Life of Pi Oscar Party with Bigelow Tea-tinis!

Alison:  So, the Oscars are a great excuse to throw a party.  Some glamour and glitz always pairs well with some good food and drinks.

Susie:  You speak the truth!  Any excuse to get together is a good one and why not celebrate some good movies like the Life of Pi.

Alison:  Luckily, I had a few new recipes I wanted to try out.  Including mixing some of our favorite Bigelow Teas into delicious cocktails.

Susie:  Off to Walmart we went to pick up party ingredients.  I'm betting they have a good selection of Bigelow Tea.

Alison:  They didn't have as large a selection of tea as I'd hoped.  For such a large retailer I was surprised to see only a few varieties of Bigelow tea on the shelf.  Also so poorly stocked.  :(

Susie:  But Walmart did have everything else we needed for our party.  Check out the rest of our trip on Google+.

Alison:  Since we recently saw the Life of Pi, we decided to go for a tropical menu.  It was nominated for quite a few categories and we loved the movie.

Susie:  So, we gathered up a few healthy choices with some lean meats and lots of tropical fruit.

Alison:  The Life of Pi is about survival on the open sea.  Not a bad way to structure a meal working to a full nutritional meal.  Pi and Richard Parker are limited to mostly fish for food.  Living in the Midwest, we opted for some crab.  We don't get a large variety of freshly caught fish this far away from the ocean.

Susie:  We paired our shrimp with coconut.  A magical food with all kinds of health benefits.  Not to mention a flavor we love.

Alison: We made some other island inspired foods with pulled pork sandwiches, crab rangoon and fruit salad.

Susie:  Basically, we had all the major food groups with pork, chicken, crab, and beef.  We had fruits, mushrooms, grains, dairy.

Alison:  Of course, all those dishes took time.  We had only two days to create everything from scratch.

Susie:  Luckily, we went simple and focused on flavors rather than fancy cooking techniques.

Alison:  We stayed away from the lure of oils and fats.  We opted to bake everything in the oven rather than fry it in oils.  It takes a little longer but it's a whole lot healthier.

Susie:  Not to mention that it's a lot safer.  Being spattered by hot oil is never fun.  Plus, it's almost entirely unavoidable.

Alison:  After two entire days in the kitchen it was time to set up for our Bigelow Tea Life of Pi Oscar party.  

Susie:  We love Bigelow Tea because of their variety of flavors.  They are always making new ones for us to try out.  There is no way that we could ever have too much of it.

Alison: With Bigelow we can get our caffeine fix without getting an overload.  We found their newest flavor White Chocolate.  Plus their Pomegranate Green allowed us some perfect drink flavors.

Susie:  We decorated with blues and greens to match our island themed food.  Then we set out to mix and set out all of our food.

Alison:  Our guests loved our Tea-tinis.  They even got a full meal while thinking they were only eating party food!

Susie:  We spent some time watching the pre-show while we talked about who would win what.

Alison:  Our bets weren't far off as we thought the Life of Pi would be a big winner this year.

Susie:  We even tried to take some ideas from the movie to play I-Spy but we were much too busy filling our plates.

Alison:  Right.  I-Spy something with coconut!

Susie: Is it the shrimp?  Or the the brownies?  Or the cheese ball?

Alison:  No, it's the white chocolate coconut tea-tini!

Susie: Luckily, we still have some more tea so we can mix up some more!

Alison:  Our party was definitely a hit!

Susie: We were able to spread some good nutrition and culture.


Alison:  Not to mention an amazing array of laughs.

Susie: No party is complete without some laughter!

Did you know that Bigelow Tea is having a Life of Pi contest?  You can enter up till March 20th!  Don't forget to watch for Life of Pi coming out on Blu-ray and DVD March 12th at your local Walmart!

We'll have recipes from our party to share soon!

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias® and Bigelow Tea #CBias #SocialFabric #AmericasTea All opinions are my own.