Football Snackadium

Soooo...I hear that NFL Playoffs are winding down and the Super Bowl is coming up in a couple weeks thus I felt it appropriate to share this "recipe" for the Football Snackadium.  After all, I did promise that I would earlier this week when I shared the Blooming Onion recipe.

Honestly, since the Bengals sucked this year I didn't follow football AT ALL this season (not that I ever really follow it any season...).  But, in the spirit of tailgating I hosted our Dinner Club in September by having a Tailgating theme.  I served this and Who Loves Ya Baby Back? ribs.

Normally when someone makes a Snackadium it comes in EPIC proportions and is designed to feed a huge crowd.  It gained popularity when it was posted to This is Why You're Fat because they're so big and full of unhealthy snack foods.  Since there were only 10 of us and I knew there would be plenty of delicious food I scaled mine down so the whole thing (including chips) fit inside of a 2 1/2 quart oval casserole dish.  A mini-snackadium.  Tres cute!  If you want to scale yours up, suggest you use Sara's Piggly-Wiggly Blog for guidance.

You can make your Snackadium easy by buying pre-made dips and just setting up the stadium or you can go all out and make your dips from scratch.  I went healthier with mine and used hummus instead of the traditional queso dip and served with baby carrots and celery in addition to chips.  Oh and if you're *really* trying to impress (and give your guests a cardiac arrest) you'd create a barricade out of food too but like I said, I went easy and small scale so a casserole dish served as my arena.  The recipe which I'll list below is pretty loose.  Go ahead and just have fun with this one.

Who are you rooting for and who do you think is going to be this year's Super Bowl champ?

One Year Ago: Basic Pizza Dough 

Football Snackadium

Ingredients

• 3 Types of dip - salsa, gaucamole, queso, ranch, hummus, spinach dip, etc.
• Sour cream (optional - for field lines)
• 2 Slim Jims
• Assortment of chips and/or veggies - tortilla chips, fritos, pita chips, cheetos, doritos, pretzels, baby carrots, celery slices, etc.
• To go all out: Rice crispy treats, pigs in a blanket, cocktail weiners

Additional Supplies

• Toothpicks
• Rectangular container (9 x 13 baking pan for large scale; Small tupperware container that nests within casserole dish for mini) 
• Oval casserole dish (optional)
• Foil (if you're picky and don't like your dips to mix...personally my dips were thick enough in texture and small enough in quantity that I thought this was unnecessary)

Directions

1. If creating a mini-snackadium, put rectangular pan into the center of your casserole dish.  In your rectangular pan, if desired, create foil dividers to create 2 end-zones and a center field area.  Fill each of the three zones with a different type of dip (suggest something green like guacamole or spinach dip for center field).   
2. Cut Slim Jim into 4 pieces.  Use toothpicks to secure them in the shape of a field goal.  Stick it into the end-zone (if you have trouble getting it to stand, use a toothpick to connect the supporting post to a block of cheese).  Repeat this process for the other field goal.  If desired, pipe sour cream lines onto the field.  Place mini-cocktail weiners on the field to represent the "players".
3. Fill casserole dish with "fans" (ie: your assortment of chips and veggies).  
4. Serve and watch the fans go wild!

Source: Inspiration from The Piggly-Wiggly