Football Friday Tailgate Recipes: Army-Navy Weekend

Happy Football Friday.  Today we have Football Friday Tailgate Recipes: Army-Navy Weekend. Did you save last week’s Easy Tailgate Meatballs? This week we have a mix of ideas for an Army-Navy game tailgate party.  As well as a little bit of military beverage history.  I hope you enjoy the tasty treats and the Army-Navy game this weekend.

Football Friday Tailgate Recipes: Army-Navy Weekend

While researching this week’s ideas I came across We Are The Mighty dot com.  They had some cool history about military-inspired beverages.  Here is what they had to say: Did you know the terms “Happy Hour Club,” “Happy Hour Social Club,” had been in use as the names of social clubs since the early 1880s? The crew of the USS Arkansas had started referring to their social gatherings as “Happy Hours.” The “Happy Hours” included entertainment, boxing and wrestling matches, music, dancing, and movies. By the end of World War I, the practice of holding “Happy Hours” had spread throughout the entire Navy. Unfortunately, on June 1, 1914, the Secretary of the Navy issued General Order 99 prohibiting the use or introduction of alcohol on any ship or station.*

Sidecar

Legend has it the Sidecar was created when a WWI Army Captain couldn’t beat a cold. At his favorite bar in Paris, the bartender made this libation and named it after the motorcycle sidecar in which he was usually chauffeured.

Recipe

1-3/4 ounces Cognac

3/4 ounce Cointreau

1/2 ounce Fresh Lemon Juice

Orange Twist Garnish

Combine liquids in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake to blend and chill. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

French 75

World War I fighter pilot Raoul Lufbery was of French and American descent, flying with the Lafayette Escadrille, American aviators who wanted to fight against Germany, even though the United States had not yet entered the war. For French pilots, champagne was the drink of choice. For Lufbery’s American side, that wasn’t enough – so he spiked his champagne with cognac, a mix he said made him feel like he was hit by a French 75mm howitzer.

Recipe:

1-1/4 ounce Hennessy Cognac

3/4 ounce Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice

1/2 ounce Simple Syrup (or a tad less)

Brut Champagne

Lemon Twist for Garnish

Combine Hennessy, lemon juice, and bar syrup in a cocktail shaker filled one-third full of ice. Shake thoroughly for ten to fifteen seconds. Strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top off with champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist. Note: If using Courvoisier rather than Hennessy, up the amount to 1-1/2 ounces of cognac to achieve the balance of flavor.

Easy Peasy Ideas With MINIMAL Effort

Make your favorite flavor wrap using call them RATION WRAPS.

Have a bowl of your favorite snack mix and label it BATTLE MIX

Make brownies and call them BATTLESHIP BROWNIES

Cookies any flavor call them SEAWORTHY SUGAR COOKIES, SNEAK ATTACK SNICKERDOODLES, ETC. You can be as creative as you want.

Make any of your favorite tailgate treats and come up with a fun and creative military-inspired name.

You can make camouflage cupcakes below or you can buy some camouflage baking cups and some Army men and put them on top of your favorite flavor cupcake.

Camouflage Cupcakes

Directions for camouflage cupcakes:

1)  First you’ll need to get both the chocolate and white cake batters ready to go.

2)  Then, separate the chocolate into two bowls, and the white into two bowls.

3)  Leave one of the chocolate bowls alone, this will become the darkest brown.

4)  Add a few tablespoons of white batter to the other chocolate batter, until it is a slightly lighter shade of brown.

5)  Leave one of the bowls of white batter alone, and color the other one green.

*Now these are all just guides of course!  Feel free to do different shades of green if you’d rather, no brown, or no white….just go nuts!

6)  Line cupcake tins with cupcake wrappers (or grease them if you’re not using wrappers).

7)  This is the fun part!  Using squeezy bottles is probably the easiest and cleanest way to pour some of each color of batter into the cupcake tins, but we found that measuring cups or spoons worked just fine.  The point is to add a bit of each of your four colors into the tin, creating a camo pattern.  We often poured two colors at once about halfway up the cupcake tin and then add a bit of the other two colors.  Once you’ve done a couple you’ll definitely get the hang of it!

8)  Bake cupcakes according to instructions and let them cool.

On The Menu