Friday, December 21, 2012

Christmas with The Unbelievables: Eat up and party down

I hope you've enjoyed this especially festive trip down memory lane this week. Jeff and Michael have done a great job of sharing some of our holiday celebrations with in-depth looks at some of our themed parties. However, they've left out the key thing everyone looks forward to when attending one of our Yule-themed shindigs: making out on a pile of coats! But I'm here today to talk about the second key thing people look forward to at one of these merry mixers: the food!

Our parties started out as humble "pot luck"-style buffets. However, since all three of us are extremely competent in the kitchen, the menus have always been world class. As our parties became more, shall we say, sophisticated, we started hiring chefs from around the world to prepare our food. Then we'd fire them when they couldn't replicate the recipes precisely enough for our tastes and make them ourselves. That's a tradition that we've adapted and it continues to this day. Nothing says "Joyeux Noel" like watching Wolfgang Puck trudge to his car with tears streaming down his face.

First up is my specialty, the Deviled Ham Sandwich tree. Christmas is a time of wishes and this offering answers one of the most universally popular wishes, "Why can't trees be made of deviled ham sandwiches?". Keep praying really hard, Tiny Tim, and if Tinkerbell doesn't die this year, maybe she'll finally grant us that wish!
Normally, dessert is last but with Jeff's Christmas Pudding Cake, who can wait? I know, I know, pudding dishes can go either way and when you factor in that Jeff is British, well... but no! It's really, really good! Every year, he either makes the igloo or the tree and if we're expecting a large crowd, he makes both. First, he gets the Albino Wafers flown in from a specialty bakery in Heidelberg that's only open for one day a year. Then he goes to work putting together his special combination of various puddings and pudding-like substances. Is there a secret ingredient you'd like to share with us, Jeff? "Not pudding", he says with a creepy knowing grin.
Last but not least, the main dish, Michael's Frosted Ham! Is that cream cheese? Is that butter cream frosting? Is that whatever was left in that one bowl when Jeff got done making the pudding cake? Michael isn't telling! All we know for sure is this is what caused one of our guests, former New York Knicks star forward Walt 'Cool Clyde' Frazier to remark, "Man, you guys really take the concept of 'White Christmas' to heart, don't you?" "Because of all the white food, Clyde?", I asked. "Huh? Oh yeah. That too. Damn."
The three of us then work as a team to complete the pièce de résistance, the coup de grâce, the l'arbre de crevette (tree of shrimp)! We painstakingly dress each shrimp, insert the pimento into each olive (fun fact: pimentos are an aphrodesiac!), brew each glass of gelatinous goo nog one at a time (that last one actually seems kind of silly but tradition is tradition) and set it all up in front of the ugliest backdrop we can find. I think this picture came from the time we held the party in the dentist's office at a nearby insane asylum. Once that's all done, then we brush our mustaches, put on our Christmas sweaters, brush our mustaches again (static cling from the sweaters makes that necessary) and wait for our guests to arrive.

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