Super Bowl Crab Dip

According to CNBC, Super Bowl Sunday is second only to Thanksgiving for the most single day food consumption in the United States.  70 million pounds of avocados were smashed, 1.25 billion chicken wings were consumed and 3.5% of the annual total beef sold in the US was sold for this past weekend's celebrations!  Did you know that half of all Americans would rather go to a Super Bowl party than a New Year's Eve party and that 50 million American women tune in to watch?  Until about 8 years ago I tuned in only for the great commercials.  That year a friend and co-worker, Tim Tobin, challenged Heather and me to fantasy football.  I knew next to nothing about football, but Heather convinced me (yes, the same Heather who convinced me to start this blog) to create a team with her.  A night or two before the draft, we ventured out in the Upper East Side with our fantasy football magazines in hand to "prep" for the draft.  We hit the sports bars and got some key advice from the fellow patrons on strategy, but in the end we decided our game plan would be to pick the best looking players (or ones that we could successfully makeover). Playing on a theory that good looking people may get an edge on life, we hoped the same would be true on the field. We lined up the players head shots and with a bottle wine, not beer, we headed to our draft.  Our team's name was DBs short for Demon Bitches and we had hats and shirts made with our logo and we wore red pumps to finish off the look.  Tim and the others in the league cringed on how we were drafting our team especially, when we chose Jessie Palmer as our back up QB.  Getting the former Bachlelor contestant on our team was the icing on the cake!  Long season short...with a lot of dumb luck and good looks we won!! I ran to Jimmy Choo with my winnings and bought a new pair of shoes.  I came back to the office and showed them off to a lot of disgusted guys....thus the start to my love of fantasy football and the Giants!

According to the National Restaurant Association 69% of people with plans for the Super Bowl said they considered salsa spreads and dips to be an absolute must have.  I agree.  Many years ago my friend Paula Muller shared her crab dip recipe with me.  I think it was from her Aunt in Canada.  I've made it over and over and still have the envelope she wrote it on.  I brought it to my neighbor's Super Bowl party on Sunday and it was a hit again. The biggest hit of the party though was Big Blue's win!

Paula's Crab Dip
18 oz of cream cheese
1 teaspoon of milk
2 tablespoons of chopped onion
1/4 teaspoon of horseradish
1/4 teaspoon of Tabasco
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of pepper

Combine all the ingredients in an oven proof dish and bake for 8 minutes pull out and mix it up and put back in the oven and cook an additional 8 minutes.  Add toasted almonds to top after it's cooked.