. They were SO good! I also decided to do a little decorating for the party...even though it wasn't my party. Let's call it helping out a friend while buffing up my Event Planning resume.

For decor I went with a table runner that I saw on the Hostess with the Mostess Blog. Their version is made from green felt, white ribbon and stick on varsity numbers. Well, I looked all over Michael's and could not for the life of me find the stick on varsity numbers in the right size or even quantities and all the iron on numbers were HUGE! So that just wasn't going to work. I toyed with the idea of buying white felt and cutting the numbers out myself but I caved when Linda suggested I just buy puffy paint and write them on. I bought the green felt, a spool of white ribbon, white shimmery puffy paint and fabric glue. I think the felt was 36x36" so I cut it in half and then sewed it together on the ends to make it long enough, which worked out great because I used the seam as my 50 yard line :-) and then I measured it out evenly on each half and glued the ribbons down. Then I used my puffy paint to draw in my numbers. If you're going to do this project and you have a bit more time than I had, use a sewing machine to sew on the ribbon or get a thicker ribbon because I used a shiny thin ribbon and the glue shows through even after it dried. Here's what half of it looked like before I did the other side and trimmed the ribbons. The finished product was pretty cool but it could have been better.

On the food side of things...I decided to go with fried foods. Emily and Todd (the hosts of this shindig) got a deep fryer as a wedding present so I was prepared to use that thing up! I saw a recipe, while reading LimeCake one of my blogs I subscribe to, for Avocado Fries. They looked amazing and so I wanted to try them out on my friends. I also decided I wanted to try and make Fried Cheese, I figured this was a fairly simple process and would be very similar to that of the Avocado Fries. So I went to Sam's Club and bought a big bag of Avocados, a block of Havarti cheese, a container of Italian Marinated Mozzarella cheese, and eggs. Then I grabbed two kinds of bread crumbs, Panko for the fries and Italian bread crumbs for the cheeses. When I got to Emily and Todd's I set up a little assembly line of shallow bowls with flour, eggs, and then the bread crumbs. We started with the Avocado Fries, followed the directions on LimeCake's Blog and cooked them in the hot oil for 60 seconds before sprinkling them with sea salt and lemon. They were DELICIOUS! I highly recommend this recipe to anyone that likes Avocado.

Then using the same assembly line we did the cheese and added Italian bread crumbs to what was left of the Panko. I cut up the Havarti into big chunks at first but we soon saw the cheese wasn't melting before the crumbs turned brown so I started cutting them a bit smaller and it was perfect. I also used the Mozzarella balls dipped in the same concoction and all the melty cheesy goodness was perfection! There are about a bazillion recipes for fried cheese online but if you want something plain and simple follow this:

Fried Cheese:
Cheese (whichever kind you want! Experiment with new cheeses, its way fun and tasty)
Flour
Eggs
Bread Crumbs

In separate shallow bowls put flour, eggs (enough to coat all your cheese- I used about 3 eggs), and bread crumbs.
Take your cheese and cut it, if it isn't already, in bite sized pieces.
Coat the cheese first in flour, then in egg (make sure it's good and covered), and finally in bread crumbs. You may want to double dip your cheese...I may try this next time. But either way make sure you can't see any cheese through your bread crumbs or it will melt out into your deep fryer.
Last, line your cheese up in your deep fryer trying not to overlap. Cook for about 60 seconds at 375-385 degrees. Set on a plate lined with paper towels to dry and then serve while still hot.

They look a bit like popcorn chicken but they taste just like ooey gooey deep fried cheese. It was dilectable. I love the Havarti cheese so much more than the Mozzarella, it has such a full and creamy taste to it and I just think Mozzarella is bland. No matter how many ways I try to eat it I can't love Mozzarella. So we also had Tyson's Anytizers in two different flavors, a bevy of chips and some cheese salsa, as well as two kinds of meaty pizza. It was a Super Bowl meal to die for. And let me tell ya...indigestion hell! So worth it though!

PS- I apologize that my pictures aren't better, I forgot to put my batteries back into my camera after charging them so these were taken with my cell phone. Also, the awesome plates and napkins were from Aldi and I bet they were way cheaper than what anywhere else was selling them for ;-)