In honor of the victorious New York Giants, we're featuring the image of a cupcake devoted to them. This image comes to us from Clever Cupcakes, a Flickr user and baker out of Montreal. These puppies are chocolate cake with a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup in the center. They are topped with Vanilla Buttercream grass and a fondant logo. Tasty and sporty!
We post feature an image in this space very weekday (and occasionally on the weekends as well). If you'd like to see your picture here, join us over on Flickr and add your photos to the Slashfood pool.
Today is the final day in our Super Bowl Week series. So far, we've featured dips and appetizers, main dishes, healthy snacks and sweet treats. Today, we're going with a twist on the idea and focusing on foods you eat out of a bowl in honor of Sunday's big game. In order to find an appropriate picture to feature today, I went searching around our Flickr group (you should wander on over and join the group) looking for things that talked about bowls. And I think I found something of a winner with this image.
Taken by Loua, this gorgeous bowl of potato salad begs to be spooned out into smaller bowls and devoured. I tend to think of potato salad as a summer dish, but the necessary ingredients are available all year round and would make a really tasty addition to your Super Bowl buffet (especially if you add some torn basil leaves like Loua did).
Growing up in Portland, OR, there wasn't much in the way of street food available around the city. Sure, there were a select few carts located directly around the big downtown office buildings, but they had very limited hours and were spottily placed. One of the things I looked forward to experiencing each summer, during our annual trip to Philadelphia to visit family, was the all the food carts on the street. They scented the air, lending the aroma of hot dogs, pickle relish and frying beef to the air in their direct proximity.
I'm currently in New York right now, attending a conference and hanging out a bit with some family. When I was getting ready to leave her house this morning, my cousin Betsy asked me where I was going. When I gave her the address, she seemed to shuffle through an index file stored in the back of her brain. Then she said, "There's a terrific Halal food cart on 53rd Street, right off 6th Avenue, with great, cheap food." I was a little boggled at her ability to pinpoint a food cart in a city the size of New York, but as she's lived here for the last 30+ years, I believed that she knew of what she spoke.
Today is our day for sweet Super Bowl treats and there's nothing like a cupcake for it's finger-friendly, eyes-elsewhere eating. I first came across The Artful Cupcake by Marcianne Miller more than two years ago, when some friends and I were preparing to make 200 cupcakes for a friend's wedding. We turned to this book for decorating tips and tricks, and managed to pull together some really gorgeous desserts for her big day.
While the Super Bowl isn't a wedding, and you don't need to get quite as fancy for desserts that are going to be eaten in front of the television, it might be fun to trick out your classic cupcake with some nice topping or unusual frosting. If that's your game, then this book is a fun resource to have on hand to that end. The images are beautiful and there are 36 inspiring projects from which to choose.
In the last few days, we've talked about chicken wings and chili, queso and pizzas. However, our food choices have mostly been directed by our own personal likes and dislikes. Over at Ask.com, they've taken a more scientific approach towards Super Bowl food, tallying their search results in order to create a list of the Ten Most Popular Super Bowl Snacks. According to their study, here are most popular foods.
Chili
Pizza
Meatballs
Salsa
Ribs
Spinach dip
Wings
Guacamole
Quesadillas
Artichoke dip
Of these foods, what are you planning on serving at your Super Bowl party? (Personally, I'll take any excuse to eat guacamole, which is why I picked Slashfood Flickr pool member You Can Count on Me's picture of it to illustrate this post).
By the time you read this post today, I'll be on a train bound for New York City. While this is not strictly an eating trip (although I am looking forward to getting some New York pizza) while I'm in New York (during a break from this conference), there's one stop I have to make. I have to go to the William Greenberg, Jr. Desserts. You see, they make some of the world's best Black and White Cookies. I happen to have a boyfriend who went to high school in Manhattan and craves, lusts, longs for these cookies.
There's no bakery in the New England area that engenders such raw food emotions as these cookies stir up in Scott. My dad lived in Boston while he was going to high school, and while he remembers some good eating, there's nothing that generates such passion. This is why New York food so obviously trumps that stuff available in New England!
Some of you might look at the title and that pictures and think to yourself, "Marisa, what are you doing featuring an image of a nacho on healthy snacks day? They aren't healthy!" However, in the spectrum of nachos, these are far more healthy (and delicious) than the ones (those gloopy, soggy piles of chips under fake, processed cheese) that often appear on our Super Bowl snack table. As an added bonus, the Homesick Texan has written a blog post about all about these classic nachos made with nothing but good chips, Longhorn cheddar cheese and jalapeno slices.
And, as always, if you think you might just like to see one of your own images here on Slashfood, head over to our Flickr group, join up and start adding your pictures.
Today is the day that we're feature main dish foods appropriate for the Super Bowl and so it seems like a good time to look at some of the star foods that come out of New York and explain why they are so vastly superior to those items on offer in the New England area.
Our star representative is New York pizza. It is so very much better than anything available in New England (or really in the rest of the country, but that's another post). One might even say that New York pizza is the Platonic Ideal of pizza. Growing up in Portland, OR we had a pizza place called "Escape from New York Pizza." There was no pizza trying to escape from Boston. Additionally, the premiere pizza site in the blogosphere, the beloved Slice, comes out of New York. Need we say more?
I'm going to turn it over to you, our thoughtful and opinionated Slashfood readers. What are your favorite New York foods?
For some reason, Super Bowl foods tend to be pretty meat-centric. When I think game day foods, I think chili (with ground turkey or beef), burgers, steaks or Italian hoagies (also known as subs/grinders/heros/po'boy in other parts of the country) stacked high with salami. But there are lots of other things that make good, warming, stick to your ribs game food (important if you plan on playing a half-time game of touch football).
Recently I made a pot of Broccoli and Cheddar Soup, which would make a great Super Bowl offering. It uses a full half pound of cheddar (the sharper the better) so your carnivores will feel satisfied, but also incorporates several large heads of broccoli, making it feel slightly healthy. It can also be made the day before and reheated, which is always a nice feature when you're cooking for a crowd.
You're in final stages of planning out your Super Bowl buffet. You know you want the big slow cooker of chili (perhaps in a football shaped slow cooker?) as well as some Crostini (for the fancier folks). However, there are still a few holes in your plan. What about featuring a recipe from one of your favorite players? Over at Epicurious they've rounded up 22 recipes from current and past NFL-ers. It's being done in conjunction with a fundraiser, Taste of the NFL, that will take place in Phoenix the day before the big game and will benefit America's Second Harvest.
The full title for the Cookbook of the Day is The Tailgating Cookbook: Recipes for the Big Game. And really, there is no bigger game than the Super Bowl, so it seemed like an appropriate book to feature today. We're talking about main meals today, and this book delivers on that front, offering up lots of recipes for chilis, stews, burgers, brats and much, much more. They all work just as well in your home kitchen as they would on a grill perched on the back of your car.
The nice thing about this book is that in addition to the recipes, it offers tips on how to throw a good party, which can be a lifesaver if you're not sure how much ice/cups/paper plates to buy or what might be a good side dish for a large platter of brats (although, in my opinion, when you have brats, you need nothing else).
If you want another Super Bowl cooking resource (beyond all the helpful advice we're offering up this week), check out the cookbook that Nicole featured last year for game day, The Last Hurrah: the Ultimate Super Bowl Party Planner.
Chili is the consummate Super Bowl food. Hearty, meaty and spicy, it can be served in the same slow cooker you cooked it in (or you can cook it in another pot and keep it warm in a slow cooker for easy serving). Today's Food Porn Daily is a fantastic picture of chili in a shiny-handled pot by Sophiemostly. Lucky for us, Sophie includes a link to the recipe which she posted on her blog.
If you'd like to see your picture featured here, head over to the Slashfood group on Flickr and join us. Thanks to all of you have joined lately and have added your gorgeous images!
Looking for a quick and easy dip to serve your guests for the big game? Here's one of my favorites. It has been part of my family's food tradition since my mom first tasted it at a potluck in the early seventies. It's an easy dip to throw together, consisting of 1 cup of sour cream, 1/2 cup mayonnaise, 2 cloves crushed garlic and 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of curry powder. Add salt and pepper to taste and refrigerate for an hour or two before serving. The great part about this dip is that it tastes good with cut veggies, pita chips or sliced apples.
I have a horrible confession, Slashfood friends. One of the reasons I love the Super Bowl and other tailgate-type parties is that it gives me an excuse to make and eat all those foods that I'd never serve at any other type of party because they're not very, well, "foodie." I'm talking about things like Flamin' Hot Cheetos, national chain delivery pizza, and...
Spinach Dip.
I'm not talking about your little glazed earthenware crockpot filled with a homemade blend of cheese, artichokes, and spinach. Neither am I even going with a store-bought version of the same thing that I would at least pretend to cook by heating up and serving to guests hot. I am talking about that Spinach Dip made from frozen chopped spinach, sour cream, mayonnaise, and a package of dried vegetable soup mix that you have to make the night before so the freeze-dried vegetables have time to revive. The stuff is not only horrible for you (unless you make it healthy with lowfat sour cream and mayo!), but good grief, it's made from dried vegetable soup.
And yes, I always serve it in a hollowed out round of bread that I buy at the store, too.
Since it's the dips and appetizers day of our Super Bowl Week, I thought it would be fitting to feature a cookbook chock full of recipes for appetizers. I headed to my cookbook stash, knowing that I had at least one appetizer cookbook in my stacks. What I came up with is the little book yousee pictured here, A Book of Appetizers. Printed in 1958, this perfectly square volume was written by Helen Evans Brown (she wrote several cookbooks with James Beard).
It contains 145 recipes for appetizers and each is paired with a drink suggestion. Some of the recipes are kitschy and dated, while others are appealingly current. After the jump I've included recipe #144, Spicy Stuffed Onion Rings, which would make a great Super Bowl nibble (although they might unnecessarily tether you to the stove). She pairs these rings with a Columbian Cooler, which is a blend of Jamaican rum and Creme de Menthe. Personally, I think a good lager might be a better pairing.
Since it's the dips and appetizers day of our Super Bowl Week, I thought it would be fitting to feature a cookbook chock full of recipes for appetizers. I headed to my cookbook stash, knowing that I had at least one appetizer cookbook in my stacks. What I came up with is the little book yousee pictured here, 
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