Who doesn’t enjoy a good street carnival?  Recreate the feeling of an Italian street fair with dinner and games at home.  This easy to follow party plan, excerpted from The Recovering Sorority Girls’ Guide to a Year’s Worth of Perfect Parties (Andrews McMeel, 2005) gives you the decorations, menu, games and mood points to take the party out of the street and into your home.

Decorations

The colors are red, white and green.  Begin at the center of it all – the food table.  Use a red and white checkered tablecloth and some basket-style Chianti wine bottles to evoke a traditional Italian restaurant.  Insert white tapers into the empty Chianti bottles. Scatter them on your food table and anyplace that needs an authentic touch.  

Lighting.  Use white Christmas tree lights to string across the ceiling, looping down from the ceiling, to create an urban carnival atmosphere.

Purchase helium balloons in red, white and green to sell the carnival fantasy and soften the corners of your room. 

Find authentic carnival posters or Italian language advertisements and hang them in less decorated party spaces.  Always remember to include hallways and bathrooms. 

Menu

Next, carry forward the Italian theme in the food.  But don’t bore your guests with pasta and red sauce, serve a shallot pesto pasta and honor street fair culture with snow cones.  Well, snow cones for adults: frozen strawberry daiquiris.    

Shallot Pesto Pasta

5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts

2 ½ lbs wagon wheels or fiori shaped pasta

2 ½ lbs frozen asparagus spears

7 TBL chopped garlic (Polaner or other brand, chopped and packaged)

80 medium sized fresh basil leaves, torn

¾ cup plus 2 TBL coarsely chopped fresh shallot

3 ½ TBL ground pepper

¾ cup plus 2 TBL water

¾ cup plus 2 TBL dry white wine or white cooking wine

1 ½ cup olive oil

2 TBL chopped basil (Polaner or other brand)

In a large pot bring sufficient water to cover 2 ½ pounds of pasta to a boil.  Cook until al dente, about 8 to 10 minutes.  Cut the boneless skinless chicken breasts into ¼ inch cubes.  Sauté over medium-high heat in olive oil flavored cooking spray.  Lightly salt and or add crushed red pepper flakes to taste.  Chop the shallots coarsely and measure.  Once you have the appropriate amount of chopped shallot, combine with fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, water, white wine and black pepper in a food processor.  Liquefy. 

Next steam the asparagus spears.  Drain and spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray.  Lightly salt.  After the asparagus has cooled, cut spears into ¼ inch sections.  Combine in pasta pot, cooled, drained pasta, chicken and asparagus.  Pour in sauce and stir well.  Use a spatula to remove all sauce from the sides of the food processor.  Finally, add prepackaged, pre-chopped fresh basil.  Stir well and serve in a large, decorative serving bowl. 

Makes 20 Servings

Snow Cones for Adults

2 large bags of ice

6 16-oz bags of frozen strawberries, slightly thawed

30 oz sweetened lime juice

4 ltrs light, white rum

Everyone loves a daiquiri.  But some daiquiri mixes are way too sweet.  This recipe won’t make you feel coated with sugar and still evokes great snow cone memories.

Fill approximately half of a blender with ice.  Add one cup of slightly thawed strawberries, 2 ½ ounces of sweetened lime juice and ten ounces of light white rum.  Put the lid back on the blender and hit the mix button.  Blend thoroughly, so there are no chunks of ice.  Repeat as needed.  

Tip:  a standard 40-ounce blender makes 5 drinks per batch.  For larger groups, consider borrowing an extra blender from a friend or neighbor to make drinks faster.

Serves 20 

Mood Points

It’s not a carnival without the games!  Take a dartboard and affix several balloons to it to make your own “pop the balloon” game.  

Set up some empty wine bottles as a rubber ring toss.  A new, unused pet toy makes an excellent rubber ring.

Try bocce ball.  Don’t know how to play? Head down to Little Italy about a week or so before the party and do a little research. 

Finishing touches

Music.  Think New York in the 1950’s – Sinatra and Dean Martin. 

Movies.  Offer Fellini films in the background.  A little avant-garde cinema will catch your guests’ attention, but not distract them to the point where conversation withers. 

Now, there’s nothing left to do, but pour yourself a daiquiri and wait for guests to arrive. 

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The Society of Recovering Sorority Girls is an elite organization devoted to a life less ordinary. Check out more easy entertaining ideas at www.recoveringsororitygirls.com