What’s International Analog Day? It’s a day where we spend time doing things that don’t involve technology, where we party like it’s 1903. The day was created by Shannon Downey and friends, and promoted on her Badass Cross Stich site.
Matt and I decided to celebrate.
The Wednesday before the party, I still hadn’t figured out what food we were serving. But it was a day I went into the office, and also a day I forgot to bring my phone with me when going to the office. At lunch time, I realized I didn’t have anything to read, so I went out to the new books section and grabbed a book about party food, thinking it might inspire me. Instead it gave me my entire food plan: a mug party!
What is a mug party? The author had a tiny apartment when he first moved to New York City, and liked to entertain, but found that while people were happy to perch anywhere, it was hard to deal with plates and utensils while sitting crisscross on the floor. He had a lot of mugs, so he invited party food that could be served in mugs.
Et voila! The menu! Grapefruit mules, mozzarella sticks with marinara, a very green minestrone, one-pot broccoli shells and cheese, and a seven-layer sundae bar. To this I added a crudité platter, hummus, crackers and five bowls of noshes from the bulk bins at WinCo.
I was worried about the mug situation. Due to my constant discarding, we had four. Many people had not RSVP’d, so while I could tell the people who had RSVP’d to bring mugs, I was worried we would run out if a bunch of non-RSVP’d people showed up.
But! Walking back from New Seasons to buy the mint we needed for the mint syrup, Matt said to me, “Should we bring home these two boxes of mugs?” And there, sitting out for us to take, were about 12 mugs that someone was discarding. The party gods had provided!
Matt was an excellent sous chef, and I enjoyed the food prep.
As usual, I forgot to take photos when people were actually attending, but we had a good turnout, and the food was delicious. Sadly, I forgot to put out the coconut cream whipped cream for the sundaes, but everything else went smoothly.
What did we do at our analog party? As you can see, Matt made it very easy for people to play games. We also did knitting and embroidery. And I unknit a blanket Gail was making with what turned out to be not very good yarn. Kevin brought a Lego kit to assemble.
A good time was had by all.
When the party was done, we washed the mugs, and returned them to the curb for others to enjoy.