Next Saturday we’re…

Next Saturday we're having a Hitchhiker's Guide shindig for my 42nd birthday. I will be trying to squeeze into my space dress. :-) Am spending some time brainstorming party food now, hampered a bit by the fact that it's been a while since I read these books. Maybe a bit of re-reading is in order. Do you think I can talk the guests into wearing bathrobes?

In-theme food and drink (more suggestions welcome):

- sashimi (tuna, not actually whale), garnished with petunias? Have a printed sign over it that says "Oh, no, not again". �Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.�
- baked salmon with lime: http://pinterest.com/pin/217369119487623498/ (so long, and thanks for all the fish)

-"(*with the Infinite Improbability Drive it's entirely possible that the beef wellington would have turned out like lasagna � or a fruit bouquet.)"
- lasagna
- a fruit bouquet (ideally made with starfruit) -- http://pinterest.com/pin/217369119487754440/

- sandwiches made from Perfectly Normal Beast (aka roast beef) "A quadruped with rather odd migratory habits that grazes across the Lamuellan land, providing sustenance for its inhabitants and sandwich meat for the Sandwich Maker. A Perfectly Normal Beast is a bit like a cow, or rather a bull. Kind of like a buffalo in fact."

- peanuts: "FORD PREFECT: I bought some peanuts. ARTHUR DENT: What?! FORD PREFECT: If you've never been through a matter transference beam before, you've probably lost some salt and protein. The beer you had should've cushioned your system a bit. How are you feeling?"

Sweets:
- Hitchhiker's Guide cookies (as I am not a pro, will probably pick just one of these to try to recreate if I feel like baking cookies, which I'm guessing I won't): http://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a5924ef0970b017d41a88b0b970c-pi
- Trillian's pet white mice (made of chocolate) -- Slartibartfast explains to Arthur that the Earth was actually a supercomputer commissioned and paid for by a race of "hyper-intelligent," "pan-dimensional" beings. These creatures had earlier built a supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. This computer, after seven and a half million years of calculation, had announced that the Answer is, in fact, 42. Being unsatisfied with the Answer, they set about finding the Question which would give the Answer meaning, whereupon Deep Thought designed the Earth, to calculate it. However, ten million years later, and just five minutes before the completion of the program Earth was designed to execute, the Earth is demolished by the Vogons. Two of these beings, Frankie Mouse and Benjy Mouse, had arrived on Magrathea on the Heart of Gold, in the form of Trillian's pet mice. (Wikipedia)
- babel fish (made of chocolate which I've colored yellow: "The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe...Meanwhile, the poor babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different cultures and races, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.")
- space lollipops (ordered! https://www.etsy.com/listing/115774396/the-original-solar-system-lollipops-tm?)

Birthday cake:
- cake as a bowl of petunias is lovely, though I think not so yummy: http://cakecentral.com/g/i/2344544/another-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-cake-devils-food-cake-baked-in-a-pyrex-bowl-covered-with-chocolate-bc-and-chocolate-fondant-with-bc-leaves-and-gumpaste-petunias/u/780981/
- or could do fairy cake from the Total Vortex (but just made a fairy cake for Kavi's birthday, so this seems less fun)
- space cake is cool: http://pinterest.com/pin/217369119487754441/
- but probably just some cupcakes that look space-ish -- like these? http://oliveloafdesign.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/purple-cupcakes.jpg

Drinks:
- glowing gin and tonic (would need black light): http://geyserofawesome.com/post/29913064464/earlier-this-year-we-posted-about-a-gruesomely -- "It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary water server at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds."
- Pan Galactic Gargle-blasters (must do some kind of blue cocktail): "Fluid replacement is vital to the well-being of all organic life. However, some beings take fluid replacement to health-threatening extremes, with the enthusiastic imbibing of Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. A cocktail invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, its ingredients include Ol' Janx Spirit, Santraginean sea water, Arcturan Mega-gin, Fallian marsh gas, Qualactin Hypermint extract, the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger, Zamphuor and an olive. It should be drunk with extreme care."
- tea (and ideally, something that also not-quite-tea: "When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.")

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