Super Bowl Food!

Our Super Bowl Feast!

As a way to celebrate our new apartment, Matt and I had some friends over to watch the Super Bowl last weekend.  My team (Green Bay Packers!) was unfortunately not playing, but I spent most of the day cleaning and - most importantly - cooking!
When I think of the Super Bowl, I think of snacks.  No one wants to sit down to a full meal when they're busy rooting for their team - or watching the way too expensive commercials.  (My favorite this year was for Volkswagon... the one with the dog that had to lose some weight!)  So, I decided to make one of my all time favorite snack foods - my dad's chili dip!

Let me tell you, the chili was a hit.  Everyone loved it, and came back for seconds and thirds!  It's really nothing too special, just your basic chili - only chunked up a bit.  Instead of throwing in diced tomatoes and onions and peppers, the recipe called for 2 cups of chunky salsa, and it uses black beans instead of chili beans.  But other than that, it's just plain ol' chili!  Throw everything into the Crock Pot for a couple hours and BAM - best chili ever.  I served it with some plain tortilla chips, but I think it would also go really great with Ritz style crackers.  Some of our friends brought over some other things to munch on, and we ended up with a game-day feast fit for any football fan!  We had a meat/cheese tray with crackers, cheese flavored little smokies, the chili dip, and some cookies and milk for dessert!  It was a great night, and everyone was full at the end of the night!

Garlic Parmesan Crusted Chicken

Almost every time I'm watching a show on HuluPlus (greatest thing ever invented by the internet) I seem to see the same commercial over and over again, and it was making me hungry.  The commercial is for Hellmann's mayonnaise, but the commercial shows some really juicy looking breaded chicken.  So, I looked up the recipe on the Hellmann's website, made some tiny adjustments, and ended up with the most delicious chicken I have ever had from home.  True to the commercial, the chicken stayed very moist, and the flavor was strong, yet not overpowering, as some garlic chicken can be.  To go with the Italian flavor of the chicken, I served it with my number one side dish, slices of garlic texas toast.

I followed the recipe almost exactly.  The only adjustment I made was to substitute the bread crumbs that the recipe calls for.  Instead, I got some garlic butter flavored croutons and crushed them in a bag and used that as the breading.  The little kick of garlic gave it the Italian flavor that it needed without being too much.  This recipe is going to be one I will use a lot, and the bread crumbs can be substituted with many other things to make it a very versatile dish.  Try it with a different flavor of croutons (ranch maybe), crushed french fried onions, or even mix in some bacon bits with the crumbs!  The possibilities with this are endless, and you can change it to match exactly what taste you are going for!