Smoked Salmon Sliders for Superbowl XLVIII!

The Superbowl, it's almost like an unspoken national holiday for Americans everywhere. Though this year I'm not particular to either teams, I did secretly hoped that Payton Manning would take those Seahawks down... unfortunately that didn't happen and leave it at that.

Times like this, having a DVR is awesome, you don't have to suffer through the painful parts especially when you pause the game to go make some yummy sliders and then again when dinner rolled around...I'm the only one in my family who watches football, so when dinner comes, its not in consideration that The Superbowl is on but its dinner time... anyways getting back to the point, I was about 45 minutes behind in the game but it was so sad that I ended up watching it on fast forward mode. It was slightly less painful that way.

With that, here's to another season of football, see you in September!

I still have one more photo dump from my New Zealand trip but I'm too lazy to filter through pictures (as I took *A LOT of pictures), so I'll share next time. In the meantime here is the recipe to a simple but classy appetizer good enough for any game or just plain munching.

 Smoked Salmon Sliders
Makes 8 sliders (approx 192 calories)

Ingredients:

• pack of mini burger buns (I used ones from Trader Joe's)
• slices of smoked salmon (about 1.5"x 1.5")
• brie, thinly sliced (about 1.5" x 1.5")
• half an avocado, mashed
• 2 tbsp of greek yogurt dip (I used the cilantro & chives yogurt dip from Trader Joe's)
• tapatio sauce (optional)
• basil flakes (optional)

Procedures: 

1. Split open the buns and on a sheet pan, place the bottom half face up with a piece of brie on top and the top part of the bun face down. If desired, sprinkle on a little of tapatio and basil flakes onto the brie.
2. Toast the buns with cheese in an oven for about 5 minutes at 325F degrees or until the tops are slightly golden brown and cheese has slightly melted. 
3. In the meantime combine the mashed avocado with the yogurt dip to make an avocado spread
4. Once the buns have been toasted, remove from oven. Place slice of salmon onto of the brie, spread on avocado and place top on. Hold with toothpick and serve.

You may have noticed that there's a calorie count with this recipe and that is because there is this wonderful app call My Fitness Pal that allows you to input your recipes and calculates how many calories that particular dish/meal/snack contains per portion to help you better track your calories. I've been using this app for quite some time now and thought since people are becoming more and more health conscience that this would be a nice piece of information to offer. Though at this time I am unable to provide anything else in terms of nutrients and such. At least the calorie can be a start.