Funny fun meals

[Undead Molly]

Does anyone else ever try to make funny or novel meals? My boyfriend and I are kind of goofy, we'll come up with crazy theme meals or silly dishes all the time. Silly, but also well prepared and delicious - we don't waste food or sacrifice taste for the love of goof. For instance, we had a friend over for dinner last winter and every part of the meal had to be 'pie'. So we had:

Green salad arranged in a pie shape
Tiny mini pies with a creamy, cheesy corn chowder filling (I baked them in a muffin pan)
A puff pasty vegetable quiche tart
Then for dessert I made fresh, homemade key lime whoopie pies by adapting this awesome recipe

My friend Brooke and I used to work on vegan white trash menus all the time before she moved away. I like making homemade versions of mass produced foods - pop tarts are next on my list when the weather cools off enough to work pastry and have the oven on again. Here's a blog post I made last year of my boyfriend and I making our invention - Sloppy Joenuts. For my boyfriend's gallery opening last month I made cupcakes decorated to look like eyeballs, breasts, and brains.

Do you guys do anything silly?

[Haylley Johnson]

I definitely try to make meals like that, but not necessarily themes like your "pie" example. Usually my friends and I pick a movie, then we try to plan an entire meal around it. I've made Ratatouille and then watched Ratatouille. Or we'll try our hand at some sort of Middle Eastern dish and watch Aladdin. It is really fun actually. It is the ultimate dinner and a movie - you basically get to have your movie and eat it too.

[Morganna]

Closest we come is having different themes or meals every solstice/christmas.  We always have something new, that we've never tried before.  One year when we had several people over, we did medieval recipes only.

[Carolyn Fox]

My friends and I recently started a book group, and we're trying to do a themed potluck dinner with each read.  Last month's was "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett, which takes place in the South in the 1960s.  We had mint juleps, cornbread muffins, potato salad, fried chicken and caramel cake as we discussed.  It was awesome!

This month, we're reading "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls.  It's a memoir about a pretty messed-up family, and most of the time the kids went hungry or ate out of the trash... so I'm think we'll skip the themed dinner this time!

[Alice Levitt]

I've never done anything multi-course like yours, Molly, but I like to do quirky things in the kitchen. I once did a black meal, with blueberry chicken, balsamic risotto and black beans.

I like to set myself challenges, too. Before my boyfriend and I went to a Primus concert last year, I made him "Pork Soda," shoulder braised in a Dr. Pepper-based jus. I'm all about combining somewhat opposing cuisines or assigning myself an unconventional ingredient that I must use in every element of the meal.

[suz1023]

well this is a bit different, but occasionally we'll eat neanderthal stiyle (no offence meant to any neanderthals who may be reading).
we usually make a roast chicken or turkey with roasted potatos and roasted brussels sprouts.
in other words, easy to eat without silverware, and the kids always get a big kick out of it.
onvce in a while we'll skip or switch meals up, upside down monday we serve dessert before dinner, or spagetti for breakfast, that type of thing.
soon i'll make my beef stew and serve it in a hollow oumkin, that's pretty fun too!

[Morganna]

...we'll eat neanderthal stiyle ... roast ... turkey with roasted potatos and roasted brussels sprouts.

*giggle*  I just -had- to nitpick on this because if I didn't, I'd lose my pendant's credentials.   Please be sure to read this with a huge smile and a giggle in the voice, I'm just teasing gently, not being all snotty...

Turkey, potatoes, and brussel sprouts are three foods the the neaderthals could not possibly have eaten.

All three of them came about =much= later than the neaderthals.  Turkey and potatoes were "new world" foods, that were only in the Americas, and were eaten by the indigenous peoples long after they stopped being neaderthals and had migrated across the land bridge into the Americas.  Brussel sprouts are the result of selective breeding done well after prehistoric times, possibly initially cultivated by the Romans, but most definitely the ones we know today were first developed in the 13th century.

Ok ok, you can totally do a "neaderthal style" of roasting foods, inasmuch as we have any clue what that might be, I'm just teasing.