Jalapeno Artichoke Dip + Game Day Football Party

Thank you Alexia and Walmart for sponsoring this Game Day Football Party post. All ideas and opinions are always 100% mine. #GameTimeGrub #CollectiveBias

Raise your hand if you or your husband love football. Chances are, there’s someone close to you who loves those big football games, and maybe gets a little too excited at every touchdown their team makes. I enjoy watching football here and there, but what I REALLY enjoy is putting together a fun football party!

Today’s post is all about putting together a big game day football party for those football fans in your life, PLUS an amazing jalapeno artichoke dip recipe that is to die for! I can’t wait to share it all with you today.

Let’s start with putting together the food table. The more football-themed items and colors you include, the better! Instead of using my table surface or a plain tablecloth (that would probably get stained anyway), I bought some astro turf + some white electrical tape and got to work. I taped down the “field” lines on the astro turf and I had an almost instant football field grass tabletop!

Party food always looks better when served in dishes that are somewhat uniform- the same shapes, colors, styles, etc. I bought a couple large brown football-shaped platters, as well a handful of smaller brown football-shaped bowls, to hold the party food.

Galvanized buckets add some height to the display and hold soft pretzels and smaller baked pretzels, as well as a large galvanized bucket full of ice and root beer.

To match the food bowls and go with the whole football theme, I included my husband’s football and my son’s football helmet, stacked on a wood crate. The crate was a great way for me to add some height to the table to make it more interesting visually.

Football brownies were placed on each side of the table on astro turf squares that were placed on rectangular white platters. It was a great way to tie in the theme to the food. To see how to score these astro turf squares for free and how to make DIY football field coasters out of them, check out this post from last week.

Now for the best part… the food! I filled up the large football platters with lots of Alexia sweet potato fries, crinkle cut fries, and crispy onion rings. They are the perfect game day food! All you do is pop them in the oven and serve, which means less time in the kitchen for me and more time watching the game and hanging out with everyone!

These fries and onion rings are high quality and taste great. I’ve been buying Alexia sweet potato fries for years because of their great flavor and texture.

I found them at Walmart in the freezers with all of the potato products.

And just when you thought the fries and onion rings couldn’t get any better, I made a delicious jalapeño artichoke dip that tastes absolutely amazing and that is PERFECT for dipping! We dipped our fries, our onion rings, our carrots, broccoli, and even our chips in it. Seriously, I’m pretty sure you could dip just about anything in this dip and it would taste great. Ready for the recipe?

Jalapeno Artichoke Dip

Ingredients:

Small jar of artichokes (mine was 14 oz.)
2-3 jalapeños
4 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp. chopped onion
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
4 oz. cream cheese (1/2 a block)
1/3 cup mayonnaise
Dry dill, salt, and pepper to taste

Cut and remove the seeds and white portion from inside the jalapeños.

Finely chop the jalapeño and the onion. Mince the garlic cloves.

Drain the liquid from the artichokes jar, and place the artichokes in a food processor. Pulse to slightly chop the artichokes. Be sure not to over blend- you still want the dip to be somewhat chunky.

Add the chopped jalapeños, garlic, onions, cheese, cream cheese, and mayonnaise to the food processor, and pulse until the dip reaches the desired consistency. Add dry or fresh dill, salt, and pepper to taste. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Beware, this dip is highly addicting! Don’t even try to dip just once, because you will have eaten half of the bowl before you know it. Using two jalapenos will give the dip a little bite. If you want more heat, you can stir in a third chopped jalapeño.

We scooped some fries and onions rings into some paper fry trays, and then added a large spoonful of dip to some small plastic cups for dipping, which worked perfectly.

I hope this gives you ideas on how to score a touchdown when throwing your next football party!

Here’s more football parties, recipes, and crafts you’ll love-