In case you haven’t noticed, it’s that time of year again!

Time for creative commercials, face-painted fans and superstar half-time entertainment… and oh yeah, a championship game – SUPER BOWL XVLI! And if you’re planning a get together for the big game, I have a couple of ideas to make the party more interesting….

CREATIVE FOOD

Why not “streeeeeetch” out the your burger patties (when making them) to create a football shape. Also, cut long & short, thin slices of (thick-cut) pepper jack cheese and have them ready to pop on top of your burger near the end of the grilling process. The upside – it will save a few calories (using less cheese), create the look of a football and a highly-flavored cheese has more punch, so less will be more, in this case. Consider some raw almonds as one of the side dishes… they’re football shaped and healthy! Also, instead of lettuce to top off the burger, offer your guests leaf spinach. It will be healthier and also put the grid-IRON on your burger ( get it? lol).

ADD YOUR OWN COMPETITION

click to enlarge

Finally, why not throw a little healthy competition into the party mix? If you don’t already own them, head to the store because many of them (esp. party stores) already have Easter decorations out, so you’ll probably have no problem finding “football-shaped” plastic eggs. They’re inexpensive ($2 for a bag of them), so they’d be the perfect storage container for your guests to place their game winning score prediction. To make it easy, set out 2 separate bowls and label one for the Patriots and one for the Giants. Set these out with some slips of paper and a pen at the beginning or end of the food table so each of your guests can write down their name and what they predict to be the winner’s score. Instruct them to then, place their prediction in a football egg, close it and drop it in the bowl of who they predict to be the winner. Finally, have them also (anonymously) write down their “score” prediction on a nearby pad of paper (under their winning team’s name) for everyone to see, so there are no duplicate predictions for either team. At the end of the game, open the eggs in the winning team’s bowl to determine who came the closest to their final score, without going over, and have a prize (restaurant gift certificate would be perfect!) for the winner.

Good luck to both the New England Patriots and New York Giants; it looks to be a great game! [kickoff is Sunday, February 5, 2012 @ 6:30 p.m. on NBC]

And while you’re here, don’t forget to check out my other easy, YUMMY recipes under the RECIPES tab, located in the top tool bar of this page.