Catching Fire.

We had a Victor's feast before going to see the Catching Fire Premier.  It was fun to eat delicious food and visit with friends.  For our feast we had soup in breadbowls, bacon green bean bundles, some amazing brie, a puff pastry apple caramel pie, firey cupcakes, Nightlock berry fruit salad, a veggie rosette pie, and  various other delights.

The bacon wrapped green bean bundles are from our best bites. They were easy and a really good veggie side-dish.

The Veggie tart is from a European magazine I found online, pg 67.  I just used a premade pie crust instead.  Used a peeler to peel the veggies and for a 9 inch pie it took 4 medium zucchini and I believe around 8 carrots.  We peeled all of the veggies first.  then we made the rosettes and swirled them around.  We decided to make some small rosettes too and I liked the effect a lot.  After the veggies are done, I drizzled with Olive Oil, and sprinkled with thyme, pepper, and salt.  Baked at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

The puff pastry apple caramel pie came about by accident.  I was attempting to make apple rosettes from a recipe in the same magazine pg 65 as the veggie tart and it suddenly went a bit Sweeny Todd in the kitchen as I almost chopped off a nail.  So I scrapped that idea and made my own.  I thawed a box of puff pastry according to box instructions.  I made caramel in a can, using the boiling method by Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk.  Basically you boil a whole unopened can of sweetened condensed milk for 2-3 hours.  Every 30 minutes I would check it and pour about 2 cups more water in the pan, as the can needs to remain completely covered during the boiling process.  Allow can to cool and then open.  Inside is sticky-sweet caramel.  I spread the caramel over one rolled out layer of puff pastry (about 2/3 of the can) and then sliced 3 apples and laid out sliced apples over the caramel.  I sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, topped with other puff pastry and sealed the edges, pressing with a fork.  I egg wash brushed the top (beat one egg with some water and brush over top) I cut some slits in the top crust and then sprinkled with some sugar-in-the-raw I had on hand.  I baked it for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  Sliced when cooled a bit with a pizza cutter.

For the fiery cupcakes I simply bought premade red-velvet cupcakes and used Wilton's frosting spray colors in yellow and orange to make the frosting look like fire.  To make the mockingjay picks I used my stamp from my last party and just punched them out and taped them to toothpicks.

The brie is a top secret recipe by my friend Toni, if I get it I will post it! :)  And as for the berry salad I just made a traditional cottage cheese fruit jello salad (1 large container cottage cheese, 1 large container coolwhip, 1 box raspberry jello, mixed frozen blueberries and raspberries all mixed together when thawed).

 

We also enjoyed some photo-booth fun.  For the banners I used my Silhouette to cut the title "75th Hunger Games" using the Hunger Games font.  I made the various banners using district logos and pictures I found through tumblr and pinterest.  Props included Katniss' bow and arrows, and various colorful Capitol accessories (the skeleton and turkey hat were pure irony).

For take home goodies I made chocolate peanut-butter and white chocolate peppermint mockingjays.  I found the mold online on ecreater, but it is also carried at various baking shops.  I bought tiny boxes of matches and just printed little labels that say, "Every Revolution Begins With A Spark."  I found these silly bright mustache magnets at target.

Hunger Games: Activities

For the Hunger Games movie premier party we had various activities that could appeal to a wide range of people and ages.    There was no pressure, people could just participate as they pleased.  May this also be a lesson of Pinterest party planning pros and cons!

I found all of my ideas for this party on pinterest.  Some ideas did not work well at all.

Bows and Arrows: On pinterest there was a link to making little bows and arrows out of fishing line, popsicle sticks, and q-tips.  I soaked my popsicle sticks for hours and hours...still no bending without breaking.  So I wandered the Dollar store looking for anything else an hour before the party we could do.  Found some glow-stick bracelets and with a little bit of hot-glue they made perfect bows!  You just bend the glowstick in a large C shape. Wrap fishing line around one end, securing with hotglue, and then string down to other end.  We wrapped a couple of times.  Then use the q-tips to shoot as arrows.  They actually went pretty far and were quite entertaining.

Capital Couture Nails and Makeup:  We had a bunch of nail polish and brighly colorful/glittery makeup for people to play with.  The Capital is famous for it's outrageous colors and stylings so we had fun trying to look the part.  For the gents we also had a cutout of Senica Crane's beard. We got our nail ideas from Pinterest.

Don't Eat Peeta:  My sister created the board game for this one.  I have posted the rules before in a Don't Eat Peter Pettigrew game we made for Harry Potter. 

Cake Decorating:  I posted about our Peeta Mellark cake decorating contest on the Hunger Games:  Food post.

T-shirt making:  A few of us got together to make Hunger games themed t-shirts with my Silouhette heat-transfer.  The LOVE t-shirt was inspired by a poster found from pinterest. (More info below)

Prize Reaping:  I had various prizes like key-chains, little figurines, and buttons from Hot-topic.  I also had a water-bottle with some survial stuff inside, soundtracks, bags, and movie posters. I wrapped them up in yellow, red, and orange tissue paper to make them look like fire-balls (inspired by these).  I made some bags inspired by painted ones I found here.  I used heat transfer instead.  I downloaded the shopping cart and bread from the Silouhette store.  I made the mocking jay symbol by downloading a picture of it and using the trace tool on the Silouhette Design.  The font is the Hunger Games font from dafont.com.  I created the parachutes for my shirt by welding parts of a parachute man from Silouhette with the bread or a basket.  I also got the "Prep-team" graphics from the silouhette store.

Decorations:  I had seen silver parachute decorations on pinterest but there wasn't any tutorials online so I winged it by covering strofoam bowls with aluminum foil, attatching jute tied around bread (the same bread from Silouhette, cut out of brown cardstock).  I hung them with fishing line.  I printed several of the posters I had found online, and I wrapped the silverware and placed it in a cornucopia as I had seen here. 

Favors:  For party favors I made bookmarks by copying pages of the book and stamping them with this amazing mockingjay stamp I got on Etsy. I bought various magnets, pins from Mud in the Blood on Etsy and Pinbackattack.  I stamped water bottle labels and included fireballs.

Hunger Games: The Food

For my Hunger Games party I wanted to keep it "Authentic" yet simple.  I chose to serve roast chickens, a mixed bread basket with Prim's goat cheese wrapped in basil and berry jam, mashed potatoes, a mixed salad, goat cheese apple honey tarts, Greasey Sae's not-dog soup, and friut cornucopias.  To drink we had berry cooler.

Fruit Cornucopias were inspired by pinterest.  We just cut up a bunch of fruit and mixed it and spooned it into sugar cones.  The only change I will make next time is serving it with some yogurt.  They were a big hit!

My sister made the goat cheese from scratch.  Crazy and amazing!!  If I get a hold of the recipe I will post it.

The Berry punch was just berry 7up with frozen marion berries floating around. Super tasty though.

For the bread bowl we had white chocolate pecan sourdough bread from a local bakery for District 1, some basic french bread from the Capital, some wheat rolls representing District 12, some seaweed bread from District 4, and crescent shaped seed bread from District 11.  The seaweed bread is from the "Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook"  and while salty was very good.  I just used pillsbury crescent dough, brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with black and regular sesame seeds.  There are a lot of good recipes for from scratch district 11 bread online though.

My friend Scott brought the soup and used and Alton Brown recipe.

The tarts were incredible.  We adapted a recipe from the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook:

16 frozen puff pastry shells, thawed
1 egg, beaten
5 oz of soft goat cheese
1 1/2 tsp. Lemon Juice
1 Tb. sugar
1 cup honey
1/2 tsp salt
4 medium apples, cut into 1/8in slices
3 Tbsp butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil 2 8x8 pans.
2. Place 8 of the thawed puff pastry shells on each of the oiled baking sheets. Brush each shell with beaten egg.
3. Bake shells for 10 minutes.
4. While shells are baking, mix cheese, lemon juice, honey, and salt in a bowl. Pour cheese mixture into a ziplock bag. Snip the bottom corner to make a piping bag and squeeze cheese mixture into each pre-baked shell, when cool.
5. Artfully place apple slices atop cheese. Mix butter and 1/2 cup honey in a small bowl; brush over apples and tart. 
6. Bake tarts until apples are tender and pastry is lightly golden, about 15-20 minutes.  Serve warm.

For dessert and an activity we held a Peeta Mellark cake decorating contest.  I got the awesome little pan that bakes 4 mini 3-tiered cakes (one boxed cake mix makes 5 little cakes).  It was an absolute blast to see what people cake up with.  Audrey's cake representing the arena was my favorite: