You're all ready for trivia night. You know who won the Battle of Waterloo (the Duke of Wellington). You know the tallest building in the United States (One World Trade Center). You know how many sentences there are in the Gettysburg Address (10).
But you don't know what food to bring.
Trivia is only part of the fun of trivia night. The other part is eating.
Anyone can stop at their local grocery store and pick up a plastic box of cookies to bring, and many people do. But that is merely perfunctory, a no-thought solution to an immediate need. Surely, your trivia teammates would be happier if you brought in some nice, homemade snack, particularly if you don't know how many teaspoons there are in a gallon (768).
To be a winner in your trivia snack-making, you only have to remember a few guidelines: It should be something you can eat with your fingers, it should be relatively quick to make and it should not be particularly good for you. Crudites can wait for another occasion.
For my trivia night extravaganza, I made five snacks, five also being the number of U.S. states' names that have a direction in them (North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia).
I started off sweet and ridiculously easy. Baked Cinnamon Tortilla Chips are exactly what they sound like, but they taste much better than you would think possible.
You simply cut flour tortillas into wedges, brush them with melted butter and sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon. It helps to remember what part of the tree cinnamon comes from (the bark).
Bake them for 10 minutes, and they come out surprisingly light and crispy, a delightful little nosh to enliven any trivia table.
A savory treat came next, Chipotle and Rosemary Roasted Nuts. I'd first had the thought of trying to re-create the addictive goodness of Beer Nuts, but then I stumbled upon this recipe by Ina Garten, and it sounded so good I simply had to try it.
It is even better than it sounds, though I should point out that it is also not inexpensive. The recipe mixes together cashews, walnuts, pecans and almonds, none of which is cheap. The nuts are glazed with brown sugar, orange juice and maple syrup, and then dusted with chipotle powder and minced fresh rosemary leaves (Rosemary Clooney's first million-selling No. 1 hit was "Come On-a My House").
"You do too many recipes for spiced nuts," said my editor. But then she tasted them and said, "Oh my gosh these are the best things ever I can't stop eating them." So there's that.
I went sweet again with my next snack, Chocolate-Peanut Butter Chex Mix. Once again, you can probably figure out what these are from the title alone.
I began with an off-brand version of Chex Mix, and I'm not entirely certain the 50 or 60 cents I saved was worth it. I emptied a full bag onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and covered the pieces with melted chocolate and melted peanut-butter chips. I mixed the goo all together, spread it back out into a single layer, more or less, and placed it in the refrigerator to set before breaking it up into bite-sized chunks.
It's sweet and salty, chocolaty and crunchy. Eating it made me very happy (Snow White's seven dwarfs are: Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful and Doc).
The next dish I made, Cheese Crisps, was perhaps the easiest snack of all. Simply shred some cheese, place it in a small circle and bake until it is all bubbly.
They are incredibly good, but also incredibly simple to make. Just don't tell that to the other members of your trivia team (the most common category in Final Jeopardy! is U.S. Presidents).
I wasn't ready to stop yet. I wanted to make one more sweet snack, especially when I saw a recipe for Nutella Popcorn.
Nutella, of course, is the hazelnut spread that is hugely popular in Europe but has never gained quite the same foothold here. It is easy to imagine how it would taste on popcorn; the only question is how to put it on.
As it turns out, it's not hard. All you have to do is melt together some butter, brown sugar and corn syrup. Stir in the Nutella and add a dash of baking soda and a splash of vanilla. Mix that all together with some popped popcorn and bake it until the sauce dries onto the kernels.
(Nebraska produces more popcorn than any other state, about 250 million pounds per year. In case you ever have to know).
