Football Tailgate Party {Nebraska Huskers Style, of course!}

We had a super fun tail­gate party yes­ter­day (with an epic nail-biter, come from behind win) and I just could wait until the next Sat­ur­day to share! It’s no secret that we LOVE col­lege foot­ball and are die-hard Nebraska Corn­husker fans! Between my fam­ily being huge fans too, good friends of ours from col­lege that live here now, and the rest of the HUGE con­tin­gency of Huskers fans in Ari­zona, there is no lack of Nebraska foot­ball fun to be had. And, yes­ter­day was no dif­fer­ent. We had a fairly big game (play­ing Michi­gan State at their place) and thought it would be a great day for a fun fam­ily tail­gate party! So, we came up with a good foot­ball menu, gath­ered up lots of red & white, and headed over to my parent’s house (since we don’t have cable). To get our tail­gat­ing (ok, really, “home­gat­ing”) sup­plies, I headed to Smart & Final (you can see that shop­ping trip on Google+, here). It’s great for hav­ing a choice of large “bulk” items and more stan­dard serv­ing items, plus party sup­plies. We ended up with some honey BBQ wings, ingre­di­ents for home­made Huskers piz­zas & foot­ball 7-layer dip, and even some Big Red soda! How per­fect!

For our set-up, I hung a large black table cover as a back­drop behind the table (a super inex­pen­sive way to go at less than $2!), attached red & white stream­ers, and put down red & white table­cloths. Super easy! We had a Nebraska box filled with pom-poms, the Nebraska sub­way art print­a­bles I made, roses that my par­ents found at a steal (in honor of hop­ing that Nebraska wins the rest of its games & heads to the Rose Bowl), and some cute lit­tle upcy­cled Nebraska-football uten­sil hold­ers. For the menu, we kept it fairly sim­ple, but still fun: Toma­toes & black olives with ranch dip (a Nebraska veg­gie tray would have been another great alter­na­tive), chili cheese dip, honey BBQ chicken wings, home­made Husker piz­zas, and foot­ball 7-layer dip.

The lit­tle piz­zas were easy to make and per­fect for being able to make them “Huskers” style. If you’ve never made eng­lish muf­fin piz­zas, they are great! Inex­pen­sive & super cus­tomiz­able! You just open the muffins & lightly toast. Then, add your favorite pizza sauce (we used Smart & Final’s La Romanella) & top with moz­zarella cheese plus your favorite top­pings. We stuck with Nebraska col­ors, using just pep­per­o­nis and black olives. I cut a hand­ful of pep­per­o­nis into strips and used those to make Nebraska “N’s” and spell out Huskers. Once all the top­pings were on, we just popped them in oven (while the wings cooked) until the cheese was melted & bubbly.

The foot­ball field 7-layer dip (recipe com­ing soon) was great fun (and yummy) too! My mom actu­ally found some old foot­ball cake dec­o­rat­ing sup­plies that were my grandma’s. The copy­right date on the bot­tom was 1974! Ha! Fun, huh?! It was a great spread! Can’t go wrong with super tasty stuff that’s rel­a­tively easy to prep! We even had foot­ball brown­ies for dessert! Then, the after­noon was pretty much spent eat­ing and watch­ing foot­ball. We have some really cute lit­tle Husker fans here!   There was also a good amount of time spent nail-biting & get­ting gray hairs. Do you see that score at the start of 4th quar­ter?! Well, we kept com­ing back & then, with 6 sec­onds left, scored the game win­ning touch­down!!!  The crowd at our house went wild!!! Seri­ously, it was totally insane! Def­i­nitely a great way to spend a Saturday–family time, fun food, and a Nebraska win!

Did YOUR favorite team win yesterday

To learn more about La Romanella prod­ucts or Smart & Final #Choos­eS­mart, check out the Social Cir­cular or fol­low along on face­book and twit­ter.

Dis­clo­sure: I am a mem­ber of the Col­lec­tive Bias™ Social Fab­ric® Com­mu­nity.  This shop has been com­pen­sated as part of a social shop­per insights study for Col­lec­tive Bias™ and Smart & Final #CBias #Social­Fab­ric #Choos­eS­mart. As always, all opin­ions, expe­ri­ences, pho­tographs, and love of Nebraska foot­ball are entirely my own.