Party Food

I'm trying to plan some offerings for our annual Oscars(R) watching party, now that there will be an Oscars ceremony to watch. We do it as a pot luck and we've asked people to bring appropriate Oscars themed food. Len has asked that no one bring milkshakes. We're both tired of the radio ad for There Will Be Blood (although I'm thinking about ham for Daniel Day-Lewis.)

I'm inclined toward some Russian zakuski, in honor of Viggo Mortensen's nomination for Eastern Promises. I happen to have a couple of Russian cookbooks, including one mentioned in an L.A. Times article about zakuski in Wednesday's paper. My first husband proposed to me at the famous Russian Tea Room in New York and that bit of information made it into an article that appeared in the Washington Post on the publication of the Russian Tea Room Cookbook back in the days when I did a lot of photography for the post (and as much as I could do for the Food Section headed by Phyllis C. Richman.) (I'm not sure I could have made that sentence any longer.) My roses aren't in bloom, making it difficult to reproduce the rose petal cake from that film.

Of course, being a huge fan of eggplant, Ratatouille's ratatouille (sans Reme) would be the perfect dish, even though my husband wouldn't eat it on a bet. My vegetarian friends would certainly appreciate it. Perhaps the simple roasted chicken instead, though Len won't eat food that looks like itself.

Candied apples a la Enchanted (sans poison) are another possibility, but Len won't eat most fruit.

I'm really looking for some input here.

It would help if I'd seen more of this year's nominees. Despite the number of screeners that arrived in the mail, the only best picture nominee I've seen is Juno. I'm going to try and watch Michael Clayton before Sunday night, but Len keeps booking up our free evenings. If there was an Oscars pool that wanted my participation, I'd really have to punt this time out.