We have a plan for this Sunday.
We are going to come home from yet another travel weekend, put on comfy clothes, clean exactly enough so that we can function on Monday, make some cozy food, and watch the sportsball while ignoring each other on our phones and willing Will to sleep.
It's going to be the greatest ever.
......because otherwise tbh football is a waste of damn time. 
So! Let's make a party on Sunday. I love a theme sometimes, like tacos, pasta, or chili with a ton of toppings, but I also love making a few really good snacky foods that don't necessarily go together. Buffalo anything shows up often, and here are a few other ideas for Sunday!
...
Homemade ranch dip in just 5 minutes! This version has lots of yummy dill flavor and uses dried spices - no chopping or messing up a ton of dishes! This ranch dip recipe is particularly delicious with homemade pan fried potato chips or baked chicken tenders.
Unlike some people who love eating a wide variety of foods, I adore ranch. BUT, it has to be good. Hidden Valley is not good. Homemade bar ranch from a packet is good. Those packets are also Hidden Valley, so riddle me that. I think it's something about the combo of less preservatives, less or no mayo, that makes "homemade" ranch so wonderful.
I've seen a ton of no-packet homemade ranch ideas on the internet, and a lot of them call with powdered milk or something similar to achieve a more classic flavor. I don't love having ingredients around that only can be used for one or two things, though, so I don't use anything but spices and sour cream in my ranch.
...I'm skipping that thing where we pretend to be on a diet for the first three weeks of December to punish ourselves for Thanksgiving. There are a few reasons for this, the first being that I think punishment for food-related behaviors leads to more unhealthy behaviors, and on and on. BUT MAINLY, our post-Thanksgiving lives are chock-full of celebrations, and no one wants a salad for their birthday. Jay's birthday was yesterday and Beck's is in less than two weeks, so here's the first of many holiday party foods. 
They're balls with ham and cheese and chicken.
They were, as all good ideas on this blog are, Jay's idea, and they were a fantastic one. I love the nostalgic flavors of chicken cordon bleu, crispy exterior, gooey interior, but the process is pretty arduous and a meatball is just so friendly and celebratory, right? For the sake of the holidays, you can totally make these in advance, bake them, then reheat them in the oven until the cheese melts again so all the mess + raw meat nonsense can happen well in advance of your event.
The ingredients are simple, and I'm so glad I'm showing these to you TODAY because they are a perfect use-up for Thanksgiving ham, if you have any of that lying around. I made a few things with leftover ham this weekend and all were just as delicious as eating ham on its own.
Cheers to my wonderful husband and the start of what I hope is the most celebratory of seasons for you! No punishment or self-loathing allowed.
...
HAPPY MONDAY.
You deserve this. How was your weekend? Ours was fabulous, filled with a wedding with wonderful friends, cooking, family time, begging Beck to sit in a high chair to eat (??), yard work, enjoying fall weather, the absolute most perfect mix of relaxation and fun and productivity.
So instead of ruining that feeling with vegetables or a salad or similarly boring Monday meal, we're cutting straight to next weekend, where you should probably definitely for sure make THIS. Super simple spinach artichoke dip with four cheeses, including goat. Goat cheese makes it fancy, duh. My sister actually came up with the idea and I made a big batch of this for our last family gathering, and the dip was GONE in about four seconds. We have garlic and green onion for flavor, so much cheese, and the base is vegetables which practically makes this a salad, so no worries if you end up making this today and eating it with a spoon for dinner.
Let's not waste any more time talking about it.
...
aka IT'S SUPER BOWL WEEK. 
It is no secret in this world that I don't care a lick about sports. I'll get excited by proxy when a home team does something good, and I care-ish about the schools I went to, but only as far as it relates to me brightening somewhat when someone informs me that they've won something. Brightening somewhat, that's as far as I'll take it.
The food, however, is an aspect of sports that I'm alllll about. And excuse to eat nachos or selections I'd rarely otherwise choose, basically. Why is it that watching really fit people do really fabulous things makes us want to eat the most garbagy garbage there is? Life is full of conundrums like that recently it seems.
Wings aren't garbage, for sure, and we healthy-ed these up even more by baking them and skipping a butter-heavy sauce, not that there's anything wrong with that at all. I'll be the first to say I love fried foods, but wings kind of don't matter to me. If the flavor is great and the dippers are yummy I honestly don't prefer a fried wing over baked or grilled, except for the crispy skin. Soggy chicken wing skin is just the most sad thing, so much so that I'll pull it off and not even eat it. So I wanted to bake wings, but I wanted them to be crispy. So I read up, used this recipe for inspiration, ADDED to the cooking time, and boom.
Twice-baked dry rubbed wings. The blue cheese ranch is just a bonus, but a bonus that you've more than earned.
...
...with only 7 ingredients! A few basic things, mix, bake, scoop into your open trap. 
I've made this twice in the past 2 weeks, for different crowds, and both times it's been met with massive acclaim and very few leftovers, which is my main measure for success. It's a little sweet, a little spicy, a lot creamy, and the easiest of all the easy dips. I use frozen corn and jarred jalapenos, BUT I've also added a chopped fresh jalapeno on instances where I wanted more spice. So, feel free to upgrade your ingredients if that sounds fun to you!
Mainly, though, make this your plan for football this weekend. You owe it to yourself.
...
Happy Thursday! It feels like fall here and is dark in the morning (boo) and cool all night (yay!) and football season is in full swing, thank goodness for Jay who really needed 4 days off of life per week (damn NFL, man). Jk, he's great. 
I've noticed this dip making the rounds on Pinterest, and with good reason! It's delicious, so simple, and pizza duh. ...
Ok so I have the most wonderful new football season recipes comin' atcha, because if you know me at all you know that I'm all about that buffalo and have no clue why football players need so many breaks. Ballet dancers don't quit after every pirouette, you know what I mean? 
I digress. ...
This spicy candied bacon recipe features just a few ingredients and a quick bake in the oven. Oven baked bacon means no mess, and sugar + spices give huge flavor for the best appetizer, brunch item, or snack! Bacon should always be a snack, let's just agree on that.
Well, well, WELL.
The vegetarian husband has glazed us some bacon.
Last week when we had the epic snow that was very non-epic, my sister stayed the night because her power went out (a light breeze knocks the power out on her street, it's really remarkable), and since calories don't count on snow days Jay made us burgers on Saturday. They were EXCELLENT and involved caramelized onions and super juicy patties and onion buns, but the best part was this bacon on top of the burger. It was so good, in fact, that I decided it could stand alone, and boy can it. I made this last week for my fairly-healthy, mostly-vegetarian family, and it was GONE in approximately 4 seconds.
Now, the Green Jar Spice is famous in our family, we all keep a can around and find that it just fixes any number of sins food-wise. If you have another Cajun or Creole seasoning you like, by all means use that. You can also use my recipe for homemade blackening seasoning if you'd prefer - it's completely up to you.
.......with butter-braised chicken + blue cheese croutons. BLUE CHEESE CROUTONS!
As with any cool new thing that I put on this blog, this was one of Jay's ideas. We're all about buffalo anything, but the fried + butter aspect of it....sometimes leaves something to be desired in the pants-fitting department.
So we made soup! Chicken roasted in butter, croutons, a regular onion + celery + carrot base, and some extra raw veggies on top for that blue + buffalo + celery combo we all know and love.
I used chicken thighs in this, which I think work really well in soups. Boneless + skinless dark meat chicken only has 5 more calories per serving than white meat (I read once, it might be a lie), and to me 5 extra calories is well worth it for how much extra flavor you get out of it, RIGHT?
Right.
...
Guys.
After travelling all weekend we went to a grown up birthday party yesterday which was all kiiiiiinds of fun and ended way too late and made us a little bit groggy this morning.
BUT. We also started planning for NEXT Sunday, which involves some kind of sporting event? And commercials?
So we need to plan our food, clearly.
If you follow along on Instagram you know that I've got a super duper special seafood recipe comin' atcha later this week, but I also wanted to draw your attention to a few of my other fav gameday types of foods. We usually do lots of apps and snacks, but this year decided to make real dinner. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to make, but for some reason Indian is calling my name. We shall see.
...
THIS IS THE START OF A WEEKEND THAT WE CAN EAT TONS OF CRAPPY FOOD FOR SPORT. 
I mean really, is there much better? You know the answer! YES, it'd be better if we were eating crappy food with no negative effects on our bodies and also watching chick flicks.
But we can't have everything, can we?
This, though, is NEARLY everything. Teriyaki sliders that are done start to finish in 30 minutes, maybe less. SERIOUSLY. The sauce is straight from Keiko Hayashi's Simple and Delicious Japanese Cooking, and the sliders are LEGIT. The sauce is super simple and flavorful, and then we dunk burgers in it! Like good Americans!
Let's do this.
...
Guys after working all this week and Saturday SUNDAY IS THE SUPER BOWL! 
Sporting events are only really fun if they revolve heavily around food. Doncha think?
This week is just....ugh. My weeks are like that recently - Monday and Tuesday are pretty productive and hopeful, and then by the second half of the week I'm flying though life with too much to do and not enough time or help and just GRUMPY. 
So we need to turn this frown upside down in the shape of appetizers, right?
RIGHT.
...
To add to your footballfood repertoire, I give you A Healthy Appetizer. That you serve with chips, but whatever.
This was actually Jay's idea: he wanted something not quite so cheesy and fried, and we both love Mexican flavors and hummus so....refried bean hummus with roasted jalapeno was born. I'm all "pass the beer and cheese," but I aim to please this husband of mine, so this one's for him.
...
I know. Dumb title.
But it's FRIDAY, y'all.
Two days until the Super Bowl! AKA the time football players are going to intrude on the Beyonce concert.
Whatever.
The other day we talked about some GREAT appetizers/snacks that you can make this weekend that are totally meat-free. Check out the post - there are some great ideas!
Now, you may not want to only serve vegetarian options on Sunday. I'm with you - I'm doing a mix. Here are my favorite options for meat-inclusive appetizers. All easy, all scrumptious.
...
We discussed this morning how there are, like, so many delicious appetizers that are perfect for tailgating but mayyyyyyyybe not the healthiest choices to make if you want to be tiny or healthy or feel good or anything dumb like that.
IF you're in that category of folks FEAR NOT, there are options in your food-camp as well.
There are yummy HEALTHY options that you can contribute to any football watching, snack eating extravaganza.
...
Happy Friday!
I'm really stinking excited that it's the weekend! I have another 20 hours of yoga this weekend, which makes me happy and peaceful.
...and grumpy on Mondays, but whatever.
This is a total throwback that I've been making for YEARS. Like, since I was 16. In Tokyo. One of my cheerleading coaches made this and gave us all the recipe, and it became a staple at our super mandatory and fun sleepovers. Cheer sleepovers are totally the best after a long game - and food like this was MANDATORY. Sure, we had the standard rice balls covered in seaweed that everyone eats in high school (ha), but AMERICAN food like this was, like, totally our favorite food to make, even though avocados cost $5 each and Japanese food is better anyways.
Whatever. We were brats.
...
Since it's Monday, and since it's raining, and since I'm tired, I thought it'd be nice to share with you a recipe that you can make this weekend for tailgating.
Because you're already planning that, right?
Right.
...