'Tis the season... for football, that is!

I don’t know what your house is like on Sundays, but at my house, during the season, football is on the tv from the time I get up, until the time I go to bed.  Preshow talk, post show talk, fantasy football talk, oh yeah, and the games themselves.  Hubby’s slightly obsessed.  Especially when he’s winning in his fantasy football league.  When I say obsessed, I don’t mean he dances around in the snow in the stands wearing nothing but shorts and paint for the camera, and therefore the rest of the world, to see.  He does, however, scare the bejesus out of me and Otto when there’s a touchdown or a fumble and he jumps out of his chair and yells at the top of his lungs.  Personally, I’d rather cook than watch football, so why not make hubby something to munch on while watching the game.  This snack mix is perfect.  It’s tasty, and it vacuums up easily in case of touchdown or fumble or some other exciting event. 

Here’s what you need:

6 cups Crispix cereal
1 cup shredded oats cereal
1 cup mini crackers
1 cup plain pretzels
1 cup sesame sticks
1 cup honey mustard & onion pretzels
1 cup baked cheese crunchies
1 cup cheese and garlic croutons
4 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon season salt
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon black pepper

Whew!  That’s a lot of ingredients.  Now, these are just the things I used.  Feel free to substitute whatever you want, really.  Just try to keep the proportions the same.  I don’t like my snack mix to all taste the same, so I like to combine plain things that I’ll be seasoning with things that are flavored.  Keeps the tongue from getting bored while munching.  Ahem… not Seeley, not going there.  You’ll just need one specialized tool for this project. 

No, this is not an advertisement for Whole Foods.  You need a paper bag.  It makes for easy coating and easy cleanup.  So, in goes the crispix.

Next the pretzels.  They’re a little stubborn about cooperating in the measuring cup, so I just mounded them up. 

In they go.

Next come the sesame sticks.

Then the baby crackers.

And last but not least, the shredded oats cereal. 

Yes!  I finally got an action shot!  Seeley and I do a little dance when we get a cool picture like that that actually turns out.  Well, I do anyway.  I can't really speak for how much dancing goes on in Seeley's kitchen.  Ok, so everything’s in the bag now. 

 

Next, melt the butter over low heat.  Pour in the Worcestershire sauce and stir until they’re well combined. 

Sprinkle on the spices.  I didn’t actually measure the black pepper.  I like lots of it, so I just ground it in until my hand got tired.

Stir those in, then drizzle the mixture over the stuff in the bag. 

Fold the top closed and shake shake shake until everything is evenly, well mostly evenly, coated. 

Pour the whole mixture onto a sheet pan, or a big roasting pan would work well too. 

Um… I seem to have forgotten to mention preheating your oven.  You’d think we plan that, we do it so often.  Nope, we’re just that scatter brained.  Somewhere back a few steps, preheat your oven to 250°.  That way, you can now slide your snack mix into a preheated oven.  Bake it for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes.  Pull it out and allow it to cool completely.  I like to just sprinkle the rest of the ingredients over the top. 

That way, when you pour it into a big bowl, everything mixes together.

Serve in a big bowl… actually, on second thought, individual servings are much easier to clean up when scattered across the floor.  If it’s a small enough amount, you can even just let the dog take care of it.  Lord knows you’re not going to beat him to it anyway. 

What are your favorite game day snacks?   

Get Stuffed

They really are easy. There is absolutely nothing difficult about making stuffed shells.

For some reason, stuffed things are considered impressive. People find it amazing that you can put one thing inside another. This is a basic skill we learn as toddlers, people. You mastered this when you were 2. And so with this post I set out to prove to people that they really can put one thing inside another. There is absolutely nothing fancy about this dish. The ingredients are basic, as few as I could get away with, and the assembly takes little more skill than most kids have. Just don't burn yourself on the stove.

Stuffed Shells

What you need:

(as usual, I made as little as possible, but this is easily doubled)

• 1/2 box of large shell pasta
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 c fresh basil
• 1 large bunch (or bag if your grocery is out of bunches) of spinach
• 1 c ricotta cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 large tin of tomato sauce (this is the unseasoned kind, really just finely crushed tomatos, so yes, you could use a tin of crushed instead)
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1-1/2 c mozzarella cheese

What you gotta do:

Start a big pot of water boiling.

Dice the onion and mince the garlic.

Lay a bunch of basil leaves on top of each other, roll them up, and slice the roll. This is called "chiffonade" ing the basil.

I've done it before with spinach, and Taneasha showed you basil in her salad post. You should be a pro at this by now.

Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large pan. Sautee half of the onion and half of the garlic and half of the basil in the oil until the onion is starting to look soft.

Dump in your spinach.

Cover it for a bit to get the bottom layer wilted, then do your best to flip the not-wilty leaves down to the bottom.

Eventually, it will all be wilty and you can put it into a bowl.

Your water should be boiling by now. Add shells to it; 18 or 20 should do. Stir them every couple minutes so they don't get stuck to the bottom, or to each other.

Heat the other tbsp of olive oil in the pan you just dumped the spinach out of. Add the other half of the onion and garlic, and sautee them for a few minutes before pouring in your tomato stuff (sauce or crushed).

Oh yeah, salt and pepper. I always seem to forget to mention them in the ingredients and the steps. Add a bit of salt and pepper.

Add the balsamic vinegar,

and then the other half of the basil.

Give that a good stir and turn the heat down as low as you can while still letting it simmer gently.

Now, back to the spinach.

Add the ricotta and the eggs to the bowl that has the spinach in it and mix it well.

Are your shells done? Good. Stir the sauce one more time, then drain the pasta. You're going to need to rinse the shells with cold water a few times so you can handle them.

Now, I'm making dinner for tonight and for next week, so I'm using 2 pans, but if you're planning on feeding more than 1 or 2 people at once, you might want to opt for one large pan. Cover the bottom with a bit of oil, then spoon in a bit of sauce.

Now for the easy part. Yes, I know, it's been horribly gruelling up to this point. Confusing, hard to follow, advanced techniques, and bizarre ingredients we've never seen before in our lives.

Okay, so back to being toddlers. Hold a shell in one hand, and with your other, spoon some of the spinach-ricotta mixture into the shell. Okay, wait, you might have missed that: one hand has a shell, the other hand has a spoon. Spoon stuff into the shell. Concentrate. You can do it. I know you can.

Yay!

Okay, one down, 19 to go....

It's not the tidiest process, no, but the finished product hides a lot of the mess.

Once you've got a pan full of stuffed shells, cover them with more sauce, then layer on your cheese.

You can grate yours if you'd like, but I find it easier to locate indivudual shells if they've each got a nice little strip of mozza on top of them.

Bake them at 350 (totally preheated your oven, I know you did) for about 20 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is nice and melty.

If you split yours into two pans, cover the other one with foil and freeze it. Take it out of the freezer in the morning and let it thaw in the fridge while you go about your day. That one will need more like 30 minutes to get hot and bubbly since it's starting at fridge temp.

Now, these things look lovely in the pan, but plating them...

Not the prettiest presentation ever, but they taste damn good, they require a minimal number of easily acquired ingredients, and you can make the filling and the sauce in the time it takes to boil pasta.

And they come off as very impressive merely because you managed to fit one thing inside of another.

Add a bit of nice bread, a tumbler of wine, and someone wonderful to share it with, and you've got a fancy schmancy dinner.

What do you like to stuff?