October comes in on a Styrofoam tiger and rubber chickens

You know I wanted to do a Halloween menu from Cincinnati Celebrates: Cooking and Entertaining for All Seasons (Junior League of Cincinnati, first printing August, 1974, though mine is from the 1980 fifth printing) for October, but the one in this book was frankly boring. The menu was pretty basic and had few actual recipes associated with it. The decorations were pretty traditional. The most exciting touch was that the invitations were supposed to be written in invisible ink on ghost-shaped paper with only the instructions "Iron Me" visible, so the invisible ink would turn visible. So instead of going with the holiday I love, I picked a menu for an event that I could not care less about: tailgating.

I mean "Parking Lot Picnics."

The invitation is a miniature card of an actual tailgate, though, so I'm pretty sure I'm right in assuming that the Junior Leaguers mean tailgate parties.

Note that the invitation says to "look for the 'chickens.'" If you've been paying attention to this book, I'll bet you can guess why.

Yep! It's a craft-- in this case, rubber chickens with the name of the opposing team tied around their necks before they were fastened to the car antennas. My favorite touch is the "replica of a football field with a Styrofoam tiger representing the Cincinnati Bengals," though. I'm sure everyone was impressed by the ball-shaped tiger with a yarn tail and cork legs running across a white-ribbon-bedecked green Styrofoam field. I also love that the illustration makes it look like a hybrid cat-pig with gumdrop legs trampling some freshly-dug graves, so maybe this post is still Halloween-appropriate. (Yes, I know the crosses are supposed to be a goalpost, but let me have this one.)

The Champura is supposed to help with the chill if it's a nippy fall day.

The boozy hot chocolate should take the edge off. Just hope that nobody drinks enough that they start making fun of the model of a hybrid cat-pig in the cemetery, or Mitzi will lose her shit. She worked hard on that!

The chili doesn't have any hot sauce or chili powder, but at least the recipe calls for green chilis and cumin. It's not a contender for least chili-like chili of all time.

I think corn or tortilla chips would be better sides than crackers, celery and carrot strips, and slaw (and really wonder about cottage cheese as a topper!), but I also think the chili could maybe have used some chili powder and hot sauce, so what do I know?

The Shrimp & Mushroom Picks are here to add a little class to the tailgate, so everybody will know it's a Junior League event.

Plus there should be Cocktail Wieners with Mustard Sauce so it will seem tailgate-y enough. Have to balance out subbing champura for the beer and serving shrimp with things like chili and mini-wieners.

There are no recipes for the relish plate, banana cake, or coffee royale, but everybody knows the relish plate is only for decoration anyway, especially at a tailgate party! The cake could probably be picked up at a bakery on the way to the parking lot, and anybody could pour their own booze into some coffee and call it "royale" if they wanted. Everybody knows the real work for a tailgating party should be on the handcrafted decorations anyway. The food is just a lure to get everybody to admire rubber chickens and Styrofoam tigers on Styrofoam fields.