So, in order to throw my good friend The Rose the 60's Mad Men Cocktail Birthday Party he's dreaming of, it seemed necessary to do a little research and planning. First of all, while I'm in the US, I had to hunt up the right recipes and rare ingredients. My ayi threw out my bottle of Angostura Bitters when I last moved, so I had to find a replacement bottle. (I can get them in Beijing but only at rather suspect shops where my friend the IP rights expert won't let me go as they carry impostor bottles of vodka and the like.) I already have a gross of paper umbrellas, so I don't have to mess with that, and the two ladies invited to the event (myself and the delectably petite Coco) are wearing dresses made of Saran Wrap. (A tad bit Total Woman but I've always wanted to try it.) But food! FOOD! Authentic tidbits can be easily rustled up, even though my kitchen is barely big enough to melt cheese it. (Seriously, my refrigerator is in the living room.) Our nibbles are made up of a wide variety of Real Meat Products, sausages and the like. But it's not enough to make authentic food, no matter how nauseating, you have to serve it in the authentic style. Thus The Tidbit Tree.
Oh, hell, everyone knows about The Tidbit Tree. It's a clear plastic tree, three dimensional, breath-takingly life-like as it stands up on its plastic roots in the middle of the cocktail trail, its limbs supporting a mishmash of delicious cocktail treats such as cheese cubes, cut-up Twinkies, and Lil' Smokies. My South African friends had hedgehogs (cubes of cheese stuck on toothpicks stuck into a half melon) but the Tidbit Tree was the dream of my childhood. It was usually advertised in the Sunday supplemental, a garish fold-out section in four color printing that drove my grandfather, a printer par excellence, into a screaming fit. I'm not sure what company advertised it--Lillian Vernon, maybe?--but my brain seemed to recall seeing it the last time I hit the States for a hiatus and I fixed my heart upon ordering one. After all, what's a dollar for a great gag prop?
Entire senility or peri-menopause or something. I couldn't find the section of the paper that advertised it. I went to the Dollar Tree. Nada. Big Lots? Not a thing, although I did get some of those crystals you get wet and smear on in place of deodorant as gifts for friends back home. I even screws up my courage and entered the Pack Rat Mecca that is my father's garage and searched through boxes of Mom's old catering dreck in search of the elusive Tidbit Tree. (Note: my mother has never been a caterer, she just likes to buy the stuff in case anyone asks her to make a wedding cake or something. Many ask once, but none ask twice.) Sickened more from the onslaught of useless bits of paper from my high school years more than anything else, I returned discouraged. Dang, I'm so very fond of The Rose, and he just HAD to have a Tidbit Tree! So I turned to the last resort of resorts, Google.
Surely Google will have at least a thousand good old fashioned Tidbit trees, I reasoned. Oh, sure: tons of fancy-schmancy "work bowl" trees and the like but no stunning rendition of forest beauty cast in pure petroleum bi-products...except for one site. With one tree. And it's advertised as being "rare and stunning" as well as "vintage" and I am also "helping the environment by recycling" which is what I tell myself when I have an artificial tree in Beijing (which I invariably kick to the curb by July because Ayi broke the stand, again. Shush: it's always gone within an hour, picked up by those eager little elves my neighbors who have decorated a manse or two on what I throw out weekly.) It's authentic! It's from the Sixties! So why does it say "Made in China"?
Yes, my deep fondness for The Rose, as well as my perfectionism and eye for detail have lead me to pay 12 bucks, plus five for shipping and handling, for a piece of shit plastic tree to spear wieners on which I have to schlepp back to Beijing in a suitcase already crammed full of shoes, tights, books, and my friend's Colon Cleanse from Blessed Herbs. Worse, I shall be hosting a party featuring this example of the nadir of my tastes and desires dressed in Sarah Wrap, which my mother points out will be good for my thighs, as it's both a way to lose water weight AND will control that nasty thigh jiggle. Coco would look elegant and gamine dressed in anything, and I must admit she will take up far less Saran Wrap than I. I haven't told her about the outfits yet--will soften her up with the tiny Coach bag I bought her at the outlets first--but I'm sure she's game. She's just that type of girl, and I am just that type of friend. I promise to post pictures--not of the results of David's Colon Cleanse which you can see for yourself on the Blessed Herb website-- but of the party. Any event that features a Crown Roast of Wienies, each topped with a whole caramelized onion surrounding a center of meltingly delicious hand-riced mashed potatoes, deserves to be immortalized on the Net with a photo or two.
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