Star Trek Tea Party / Marathon

"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot!" is Captain Picard's fave beverage and I worked it into this little festivity by turning it into a tea party. Though it wasn't the phrase that began this whole festivity. It was, "Let's have a Star Trek Marathon!" that began this little idea. A mutual friend of my boyfriend and I happens to be a writer and huge Star Trek/Sci-fi fan and my boyfriend is big on Star Trek too. Though I must admit I am not what you call a "Trekkie" or "Trekker" or anything of the sorts...I am a geek but mainly about different things...cartoons and Muppets are more my forte I'd say...sci-fi piques my interest mainly if it involves time travel I've noticed. I have many friends that are into Star Trek and I assume it's because they're very sweet, progressive, and accepting people when it comes to everyone's differences. I like that about the Star Trek crowd...though I've tried to pay attention to shows and even movies, for some reason I can't quite stay with the dialogue. I often tell my boyfriend it's because I'm like a boring old Hobbit. I don't like adventure and would hate to be a nomad like these guys. I always cry when I watch The Littlest Hobo not just because of the theme song, but because he has no home. My boyfriend reassures me, "But he likes it that way. He doesn't want a home." Being a "homebody" myself I can't accept this reality that people are happy to not be at home. "They need to have a home! They're just circling around in space! Why don't they have a home?!" My boyfriend laughs and thinks I'm strange, "Their ship is their home." He explains. "That's not good enough!" I exclaim. He thinks my little quirk is cute for some reason so we get along just fine with him watching his Star Trek and me watching my cartoons.

So even though I'm not into the whole Star Trek thing, because my boyfriend and I have been dating for 4 years now he teaches me what some of the jokes mean every now and then. Seeing as I've been attending comic cons and had even been invited to some sci-fi cons I felt it's in my best interest to sort of get the world of Star Trek as best as I can. I like the idea of it, I just wish I could follow it and love it the way some of the fans do. Oh well, I guess it's not in my blood, but I tried. So when my friend and his girlfriend came over to Marathon through a few Star Trek episodes (My boyfriend pretty much has every show and movie, including the movie, Trekkies about the Star Trek fandom) and his girlfriend wasn't a fan of Star Trek either but she had a gluten allergy I thought I'd make the food somewhat healthy, geeky and fun! It appeared to be a success in my opinion. We watched a few episodes. I think the guys tried to get us into it with a few Tribble episodes. I personally like Tribbles. They're soft like cats and they purr like them too, all the cute and if you don't feed them, none of the mess, low maintenance. We even own a Tribble, but we don't feed it, so it's breeding habits are under control. See:

Anyhoo, back to the food. So, I had seen some Star Trek Insignia cookies being made on Nerdy Nummies on Youtube here and looked up a gluten-free recipe for these cookies and found them here I changed the recipe slightly for the cookies...I substituted the egg for 4 Tbsp of gluten-free ground flax seed and 12 tbsp of water instead of 4 eggs. So it was more vegan friendly and I didn't use the orange zest (which I think you're supposed to do) but I did use orange juice. My boyfriend and I went shopping at some health food stores and bought a couple of jams and we were given the yellow "walnut and fig" jam from friends for Christmas so we used it in here. You can use any jams you want and could even make your own I'm sure. We bought a few organic ones. As long as you have red, blue and yellow for their uniform colours I think that's all that mattered. I tried all of them and they were yummy!

Oh, side note* These cookies are Jewish Purim cookies and I had no idea our friend's girlfriend was Jewish (we had only met her once before) and she went crazy over it! I personally just love cookies with jam in them anyway and am also a fan of jam tarts so when I found this recipe I was happy. The dough was slightly crumbley, but in my experience with gluten-free doughs it did stay together fairly well. Maybe they don't look as good as the Nerdy Nummies ones do, nor the cookies from levanacooks.com but I was on a time restraint and making all these things at once so they were fresh on arrival.

As you can see someone gave my boyfriend a wonderful Star Trek inspired oven mitt from thinkgeek.com and I think it could also double as a "foam hand" sort of thing, if you will, while cheering for your Star Trek heroes during marathons. LOL!

Anyway, so the dessert was taken care of and I somehow wanted to work in my new fave dish that seems to be enjoyed by everyone I've made it for. I asked my boyfriend if they fought a lot of green aliens in Star Trek and he showed me this clip of apparently the "worst fight scene ever" according to people who watch Star Trek...and while watching it it seemed quite accurate. Though I felt the alien didn't exactly look green though I think he was supposed to be some kind of space lizard thing and my boyfriend said he probably was green, the footage is just probably faded from age. Either way, I decided to make this dish of the Quinoa Avacado Salad into something awesomely simple and geeky. I ommited a few things like the peppers and the hot sauce and the spices remaining gave it a nice, light and flavourful food you can eat on it's own or with chips as a dip. It can be a very nice, healthy and textured quacamole. So that's what we did. My boyfriend is a huge fan of these gluten free chips, in particular the red ones. I think the red ones were quite a hit and the first to get polished off.

So, what I did was I used each chip colour as a uniform colour insignia (again, much like the cookie idea) and the green ones I pretended they were little green aliens they had to fight in honor of the video clip my boyfriend showed me above. And the salad was the planet's tasty terrain.

I know...I have an active imagination, but I think it worked out well...though I don't know who appreciated the geekery involved, we scarfed it down so quickly.

Another healthy food I decided to have on display was inspired by my boyfriend's insistance that I watch Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. He tells me on numerous occassions that I'd love that movie. I have yet to watch it, but it does sound like one I may enjoy, seeing as they go back to save the whales for some reason. Being a vegetarian (and the only thing holding me back from being completely vegan is cheese...I have yet to try a healthy and accurate substitute for it, and I know cheese isn't the best thing for me either, but I have tried to limit my intake of it more these days and have more veggies in my diet) I have a few ethical reasons for being one, I love animals, and not just cats and dogs, all animals (I even feel bad for little ants if they get squished) so when he tells me it's a political, environmental film about saving whales I must admit it has turned my head a bit. I'll give it a chance some day I'm sure (my boyfriend's probably doing a happy dance as he reads this) but for now I found this vegan "tuna" recipe and when I put it on the table I entitled it "Save the Whales Vegan Tuna". Even though this blogger put it in cucumbers I sort of skipped that step and bought some of my fave Organic Oven quinoa bread and bagels I've only been able to find at Noah's Health Food store (link to the store is featured on the side of this blog) and I love how this is no sugar added and eggless as well. It tastes best toasted, I must admit and I forgot to take a picture of it but I toasted a slice of the bread with some cheese and put some of this "tuna" on top with some cherry tomatoes and made a little tuna melt.

I must also admit I thought the vegan mayo would have made the fake tuna taste a bit more like tuna, and not that it was bad but it only looked like tuna, it didn't taste like it at all. Because of the almonds there was a very light, nutty flavor to it. My boyfriend said it was more like an almond spread. I'm willing to try other recipes for this. I saw one that looked yummy that involved chick peas (I love chick peas) so I may try that another time.

So I came up with this light, fun, and nerdy little table. Added some other items that weren't exactly nerdy or Star Trek inspired but still gluten-free and healthy like a few fruits and veggies. I also had the option of natural peanut butter and all three of the insignia jams (that we bought for the cookies) to also go on the Organic Oven bread if one wanted it but no takers on that idea. Oh well, there was a lot of food. And of course we had a lot of Earl Grey tea as seen above. Over all I think it was a good spread and our friend's girlfriend called it "Gluten-free Heaven!" and that's all I could have asked for.