Mitch SorensenIf you remember the age of cable TV and commercials, you’ll remember seeing representations of sports parties during the fall. There were ads for chips and wings, ads for cleaning supplies to deal with spilled BBQ sauce, ads for beer, ads for cleaning supplies to deal with spilled beer, etc. But sports party preparation was never represented. Until now.
As university students, we understand the ease of resorting to last-minute Save-On-Foods runs and Dominoes deliveries (we know, the 50% university discount is great), but taking a little extra care to supplying your sports party with food will go a long way. Our writers at The Gateway have created a guide to you achieve your dream well-fed, well-entertained athletic event viewing congregation.
Pre-sports party apartment cleaning:
I live in residence, so I live in constant fear that a maintenance person will pop by to check up on the mouse infestation we reported earlier in the year and will see the literal mountain of recycling we’ve been too lazy to take out and will slap us with an exorbitant fee for attracting vermin. Because of this anxiety, my roommate and I have taken to cleaning our apartment semi-regularly, but when I heard I’d be hosting a sports party I cleaned a little harder.
My advice is: clean the dishes that have been piling up since the party you had on the weekend. Once that’s over and you can actually see the counters, you can take some Lysol to that crumby mess. Once you’ve wiped all the crumbs off the counters and onto the tile floor you can sweep the floor. I would also suggest Lysoling all of the surfaces in your living and dining areas where people will be hanging out. Don’t clean your room though, just shut the door. But make sure to clean the bathroom and change the hand towel so it matches the colour scheme of the overpriced Urban Outfitters bath mat and your roommate’s purple towel. Finally, make sure you have sharpened knives because people will chastise you if they have a hard time cutting onions at your sports party. Once all of that is done you can just stare at the pile of recycling and decide to leave it there because you’d have to go outside for that and it’s cold and you haven’t seen a mouse in your apartment for at least a week.
— Sofia Osborne
Beer:
You need, NEED, beer if you’re going to be watching sports. There’s no question about it. Alcohol helps people shamelessly exacerbate their animalistic reactions to bad calls, it helps people yell sports jargon louder when there’s a goal or a point or whatever, and it prepares the stomach to burp when there’s a moment of calm between plays.
But what kind of beer? After kindly leaving his post at the checkout to give me a tour of the Beer Room in the back, the Liquor Merchants cashier showed me two prime options for drinks to bring to a sports party: Pabst Blue Ribbon and Coors Banquet. PBR is a cheaper lager that’s “really popular among high school guys who want to get drunk,” and has a similar function for sports-watching guys and gals in university who want to get get drunk. If you have a little more to spend, Banquet is a bit more expensive, but it’s smoothness “makes the girls love it.” So if there are going to be girls at your party (and there certainly should be if you’re a responsible liberal arts student who cares about diversity and equity), take the Liquor Merchants cashier’s advice and stock up.
— Jamie Sarkonak
Green Onion Cakes:
How far are you willing to go to impress your friends? If the answer is “two hours of work and the pain of scrubbing dough off the counter,” this recipe for green onion cakes is for you. Prep some dough using two cups of flour and one and a half cups of boiling water. To prevent the dough from sticking all over, be sure to sprinkle lots of extra flour over the counter. Knead till done and put it in the fridge. Chop seven stalks of green onions and in a separate bowl, mix six tablespoons of oil, two tablespoons of flour and one and a half teaspoons of salt. After 20 minutes cut the dough into four pieces, then flatten each piece with a rolling pin. Evenly spread the oil mix and green onions onto each flattened piece, then roll it up like a burrito. Lightly flatten each roll, cover one side with more oil mix, then curl the flatten tube so that it resembles a cinnamon bun. Finally, flatten it again with the rolling pin so that it looks like a pancake. Now all that’s left is to pan fry them in oil over medium heat and you’re done.
— Nathan Fung
Guacamole:
The secret to making good guacamole is to not make bad guacamole. Also make sure your avocados are ripe. That’s important. Apart from that small caveat guacamole is an exceedingly easy dip to make. The core ingredients are four (ripe) avocados, one tablespoon of lime juice, one diced white onion, and a generous dash of salt and pepper. If you’re feeling more ambitious, feel free to add diced peppers, cilantro, or tomato. Add your ingredients of choice to a bowl and mush it into a tender paste and you’re done.
Tip: Make sure you dice your vegetables thoroughly or else people will complain, but then eat it anyway.
— Aidan Herron
Red Bull Wings:
If you’re running a sports party, you need to make sure to slip masculine branding into the food you serve. Drinking Red Bull straight is going to make it hard to enjoy a beer while watching the big game, but you can definitely give Red Bull to your wings… to give you wings.
It’s a pretty simple recipe: some chicken wings, some Red Bull, some garlic, a hot pepper, and some BBQ sauce, or any kind of sauce, really. First, fry the chicken wings in a skillet over medium heat until brown. As you’re browning those, bring a can or two of Red Bull to a boil in a pot (if you have 10-15 wings, one can should do it. Use two cans if you have more than 20 wings). Chop up the garlic and put it in the boiling Red Bull. Slice the hot pepper and put it in the Red Bull. Lastly, put your now-brown chicken wings in the boiling Red Bull and leave them for 20 minutes.
They’re going to smell really weird when you take them out of the Red Bull, but don’t be fooled. This is the smell of Quality Caffeine Food. Douse your wings in BBQ sauce to reduce the weird, boiled Red Bull smell, and enjoy. They’ll taste borderline-sweetish, kind of like Skittles. And they’ll keep you up until 2 a.m.
— Jamie Sarkonak
Vegan Chili:
Don’t be a lame, let the vegans get in on the sports party action.
To get this recipe going, dice an onion and sauté it over medium heat until translucent. Add a couple cloves of minced garlic, then cook another few minutes. Add in two jalapenos (finely chopped), two stalks of celery (finely chopped), and a bell pepper (coarsely chopped) and cook another three minutes. After that, the next 25 minutes are for cooking the juicy stuff and the spices. Over low heat, pour in a 796 mL can of diced tomatoes, and a cup of vegetable broth, six tablespoons of tomato paste, a 398 mL can of kidney beans, a 398 mL can of pinto beans.
For spices, put in two tablespoons of chili powder, two teaspoons of ground cumin, one teaspoon of dried oregano, and half a teaspoon or so of sea salt. If you want to make it spicy, sprinkle in some ground cayenne pepper or a teaspoon of hot sauce.
After you serve, top the chili off with sour cream, lime, cheese, cilantro, or whatever. It may not be vegan at this point but hey, it’s still vegetarian.
— Mitch Sorensen
Cake Pops:
You may think something as precise and detailed as cake pops could be time-consuming to make — you’re not wrong. Achieving baseball, basketball, or football cake pops is still super easy and can be done in a few days.
First, buy a box of cake mix. (That is, don’t waste additional time making a cake from scratch only to crumble it up.) This is where you get Betty Crocker and call it a day. Follow the directions on the box, bake the cake, and let it cool. Remember as a child when you used to play with Play-Doh? Apply those skills here. Break up the cake with your hands until it’s in small crumbs. Then mix in a 1/3 cup of icing of your choice (I did vanilla with chocolate cake and cream cheese with red velvet). This goopy step makes it easier to roll your cake pops into their desired shapes (Pro Tip: stick to round ones, the footballs were lopsided). Briefly toss the balls into the fridge or freezer so when you take them out, they’re easier to handle. Melt some chocolate, dunk a stick in, and insert it into the cake ball. You can put these back in the fridge if you want, or just start dunking the whole cake pop in chocolate. Then decorate as much or as little as you want. I used a toothpick and chocolate as well as these candy pen things to draw on the sporting equipment lines, but leaving them as is or simply placing some sprinkles on top is good enough.
Think of the whole experience as an Xzibit meme: Yo dawg, I heard you like sugar, so I put sugar in your sugar so you can eat sugar while eating sugar.
— Ashton Mucha
