Just Like Butter

nah, I'm not talking about our Offensive Line....I'm talking about our theme for tailgating for the Ole Miss game, sillies!!

Although I have to say, I am fixing to commander the Up The Middle play calling. You know, like when it's sensible and appropriate to insert into the game. 4th and 2 at the goal line, Yes. You may call up the middle. 3rd and 8 and still on our half of the field: no.

Anyways, we had such an awesome tailgate today.

I was so excited to host Ta'Molly and her family who came in all the way from Nebraska. Nell and the Texas Contingent partied down with us too. I always love seeing them!

I am also so pleased to note that our tailgate krewe is growing! A new tailgate friend, J-Co, came in from Baton Rouge, and one of the newer additions to our tailgate krewe, whom we'll call CandyStriper, and his little Striper, also came.

We also have a younger contingent of recent grads joining us, lead by my favorite grad student whom I'll call Bond Girl. See, look how fabulous.

They brought adorable cocktail umbrellas for their drinks! Very Hullabaloo Huddle Worthy.

We also had a special visitor to our tailgate matinee, the granddaughter of Hoss Memtsas! She is the daughter of one of my dearest friends.

For those of you who don't know ~ Coach Memtsas was a legendary figure in Westbank and New Orleans high school athletics. The stadium in Harvey is named after him. Coach Memtsas was a member of the Tulane Greenwave Football Team in the 30's and played in the inaugural Sugar Bowl game. 

Here is a picture of a bracelet she wore that had some of the swag Coach Memtsas received as a TU football player.

It was so cute, and I was thrilled to share some of that history.

I was pretty proud of our tailgate party today and I was even more pleased that students noticed! I was busily packing things up right before the game when I got a tap on my shoulder and there stood two students. These co-ed's had been tailgating in the parking cave underneath us, she said that they had been admiring our tent and tablescaping. They loved it so much that they felt compelled to come over and tell us how much they admired it all.

I'm so humbled! I take a virtual courtsey bow and receive your gracious praise.

So anyways, back to this butter business.....Our tailgate theme could very well have just been called "butter" with the vats of it used in menu we served this weekend.

Once again, everybody asked for recipes. Most have been posted before, some of them I am tweaking tho after careful thought.

Bond Girl brought some praline bacon, which is always super easy. Recipe for Praline Bacon is here What you need: oven, wire rack, thick cut bacon, brown sugar, pecans. kicking it up, drizzle with steens and a sprinkle of cayenne.

PEGGY'S SINFUL GRITS peggy doubled this for the size of our tailgating krewe

4 cups of water
4 cups whipping cream
tablespoon of salt
2 cups yellow grits
half a pound of butter (yes!)
2 cups frozen niblet roasted corn
chopped green onion


Berl the water and cream, add the salt. Turn down the heat, add grits and fold in the butter. Simmer to thicken. add corn to finish and then garnish with chopped green onion.

Originally I refered to the recipe from the White Lace Inn for Blueberry French Toast Casserole. One of my hullabaloo-ettes, whom I'll call Ace's Mom, had suggested it when I had a complete meltdown about our new television gameday schedule. But after actually making it, I found some ways to make it super easy to toss together before a brunch tailgating, I also found that the cream cheese filling needed to be a smidge sweeter.

MRS. HULLABALOO'S VERSION OF FRENCH TOAST CASSEROLE

3 french bread pistolettes
1 pack of fresh blueberries, rinsed
a third a cuppa sugar
quarter cup sour cream
dash vanilla
4 ounces of creole cream cheese
1 3/4 to 2 cups of eggnog (eyeball it)
dash of cinnamon
handful of powder sugar


Take 2 pistolettes and slice up, taking the crust off. Chop up into bits and cubes. Grease up a 9 x 9 baking dish. Spread the bottom of the pan evenly with your cubed up, crustless french bread. Sprinkle the fresh blueberries over the top. Whisk together the creole cream cheese with the sour cream. If your cream cheese is not already smooth and room temp, pop it into the microwave for a whirl before mixing with the sour cream. We want to avoid lumpiness. Fold in the sugar to your mixture. Pour over the Blueberries like we are making a lasagne. Next Up, slice the remaining pistolette into 1" thick rounds (with crusts) and place over the cream cheese layer to cover. Once the french bread slices are all in place, pour the eggnog evenly over everything. Dust the cinnamon over the top a smidge. Cover the pan with foil and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat your oven to 350, put your covered dish into the oven and bake for 45 minutes covered. Then uncover and cook an additional 15 minutes until the top is browned. Take out the oven, cool a bit and then dust with powder sugar using a wire mesh strainer (it helps get rid of the lumpies!).

I also made my world acclaimed BBQ Shrimp, which for yesterday's game I totally cheated and just used a couple bags of grocery bought Louisiana peeled, raw 21/25 count shrimp. So that way we weren't having to work to peel apart the shells. Head on fresh shrimp is totally the way to geaux because the BBQ sauce gets all up in the nooks and crannies of the shrimps and cooking with the heads on gives the whole sauce extra flavor. Anyways, I made my sauce the night before (I doubled the amount of butter for the crowd and adjusted seasonings here and there until I was happy with the flavor), which you can see from the recipe is based on butter. In the morning while the french toast casserole was in the oven, I dumped the frozen shrimp and sauce in a big stock pot, simmered until the shrimps cooked (they are pink and curl into a "c" and not a closed "o") and then spooned it into chaffing dishes to keep warm at tailgate.

Ok, so last night I admittedly had another Brain Hurricane about our upcoming tailgating for the ULM game! I decided on a Louisiana Sportsmen Theme for tablescaping! YES! How adorable, right?!