Super Bowl menu

Each year I endeavor to make healthy treats for the Super Bowl. This year was no different and except for the brownies that my step-son's girlfriend brought over, as my mother would say, I done good!

My husband was in the midst of working three back-to-back days of double-shifts with just enough sleep time planned to be able to see the game and go back to work. Therefore the cooking was left to me... which I really don't mind. I like puttering around in the kitchen whipping up tasty creations. It's at least a quiet activity that I can do so that he can get some sleep.

I started off with a tray of veggies - carrots, celery and fresh peppers. My husband and I were the only ones tat ate them though because I skipped serving any "dipping goo" that makes veggies appealing to my step-son. I thought about making homemade hummus but ran out of time.

The appetizer was organic blue corn chips and homemade salsa. It's the easiest salsa in the world and I will now ALWAYS make it (or some variation of it) instead of buying the expensive and not-so-great stuff in a jar.

The recipe is:
14 ounce can of diced tomatoes with green chiles (I'll do fresh in the summer time when tomatoes have flavor)
1 whole (mostly seeded) jalapeño pepper
One med onion roughly chopped
A handful of cilantro
A dollop of agave (recipe called for honey but I used agave and loved it)
Six or so cloves of garlic roughly chopped (love garlic!!!)
A whisker of salt to balance the agave but not too much if your chips have salt too

Put it all in a blender and pulse it till its all combined - about 30 seconds. Letting it sit in the fridge overnight is great but you can also just dive right in! This recipe makes about 2 cups of salsa.

The four of us plowed through a bag of chips and made a big dent in the salsa pretty quickly. (I can still taste the garlic... Well... To be fair... I ate the rest of the chips and salsa for dinner last night. Yum!)

The main event was Asian meatballs which I make with turkey instead of pork or ground beef. It has a hoisin sauce that makes you want to carve out a meatball and use it as a sauce-dipping-vessel.

The recipe includes instructions for the meatballs and the sauce so I'll link to it later.

Part B of the main event was carb-less pizza. I love pizza. I miss pizza. Sometimes I dream about pizza. So when I found the recipe for carb-less pizza on pinterest.com, I fixated on it. Of course I had to "healthify" it by changing a few of the ingredients. At the end of it all, it was okay. I'm not sure I'll rush to make it again... Next time I'll just skip lunch so I can have enough calories to eat "real" pizza. It wasn't terrible though and it actually got better as it got colder.

The crust is made from cream cheese, egg, Parmesan cheese, and pepper. You make that in a 9x13 pan and then cool it. Then you add sauce, shredded cheese and toppings and bake it. I used 1/3 less fat cream cheese in the crust, turkey pepperoni and low fat mozzarella for the topping. It was kind of salty (Parmesan in the crust kicked that up too much) and rubbery (that's what low fat mozzarella does, unfortunately). With that sales job, if anyone wants the recipe, let me know.

The finale was supposed to be Skinny Cow ice cream. If you are an ice cream fan and are watching your calories, run - don't walk- to the store and buy Skinny Cow frozen treats! We prefer the mint sandwiches (or vanilla or chocolate sandwiches), the truffle pops or the little cups with varied flavors - Dulce Leche is my FAVORITE cup! They are 100-150 calories each and TOTALLY satisfying for even the sweetest of teeth!

As I mentioned, my step-son's girlfriend had brought brownies though so we skipped the Skinny Cow and had a brownie.

By the third quarter we were all stuffed but at least we were stuffed with good stuff rather than junk!