The First Fifth Annual Festivus

The annual holiday party at my house is a Festivus party. Some years I even throw a couple of Festivus parties. I held my first ever Festivus party the year I moved into my house. I don't remember now what prompted me to organize that first party, but I really started something - something that gets weirder every year.

The first 5th annual Festivus started with the weird invite

for which I drew my inspiration from a truly ugly website, that of Lubbock Power & Light.

On the menu:

• Spicy Chicken Sandwiches. Reference to The Jimmy where George starts speaking in third person.
• Atomic Subs. Sub sandwich with Black Forest Ham and Turkey, Gruyère Cheese, and mustard/raspberry jam spread, toasted. Reference to The Strike where Elaine gives her Atomic Sub punch card to Denim Vest.
  

• Roasted Vegetable and Poppy Seed Spread on Challah. Reference to The Shower Head where Elaine fails a drug test because she ate poppyseed muffins.

• Éclairs. Reference to The Gymnast where George crosses the line between man and bum and eats an éclair out of the trash.

• Snickers. Reference to The Pledge Drive where Mr. Pitt starts a trend by eating his Snickers bar with a knife and fork.

• Pretzels. Reference to The Alternate Side where Kramer has a line in a Woody Allen film, "These pretzels are making me thirsty!"
• Eggnog and other snacks.

After the foodage, we got the Festivus Pole out of the crawlspace and had airing of grievances and feats of strength. I tried long and hard to think of the most harmless, ridiculous grievance I could air, so I told Ian that I didn't like how he makes fun of the way I cut cakes (which is totally Wilton approved, by the way!), but it was still awkward. Feats of strength are usually board games, and we played Telestrations, which was very fun!

Re: the food, this was my first attempt at éclairs. I used this recipe for the pâte à choux (my pastry cream and chocolate glaze recipes were pretty similar to the ones on that page, too). The first step in making the pastry is to bring the water, butter, and sugar to a rolling boil on the stove. Of course, I was trying to do too many things at once, and I accidentally bumped the pan of water, butter, and sugar, and spilled it all over the floor. That made quite an oil slick on my floor before the party. Nice! Improving my piping method would prettify my éclairs, but I was pleased with how they turned out.



The second 5th annual Festivus party was a fondue party. Since I can think of no fondue-related Seinfeld jokes besides the double dip, I'll leave it at that and sign out with a Festivus greeting from Jerry Stiller: