Monday, January 27, 2014

1964...a very good year...

S...well, ok...Sheri...cause you can read it on the cake...returned to the year of her birth on Saturday eve for a cocktail party extraordinaire.  S loves old movies...Doris Day...Rock Hudson...Audrey Hepburn...Cary Grant...and she's always wanted to go to a 60's cocktail party!

So we surprised her with a return to 1964!  I got LOTS of GREAT ideas from all kinds of FB friends - too many for me to use everyone of them, but I tried to use as many as I could!

Now a couple of things right off before I start to take you back to 1964...

...first, the people coming to this "cocktail" party don't drink...so everything...well, almost everything...was a mocktail.  We did offer one real cocktail, and I'm not sure it would have been popular in 1964, but when I heard it was a favorite of S, I had to offer it!  Pay no attention to the fact that it happens to be my favorite, too.  That had NOTHING to do with our decision to offer it, I promise you!

...second, I couldn't have done any of this without help!  The FB friends who gave me ideas then lead me on a chase for props!  However I didn't have time to do much searching, so others came to my rescue!  A lady from work gave us hair bows and gloves and shoes.  And my friend, J, gave us an ice bucket plus a silver chafer dish as well as sheer aprons, a couple of mink stoles and a fox!  It was quite the attack fox, I assure you!
...third, I didn't take any where near enough pictures!  I was too busy hosting and working on the next course and "shaking not stirring" cocktails...er...mocktails...that I didn't take pics like I should have.  So I will rely on words to hopefully paint a picture of our evening.  We really did have a fun time, and our birthday girl below said it was the happiest birthday party she'd ever had!
I guess that's the end of the Deb Disclaimers, so I will begin with our menu.  We essentially had a 7-course tasting menu, 3 appetizer courses in the Living Room with "Martinis" and Amaretto Sours (real ones!) and 4 courses in the Dining Room.  I set up a "bar" in our Living Room by removing one chair and setting up two TV trays at an angle to each other.  I covered them with red clothes, and I really wish I had taken a picture of the setup, complete with martini glasses and bar garnishes, cause it turned out quite cute.

We began with cheese cubes and olives on toothpicks plus pickles passed on a tray as well as little wienies with bacon wrapped around them and held in place with toothpicks.  If we hadn't had two diabetics in the party, I would have added some brown sugar on the outside to caramelize along with the bacon.  But they were yummy even without the brown sugar!

Since S loves old movies, we showed two clips from the old Doris Day/Cary Grant movie, "That Touch of Mink."  I've always loved Automats, but I never had a chance to go to one.  So I've always loved that scene from the movie - where Doris Day and Audrey Meadows talk to each other through one of the Automat windows.  I remember watching it as a child - yes, a long time ago!  I loved it then, and I love it now, but more importantly, our birthday girl enjoys it, too!

After our first clip, we served this tray of vegetables.  Does this scream 1964 or what?
After passing this tray, we also showed the fashion show at Bergdorf Goodman clip from the movie.  And how could we show that without having a fashion show ourselves?  This young lady was our hairdresser, makeup artist and model!  I owe her a BIG thank you!!!  Things like this party REQUIRE teamwork to be successful, and S knows that full well!
And since our party attenders weren't appropriately attired for 1964, we "had" to share our costumes with these ladies!  But gloves can be trouble...
...and funny...
...really funny, in fact...
We finished out our courses in the living room with spinach and artichoke toast points and cheese fondue before heading to the Dining Room now that all of the ladies were properly attired for dinner!  This brought us to our Consomme course with bacon wrapped crackers and "Bloody Marys".
 Rather pretty, no?

Here is a closer look at the bacon wrapped crackers.
These are a Pioneer Woman recipe, but with a couple of Deb twists.  I made these at Christmas, and they were just ok.  I used Club Crackers then, and I wanted to add mustard when I made them then, but I didn't add it at the time.  So this time I used a different cracker and added the mustard.  It was actually somewhat providential that the cracker I chose first showed up in 1964!  Chicken in a Biscuit brought a much better flavor boost to this appetizer than the Club Cracker as did the mustard!  I used an onion mustard, but most any mustard would be good!

Our 5th course was the surprise yummy of the night!  It was just normal Swedish meatballs, but they were so good!  I thought I had noodles on hand, but alas, I did not, so I broke up fettuccine pasta and cooked those up instead!  I tossed the pasta with butter and herbs, and we ate that stuff up! This is the course that I served in the silver chafer dish, but again...no picture...sigh...

Chicken roasted on skewers and carrots cooked in chicken stock plus herbs rounded out our meal along with "champagne", and then we finished us out with a classic 1960's dessert - orange chiffon cake with 7-minute frosting.  It was yum-my and as one guest said, "It tasted just like they remembered!"  I used this Lemon Chiffon Cake from King Arthur but substituted orange peel, orange extract and orange oil for the lemon.  Seriously - easy and good!  And this is time to say another "thank you", this time to my sista, W, for letting me borrow her 10" tube pan!  I only wish I had a cake dome large enough to go over this cake!  The 7-minute frosting got exposed to the air a little too long, but it was still a great tasting cake with a wonderful texture!

I wish I could have used ALL of the great ideas that people passed along!  And I would enjoy doing this party idea again sometime with others to help with the tech stuff and the pictures and a bartender,  but this was great fun nonetheless!

Hope you enjoyed going back to 1964 with us!  It was a very good year!

Love,
Deb

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