Cajun Crescents recipe

This isn’t the sort of bourbon-filled concoction you associate with the bedlam of Mardi Gras. But if you find yourself with the need to feed a throng of rowdies, these quick and easy Cajun Crescents will do the trick. And while this might not be enough to inspire your guests to bare their bosoms for beads, it does bring home a little taste of the Big Easy.

Heat-and-eat crescent rolls are perfect for whipping up party foods on the fly — something I discovered doing my pigs in blankets. But even a fancy-pants foodie would scarf these down. Loaded with shrimp, andouille sausage and bell pepper, the Cajun Crescents get a kick from a pinch of red pepper flakes and Cajun seasoning, a magic spice blend that is a bright, bold wonderland of Louisiana flavor. Keep some on hand and set your taste buds ablaze, celebrating Carnival season all year long.

How to Throw a Guac Bowl

A few years ago a friend started a guacamole competition he dubbed Guac Bowl, and my Super Bowl^® Sundays have never been the same. In my (perhaps overstated) opinion, it is the perfect approach to a Bowl party for football watchers and non-watchers alike. Here’s how to throw one:

1. Start with an Evite invitation (naturally) to provide event details as well as the perfect forum for attendee smack-talk.

2. Explain categories in your invitation. The Guac Bowl I attend has four:

• Best-tasting traditional guac (no funny ingredients).
• Best-tasting alternative guac (funny ingredients encouraged!). I’ve seen guacs that include blood orange and fennel, chocolate, hummus, pomegranate, bacon (I did that one!) and countless other tasty or disgusting ingredients.
• Best presentation (more to come on this).
• The Icarus award — this acknowledges the guac that flew closest to the sun only to fall, such as the non-palate-pleasing Guacsicle popsicles and the Guac-king Stuffers featuring peppermint candy guacamole served in Christmas stockings. Tasty? No. Hilarious? Yes!

Super Bowl Ads Pool

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Sports fan or not, everyone knows the best part of watching the Super Bowl^® is the commercials. Score points even with those who can't tell their tight end from a hole in the ground with this gridiron game anyone can play:

1. Create ballots with the names of all the companies advertising on Super Bowl^® Sunday and make enough copies for all your guests.

2. Have participants write their names on their ballots, mark which company's ad they predict will be the best of the Bowl, and write down how long they guess the game will last at the bottom of the page.

3. Tell everyone to switch ballots with their neighbor.

4. Instruct guests to rate every commercial from 1 to 10 (based on how much they like it) and write down their ratings on their neighbor's ballot. Some companies will run more than one ad; just have people keep recording their ratings for each commercial next to the company's name.

5. At the end of the game, ask participants to average their ratings for any company with multiple commercials. Then collect the ballots and tally the scores for each advertiser to determine whose spot won the Super Bowl^®.

6. Offer a prize (for example, a Nerf^® football or a six-pack of Bud Light^®) for the viewer who predicted the victor. In case of a tie, see who came closest to guessing the length of the game without going over.

question of the week: the big winner

All right, sports fans and Super Bowl^® party-goers. It's time to pick a side, and get behind your team. Let us know who you think is going to come out on top after this Sunday's game. (Out of loyalty to my fiancé, I am obligated to say, "Go, big blue!")

twiigs.com

Hut, Hut, Drink!!!

In just over a week, it’ll be the New York Giants battling the New England Patriots in Arizona for Super Bowl^® supremacy. At your home viewing party, though, the more pressing smackdown will be between the Big Blue Buzz and the Brady Punch.

Which adult beverage — color-coordinated to match your favorite team, of course — will come out on top? Or, more importantly, which batch of hooch will numb you enough to get you through Paula Abdul’s pre-game performance?

Read on for the drink recipes, and for some color-themed snack suggestions....

fishing for a kids' party idea?

Occasionally, I hear from parents who are stressed about keeping up with the bigger, better and more expensive birthday parties held for their friends' kids (nail salon visits, amusement park outings, renting out a local zoo!). Don't want to compete? If people are zigging toward big-ticket, big-headache parties, dare to zag with an old-school approach: Plan an at-home party on the cheap with fun, easy-to-organize games kids love.

I'm talking water balloon fights, scavenger hunts, egg tosses, relay races and letting kids get creative with shaving cream. And the highlight of all of my childhood parties, a traditional Swedish party game called fiskdamm (fishing pond).

I know, a goofy Scandinavian game sounds tame compared with pony rides, magicians and bounce houses, but I'm telling you, this was the activity everybody loved — and the one my friends remembered years later.

let them eat (lots of) cake

There are some lessons you learn the hard way. And other lessons made easier by the presence of cake. I'll explain.

For Eviter Lindsay's birthday, I ordered a sheet cake for the office. I assumed the term sheet referred to the shape of the cake — rectangular instead of round, like a sheet of paper. As it turns out, it means the cake you get is the size of a bedsheet. I mean, seriously, look at this thing (see photo above); it's about two feet long! It dwarfs the table! And those are full-size dinner plates next to it!

I read on some websites (after the fact, natch) that a full sheet cake can serve anywhere from 60 to 100 people. There were only about 30 of us, and although we've never been shy around cake, even our valiant efforts only made a dent in it.

So, lesson learned: Always ask about the size of the cake you're ordering. That said, I guess it was better to have too much cake than too little. The birthday girl took a big chunk home, and we were able to treat several other officemates to some frosted goodness. Happy ending.

And for the record, while I couldn't find a definitive online source, various sites claim that a quarter sheet feeds approximately 12 to 20 people, and a half sheet is meant for groups of 30 to 50.

p.s. The text on the cake? It reads "nom nom nom," an homage to the hungry lolcats on the I Can Has Cheezburger? site.

wii rule

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If you're one of the lucky people who got a Wii over the holidays, you're probably already logging some serious game time.

Playing against the computer is fun, but get some people together and you have a whole new way to party.

Here's how to turn your party up to 11:

• Dress the part. If you're playing a sports game, wear tennis whites, bowling shirts or old-school sweat bands on your wrist and head.
• Rock the room with Guitar Hero. Bonus points for heavy metal-style facial expressions and a Ramones stance.
• Plan a team tournament. For maximum bonding, ask each team to dress in matching colors or jerseys and come up with a team name.

Check out our entertaining section for more Wii party ideas.

question of the week: game highlights

Love it or hate it, watching the Super Bowl^® is one of the big American events of the year. So here's our super poll, where you can let us know what you're looking forward to — check as many as you want.

more at twiigs.com...

Profile On: Christmas Tree Burning Party

Yes, Christmas Past is now just a ghost, but the spirit of the Yule log was alive and well at the Christmas tree burning party my friends Rob and Kevin threw Saturday night. Some 50 people gathered on Dockweiler Beach at sunset to set fire to the cut conifers that had reigned over their living rooms just days before. Now dried out and denuded of their decorations, each one lit up like a Christmas tree as pyro-happy revelers threw them one after another onto the party's towering inferno of a bonfire.

During the brief intermissions between trees, kids roasted marshmallows for s'mores and waved at the jetliners climbing into the sky from adjacent LAX while the drum circle around the bonfire banged on their bongoes (silent night it was not). With especially dehydrated trees nearly exploding into a mushroom cloud of smoke and two-story flames, the evening doubled as a lesson in fire safety for those tempted to skimp on watering next year's Douglas firs till Santa Claus comes back to town.