Three Postcards Food: The Answers!

Back at the end of the school year, I was ASM for the musical Three Postcards. I put pictures up of all the dishes, and let people guess what the food was. What's real? What's fake? What is something other than it is?

So here are the answers for what everything actually was!



"Seafood mousse with mushroom caps and fried grapes"


I put Cool Whip (well, actually, the generic store brand) in the little cup. Then I sprinkled on some Folger's coffee crystals. The grapes were fake plastic. The green stuff is fake plastic grass that I cut off of a mat "fake lawn" every night. Obviously, the actors ate around the fake stuff. The little crackers were real from a box, and were stuck down to the plate with honey.


"Cream of fennel soup"


This was low-fat, non-dairy creamer (trying to keep things healthy for the actors). It's garnished with fresh parsley.


"Cornish hen with bulgar wheat"


The cornish hen is actually made from styrofoam, painted and covered with some kind of poly-styrine... or something like that. We hid a small piece of breaded chicken (nugget-sized) underneath it so that the actors could have something to eat that would look like it. It was garnished with real parsley. The bulgar wheat is cooked brown rice (which helped to hide the chicken). The carrots and asparagus are real, but we bought canned ones so that they wouldn't make as much noise on stage.

The mystery red sauce in the corner? It's dyed honey. The actors had to sing so much during the show AND during the class day that they were doing damage to their voices. They requested that we find a way to put honey on their plates and lemon juice in their drinks. But the honey (clover honey, to be precise) looked too weird on a plate, so we dyed it red.


"Veal paillard"


The veal fake, and made from the same stuff as the cornish hen. We put a piece of chicken under it, too, as well as the same cooked brown rice. The rosemary garnish is plastic, that I cut off from a bouquet of plastic greenery every night. The carrot and the asparagus are real.

Sadly, this picture isn't true to what the dish REALLY looked like. Originally, we were making it with some sort of uncooked Asian noodles, that were long and twisted, and they looked like spaghetti. Near the end of the run (I think the second to last night), we ran out of them. Our designer went out to buy more, but he couldn't find them, so he bought those brown chow-mein-ish noodles. They didn't look anything like the previous noodles, so I personally went on a shopping mission to find some. I couldn't, so I bought the egg noodles. I ended up mixing them for the last two shows and putting them both on.


"The duck with cherries"


As you may have guessed, the duck is fake like the last two, and had a piece of chicken (visibly) laying underneath. I did my best to scrape the breading off to a point where it was similar in color to the fake duck so that it wouldn't be too noticeable from stage. The red sauce is the same dyed honey. There is a cranberry sauce garnish which came from a can (and separated into solid and liquid like that every night, much to my dismay). The "cherries" are plastic grapes. The herbs on top are more fake plastic grass.


"Rum-flavored apple aspic"


The aspic was Jell-O from a snack cup, that I cut in half to make it shorter. I put a dollop of Cool Whip on top. Then I sliced an apple and fanned out the pieces. The actors usually ate more of the apple than of the Jell-O, because it was easier to grab off a plate from across the table.


"Coffee and cream"


The sugar bowl was, as you can see, empty! No one used it, and you couldn't tell from stage, so we just left it like that. The non-dairy low-fat creamer doubled as actual creamer after moonlighting as soup. The coffee was Folger's decaf that I prepared during the show. I had to figure out when to make it so that it would be warm enough to not be gross, but cool enough to be drinkable.



And the winner of the Three Postcards Food Contest is...

*drumroll*


Tim!
(Blogger of A Drop of Water)

Tim correctly identified:
- whipped cream for the "Seafood Mousse"
- milk for the "Cream of Fennel Soup" (well, it's creamer, but I gave it to him)
- brown rice "Bulgar Wheat"
- noodles from the "Veal Paillard"
- chow mein from the "Veal Paillard"
- real apples with the "Rum Apple Aspic"
- real "Coffee"

And in general, he phrased his answers in a way that made me laugh, so I gave him bonus points. (Because it's my contest, and I'm totally allowed to do that.)


The first runner-up was Mary K.!

Mary K. identified:

- real carrots
- real asparagus
- Chinese noodles with the "Veal Paillard"
- cranberry sauce with the "Duck"
- apple slices in the "Apple Aspic"
- gelatin for the "Apple Aspic"
- real coffee and cream (but also said they might be made of gelatin so as not to spill... so I gave her half-points for hedging her bets)


And the second runner-up was Kathleen (aka... my mother!)

My mom identified:
- cream for the "Cream of Fennel Soup" (well, she guessed Half-n-Half...)
- parsley for the "Cream of Fennel Soup"
- fake prop for the "Cornish Hen"
- fake prop for the "Veal Paillard"
- Chow mein noodles for the "Veal Paillard"
- real apples with the "Apple Aspic"
- real cream
- empty sugar bowl!

(But I'm pretty sure that I told my mom about some of the things I was doing with the show before she entered the contest, so I docked her a couple of points).

Tim and Mary K., please send your addresses to AngelaActs(at)gmail(dot)com, and I will send along your prizes. :)



Check back for more contests in the future!

~A~