Let the party begin as we swirl and swivel our Vodka gimlets.
We often venture through the rabbit hole from inside Alice’s Looking Glass, tunneling through Sixties television, music, fashion, games, and gadgetry. Though I was just a child during dawn’s early light of that era, I’ve gathered my wits about me to conjure what it must have been like to attend an adult cocktail party stacked with 45-rpm singles or 33-rpm albums on the stereo.
It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to! (Lesley Gore, 1963).
Zoom in to harvest gold or avocado green kitchen appliances. Note the Tupperware containers on the counter which will come in handy for storing leftovers. Enter the hip contemporary living room where you can snare a space on a curved orange sofa able to accommodate four.
Let the party begin as we swirl and swivel our Vodka gimlets while balancing a Melmac plate on one knee. Those lightweight, unbreakable, plastic dishes were a godsend, weren’t they? I own a vintage set of coffee cups and saucers my mother collected from boxes of powder dish detergent.
As pot luck will have it, a banquet is spread before us:
Chex Mix
Jello salad
Ambrosia salad
Watercress salad with Green Goddess dressing
Shrimp cocktail in a glass
Stuffed mushrooms
Gherkins wrapped inside a cream-cheese-slathered slice of salami held together with toothpicks
Rolled up cold cuts
Prosciutto wrapped melon
Cherry tomatoes stuffed with tuna
Celery stuffed with cream cheese
Cocktail franks
Cheese fondue
Mini meatballs cooked and served in an electric skillet
Deviled eggs
Lipton onion soup mix or Velveeta for dipping Bugles and Ruffles
Casserole made with Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom, celery, or chicken soup
Ritz crackers with standby canned cheese
Desserts: Impossible Pie, Impostor Pie made with Ritz crackers, and Wacky Cake.
Since the early Sixties were a throwback to the late Fifties, many housewives hustled and bustled in the kitchen, proud as June Cleaver, to preside over cocktail parties held together by toothpicks and molded with Jello. Many a fond memory was culled by fonduing, inspiration for the “no double dipping rule.”
Bidding you a fondue adieu.
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enjoyed having my memory jogged
i still like impossible pie!!
Never stop Writing!!
m
Although I don't know all of the items listed, you do bring back a definite flavor of the era where we thought that avocado and harvest gold appliances were so much more attractive (ugh) than their prior white, black and burnished metal varieties. Soon to return later. Garish orange sofas I don't remember. But I remember my father wanting to do away with sofas with hard wooden armrests. Leather was considered old-fashioned.
I don't think that fondue reached its peak until the 70s. I remember my sister-in-law once held a banquet party with oil and meat fondue, cheese fondue, and chocolate fondue so that everyone moved around the table and it generated a lot of conversation and great cocktail party mixing.
Ron