Auld Lang Cyanide
Our NYE party of bad vintage food doom was a success. We're still cleaning up the aftermath, and photos are forthcoming.
First of all, here's the menu:
- dreamlikedouche brought by pretzels and sardines as an allusion the The 'Burbs, which we didn't quite get to watch, but no matter. There's plenty of time to watch it, yet.
- 70s-style crackers: Sociables ("Perfect for Entertaining!"), and Swiss Cheese-shaped crackers
- Crab mousse. It's a horrid fishbelly white, jiggles slightly, and looks like it may be made of discoloured foam insulation. It tastes about as good as it looks, yet is entirely devoured.
- Cajun shrimp mousse. Even nastier than the crab mousse. It's a salmon-coloured spongey mass shaped like a joyfully leaping shrimp. Tastes like dolphin smegma, but again, undiscerning people with munchies gobbled it up.
- Pigs in blankets, made from cocktail weenies and Pillsbury batter. Actually not too bad, and I hate hotdogs.
- Stuffed mushrooms. The only genuinely delicious food of the night. snowy_kathryn made them, and needs to share the recipe with us.
- Mini-cheeses by La Vache Qui Rire (that's Laughing Cow for the French-impaired). The cow laughs at us for eating these things. They taste like dried-out mushroom-impregnated Cheese Whiz.
- Cheesies. Everyone needs cheesies at a 70s party.
- Cheese fondue with french bread squares. The packaging made it look so good. It made me think of lazy, after-skiing parties held in front of a blazing fireplace in a room painted orange and green, with lots of fake wood panelling. But with the addition of herbs, the fondue turned a rather brilliant green and tasted of bad wine, even though it contained no wine. The normally undiscerning seraph_x--who almost single-mouthedly devoured the crab and shrimp mousse--took one bite of the food and said, "Your cheese has defeated me."
- g026r brought something normal (the nerve!): spinach/cranberry salad with honey lime dressing.
- And then for the final course, the one you've all been waiting for: 7-Up Salad with 7-Up Dressing.
This one merits its own series of paragraphs.
The recipe for the salad is innocuous enough. It calls for lime Jello, applesauce, and 7-Up. I only had raspberry applesauce. So when I mixed the green gelatin with the red applesauce, I got something very brown and foamy. It looked like a bowl of chunky Guinness. The taste was actually pretty good.
I set it aside in a bowl to gel.
When I came back to check it, I was appalled and thrilled, all at the same time. Imagine, if you will, that you've lived on a diet of nothing but beef gravy for a week. Now imagine taking a crap into a bowl. This is what the salad looked like.
I stirred it up, then poured it into muffin tins for its final setting.
And then I began making the 7-Up Dressing.
I'd only glanced at the recipe before. My mind refused to dwell upon the incongruous ingredients: flour, sugar, 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp dry mustard, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup vinegar, 7-Up.
f00dave walked over and stared in horror at the contents of my double boiler. It looked like something which had oozed from a horrible wound. "Are you sure you're making that right?"
I double-checked the recipe. "Yup." I leaned over and smelled the stuff, and recoiled. "Eugh!"
"What?" asked f00. Then he leaned over and took a whiff. "Christ!" he yelled. "That can't be right."
But it was very right in its wrongness. I very carefully refused to sample it.
Once the salads had set and the dressing had cooled, I plopped the salads onto plates and spooned a generous blop of dressing on top of each. There was still half of a pot of the goo left over. I suspect the salad was supposed to actually swim in the stuff. I held a plate in my hand and jiggled it slightly. The glistening salads wobbled like squared-off breast implants.
"Come and get it!"
Not many people came running. It's just as well, because the only way I could get them to eat it is by waylaying them one at a time in seclusion.
The first reaction, once one gets over the initial appearance, was, "Oh, that's not so bad."
Only somewhere in the moment of saying "bad," the brain caught up with what the tongue was touching, and the victim would convulse and gag, eyes spinning so you could see only the whites. And then they would try to make someone else to try it so they hadn't suffered alone.
It's hard to put in words what the sauce tasted like, but I shall try to do so. Imagine, if you will, a salty mayonnaise tainted by mustardy citrus and raped by by a vinegar monster. Now that you've imagined it, you've got only the square root of its taste. This stuff could knock over a sewage worker who grew up in a third world garbage city.
All were appalled at the flavour except for Linda, who is apparently from another planet. "I like it. It's sour," she said, and ate another spoonful as the rest of us watched in goggle-eyed horror.
And poor psoridian was cursed by his need to eat as long as there's food in sight. He kept eating the stuff, gagging all the while. "I curse my appetite!" he lamented.
I'm not sure if it's related or not, but all the next day, snowy_kathryn had what we affectionately refer to as PC (Poop Cancer). The smell was so overwhelming that we had to flee the house.
And how was your NYE?
First of all, here's the menu:
- dreamlikedouche brought by pretzels and sardines as an allusion the The 'Burbs, which we didn't quite get to watch, but no matter. There's plenty of time to watch it, yet.
- 70s-style crackers: Sociables ("Perfect for Entertaining!"), and Swiss Cheese-shaped crackers
- Crab mousse. It's a horrid fishbelly white, jiggles slightly, and looks like it may be made of discoloured foam insulation. It tastes about as good as it looks, yet is entirely devoured.
- Cajun shrimp mousse. Even nastier than the crab mousse. It's a salmon-coloured spongey mass shaped like a joyfully leaping shrimp. Tastes like dolphin smegma, but again, undiscerning people with munchies gobbled it up.
- Pigs in blankets, made from cocktail weenies and Pillsbury batter. Actually not too bad, and I hate hotdogs.
- Stuffed mushrooms. The only genuinely delicious food of the night. snowy_kathryn made them, and needs to share the recipe with us.
- Mini-cheeses by La Vache Qui Rire (that's Laughing Cow for the French-impaired). The cow laughs at us for eating these things. They taste like dried-out mushroom-impregnated Cheese Whiz.
- Cheesies. Everyone needs cheesies at a 70s party.
- Cheese fondue with french bread squares. The packaging made it look so good. It made me think of lazy, after-skiing parties held in front of a blazing fireplace in a room painted orange and green, with lots of fake wood panelling. But with the addition of herbs, the fondue turned a rather brilliant green and tasted of bad wine, even though it contained no wine. The normally undiscerning seraph_x--who almost single-mouthedly devoured the crab and shrimp mousse--took one bite of the food and said, "Your cheese has defeated me."
- g026r brought something normal (the nerve!): spinach/cranberry salad with honey lime dressing.
- And then for the final course, the one you've all been waiting for: 7-Up Salad with 7-Up Dressing.
This one merits its own series of paragraphs.
The recipe for the salad is innocuous enough. It calls for lime Jello, applesauce, and 7-Up. I only had raspberry applesauce. So when I mixed the green gelatin with the red applesauce, I got something very brown and foamy. It looked like a bowl of chunky Guinness. The taste was actually pretty good.
I set it aside in a bowl to gel.
When I came back to check it, I was appalled and thrilled, all at the same time. Imagine, if you will, that you've lived on a diet of nothing but beef gravy for a week. Now imagine taking a crap into a bowl. This is what the salad looked like.
I stirred it up, then poured it into muffin tins for its final setting.
And then I began making the 7-Up Dressing.
I'd only glanced at the recipe before. My mind refused to dwell upon the incongruous ingredients: flour, sugar, 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp dry mustard, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup vinegar, 7-Up.
f00dave walked over and stared in horror at the contents of my double boiler. It looked like something which had oozed from a horrible wound. "Are you sure you're making that right?"
I double-checked the recipe. "Yup." I leaned over and smelled the stuff, and recoiled. "Eugh!"
"What?" asked f00. Then he leaned over and took a whiff. "Christ!" he yelled. "That can't be right."
But it was very right in its wrongness. I very carefully refused to sample it.
Once the salads had set and the dressing had cooled, I plopped the salads onto plates and spooned a generous blop of dressing on top of each. There was still half of a pot of the goo left over. I suspect the salad was supposed to actually swim in the stuff. I held a plate in my hand and jiggled it slightly. The glistening salads wobbled like squared-off breast implants.
"Come and get it!"
Not many people came running. It's just as well, because the only way I could get them to eat it is by waylaying them one at a time in seclusion.
The first reaction, once one gets over the initial appearance, was, "Oh, that's not so bad."
Only somewhere in the moment of saying "bad," the brain caught up with what the tongue was touching, and the victim would convulse and gag, eyes spinning so you could see only the whites. And then they would try to make someone else to try it so they hadn't suffered alone.
It's hard to put in words what the sauce tasted like, but I shall try to do so. Imagine, if you will, a salty mayonnaise tainted by mustardy citrus and raped by by a vinegar monster. Now that you've imagined it, you've got only the square root of its taste. This stuff could knock over a sewage worker who grew up in a third world garbage city.
All were appalled at the flavour except for Linda, who is apparently from another planet. "I like it. It's sour," she said, and ate another spoonful as the rest of us watched in goggle-eyed horror.
And poor psoridian was cursed by his need to eat as long as there's food in sight. He kept eating the stuff, gagging all the while. "I curse my appetite!" he lamented.
I'm not sure if it's related or not, but all the next day, snowy_kathryn had what we affectionately refer to as PC (Poop Cancer). The smell was so overwhelming that we had to flee the house.
And how was your NYE?