10.10.10 Is the Number of the Feast

Towel Day is May 25. 
Have a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Party!

Gwen and I enjoy throwing themed parties, especially long ones. The more pop cultural the better, and if we can work themed food in, well woe be to him who violates the theme. Like the Kung Fu Weekend of Death, complete with Shaw Brothers movies, a copious chinese dinner and dim sum breakfast. Or the Geek Movie Weekend, with back-to-back Holy Grail and Princess Bride.

Tangentially: We've spent waaaayyyy to many hours of our lives arguing over what is and is not a Geek Movie [Holy Grail IS, Total Recall is definitely NOT] and devising logical tests to determine it quickly and decisively. Eventually we'll be forced to post a Venn diagram to publish our research into this heady and debatable subject.  But I digress...

So when October 10, 2010 rolled around, my better half and I absolutely had to throw a themed party (Gwen attended of course).   We decided to make it a contest - a geek trivia scavenger hunt if you will - with clues and prizes for the first person to get it right. We thought long and hard for weeks about the clues, not wanting the game to be too easy or too hard, and using Guinea Pig Gwen to gauge their difficulty. We picked up some sweet ass prizes for the winners, including a D-n-D Red Box, Creationary (it's Lego Pictionary! Brilliant!), The Ladies of Star Wars playing cards, old USSR propaganda posters against drinking... We even prepared a Lamuella Sandwich Bar: a sumptuous buffet of fixin's for build-your-own sandwiches (including Perfectly Normal Beast, of course) and homemade mocha stout to keep everyone's spirits up.

The guests were gathered and the goal was explained:
Tell us what the theme of the party is, and why it's significant.

Clue #1: There are clues all around the house:

Sci-Fi + Britain	A dolphin, A Whale, and a Robot
Petunias	Bottles of Bitter and Salted Peanuts

Clue #2: Mice (Hyperintelligent pan-dimensional Beings)

Clue #3: Jack Handy (As in, Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts)

Clue #4: This party could only be held on 10/10/10.

The fourth clue was our favorite, and the inspiration for the party.  Serious Geeks will know that in Binary, 101010 = 42. 

We wanted the clues to be hard enough to be challenging and tailored to the audience, which is obsessed with pop culture references and quotes.  Unfortunately, we made them a little too hard, and nobody got it without hints.  But the guests had a good time, the sandwiches were worthy of Arthur Dent, and everyone loved the prizes, which we gave out anyway.

Here are some additional food ideas for future HHGTTG parties:
Gwen's Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster recipe

Fairy Cake
Milliway Steak Bites (Ameglion Major cow) and green Salad

Coconuts

So this Towel Day, have some friends over and raise a pint of bitter to the memory of Douglas Adams.   Stay Froody, Dude.  We miss you.

Douglas Adams 1952 - 2001

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster Recipe

For New Year's we had an absolutely smashing good time down at the family beach house. We spent four days doing nothing but cooking, eating, drinking, watching scifi flicks, and generally indulging in a luscious gastrogasm of all things delectable. To start the deluge of deliciousness, I thought I'd post my recipe for a geek classic: the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

The Best Bang Since the Big One.

Fans of quirky britcoms, scifi, and general geekdom will recognize the PGGB from the late great Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 5-book trilogy. Drunken geeks the world over have formulated redactions based on the recipe laid out on the first page of chapter two:

• Take the juice from one bottle of the Ol' Janx Spirit.
• Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V -- Oh, that Santraginean water... Oh, those Santraginean fish!
• Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost). 
• Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those happy hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia.
• Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odors of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle, sweet, and mystic.
• Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink.
• Sprinkle Zamphour.
• Add an olive.
• Drink... but... very carefully...

Drunken geeks that we are, this is our redaction. With action poses shot by Lexi!

You will need:
2 parts Bushmill's Whiskey (that Ol' Janx Spirit)
1 part Bombay Sapphire gin (water from the seas of Santraginus V)
A bunch of ice (cubes of Arcturan Mega-Gin)
4-6 parts Squirt, Sprite, or other suitably bubbly, lemony fizzy thing (Fallian Marsh gas)
Rumple Minze (Qualactin Hypermint extract)
Sugar cubes and Triple Sec (the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger)
Yellow or orange sprinkly baking sugar (Zamphour)
Lemon slices (or an olive if you really do want to be canon)
A big pitcher
Several teaspoons

Instructions
About a half an hour or so before mixing up your drinks, put the spoons in the freezer. (Seriously.) Then schmooze with your guests, noshing on finger foods and exotic appetizers while you slice the lemons thinly and set out drink glasses. I recommend making a big production of this one, as it's a dramatic drink with a great back story.

Mix the first four ingredients in a big pitcher (whiskey, gin, ice, and soda). Ratios are approximate - adjust as your tastes desire. This recipe is very much a work in progress and I've been trying to work out the best balance of whiskey to lemon flavor. It's getting better all the time...

Pour the mixture into lowball glasses, one for each guest. Guests who drink more than one are either very foolhardy or very brave (or both).

Fizzy, lemony, spirity magic!

Remember those spoons you stuck in the freezer a half an hour ago? Go get the spoons out now. Pour a tablespoon or so of Rumple Minze over the back of them into each glass.

Why? It just looks cool! Duh!

Pour out a small layer of Triple Sec into a dish or saucer. Dip sugar cubes in the Triple Sec and drop them, two at a time, into each drink.

Algolian Suntiger teeth

Sprinkle some of the cookie sugar into each drink. The sugar I'm talking about here is that sprinkly colored sugar you find in the baking aisle at the grocery store for topping off cupcakes and cookies. This doesn't really do much of anything to the flavor, but it can enhance the color a little and adds to the overall presentation.

Put a lemon slice in each drink. I know, I know, the book says "add an olive", which little fruit carries the historical weight of being the classic cocktail garnish for a stiff British martini - but frankly, the olive ruins it. The flavor is simply all wrong. So I break canon (yeah yeah yeah) and use lemon slices instead.

Breakin' canon, bitches!!

Drink... but... very carefully...

Having one too many of these really is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.