How to Make a Vegetable Football Field

Turn vegetables into a realistic football field.

Football games are known for junk food like nachos, chips and chicken wings, but if you want a healthy alternative for your NFL party, serve up a football-themed vegetable platter. Using an assortment of vegetables, you can create a complete field with turf, field goal posts and edible players. The field uses a collection of vegetables commonly found in a vegetable platter and others found in a grocery store's produce section. Does this Spark an idea?

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Casserole pan
2 plastic food containers
Dipping sauce
Cutting board
Large knife
2 heads of broccoli
Red pepper
Cucumber
Carrot shreds
Carrot sticks
Cherry tomatoes
6 fresh asparagus

Instructions

- 1
  
  Wash all of the vegetables before creating the dish. Use a clean table or counter top to make the creation. Set the casserole pan flat on the table with plenty of room to work.
- 2
  
  Place two of the same sized plastic food containers on each end of the casserole pan. These containers represent the end-zones of the football field and will contain the dipping sauce of your choice. Fill each one with dipping sauce and wipe away any spilled sauce on the pan.
- 3
  
  Chop broccoli up into eatable pieces with a 1-inch stem. Try to keep the height of each broccoli piece the same so they will line up evenly. Place them into the casserole dish with the "tree" end up. Tightly pack the broccoli in until it complete fills the dish and looks like the turf of a football field.
- 4
  
  Place a red pepper on your cutting board. Set the pepper to the side and cut the end off each one. Take the knife and cut a slit down the side. Run the knife through the inside of the pepper until you have made a full circle. Remove the center of the pepper and any leftover seeds. Slice the pepper in half and then cut the pieces into a thin julienne style.
- 5
  
  Lay the pepper pieces across the field to form the yard lines. Set them across the field to go parallel with the end-zones. Make a total of nine evenly spaced lines to create the 100 yards from end-zone to end-zone.
- 6
  
  Slice a cucumber into thin circular shapes. You can peel the cucumber or leave it unpeeled depending on your preference. Cut each circle in half and place one half cucumber circle on each side of every yard line. This will create a total of 18 cucumbers on the surface.
- 7
  
  Use carrot shreds to create yardage numbers on top of each cucumber. For example, set the "10" yard line with a single line shred and then four little shreds to form a zero. Continue this for the "20," "30," "40" and "50" yard lines. After the "50" yard line, count down again with the "40" and so on.
- 8
  
  Cut carrot sticks in half until you have 11 pieces. Eat or throw out the extra piece of the sixth carrot. Place them in the center of the field in a offensive formation. Set up five carrots in a line for the offensive linemen, one carrot behind them as the quarterback and two carrots behind that as the running back and fullback. Scatter three other carrot stick pieces across the offensive line to represent the wide receivers.
- 9
  
  Set 11 cherry tomatoes on the field as the defensive team. Match up a tomato with each carrot on the front line and then scatter the remaining tomatoes out as safety positions.
- 10
  
  Cut three asparagus in half. Take a whole asparagus and carefully pull away a string of the vegetable. Do this until you have four strings. Stick an asparagus half between the edge of the casserole dish and the dipping dish.
- 11
  
  Use the asparagus string to tie a whole asparagus horizontally across the top of the standing asparagus to create the bottom of a field goal post. Use the other half pieces and string to tie on the sides of the field goal post. Repeat this on the opposite side to complete the transformation.