Vegan Mofo: My Birthday, Part Two

As promised, here's a culinary recap of my 29th birthday party. On Friday night, I invited a group of close friends over for a loosely-themed John Waters/big hair party. I always have themed costume parties because dressing up is loads of fun! Since some folks weren't familiar with the campy flicks of Mr. Waters, I kept the costume theme pretty loose — just come with big ole hair a la Hairspray rather than require folks to actually dress as characters in John Waters films.

As you can see, I was some sort of giant pink-haired variation on Rainbow Brite. Others pictured include (left to right): Stephanie (aka Poopie Bitch), Barbara (whose head got kinda covered up in this shot by my big-ass hair), Vaughan (aka She-Bop ... that's his drag name), Corey, Greg (dressed as Tracey's Ullman's character Cynthia Fuchs in A Dirty Shame), and Weezy.

We played John Waters films — Hairspray, A Dirty Shame, Female Trouble, Pink Flamingos, Pecker — throughout the night. And we tried to make most of the food fit the theme as well. For example, Edie (Edith Massey) from Pink Flamingos loves eggs, so I made my Tofu Deviled "Eggy" Bites (recipe is here):

And who doesn't love the redneck delinquent son Crackers from Pink Flamingos? We do! So we served Whole Foods brand water crackers with a couple of spreads — Muhammara (Roasted Red Pepper and Walnut Spread) from The Vegan Table:

And Edamame White Bean Hummus:

The red pepper spread was AMAZING! I've been eyeing this recipe for awhile, and it's definitely a kepper. The edamame hummus was a quick throw-together-at-the-last-minute thing. It was super garlicky and pretty decent for an off-the-cuff creation.

True Pink Flamingo fans may remember the sausage scene. I sliced up some of my Creole Steamed Sausages in honor of that proud John Waters moment:

And the lovely Stephanie arrived armed with these flaky Mini Onion Quiches from Vegan Brunch:

Savory, caramelized, and delicious! And totally unexpected. I couldn't think of a way to fit these quiches in with the theme, but it didn't matter because they were tasty!

Stephanie also provided the cupcakes for the party because she is the world's greatest vegan baker. She surprised me with two kinds — Dark Chocolate with Scharffenberger Chocolate Ganache:

And Pumpkin Ginger Coconut:

The dark chocolate ones were the hands-down favorite. You can only imagine what that high-quality Scharffenberger did for these babies! But the pumpkin coconut cupcakes were like summer-beach-meets-cool-autumn-night. Different, but delicious.