Okay, so I never did get around to doing any FSMas blogging this year, but in my defense, I didn’t do much decorating, either. Or rather, I didn’t make any new decorations; I just make do with last’s years arts and crafts. Which is all fine and good, as I’ve gathered quite the collection of FSMas ornaments to date.

I did, however, get my FSMas cards done and out in a timely manner - so much so that I had plenty of time to make some outtakes, too.

While every dog-kid got his or her due in 2009, Ralphie & Rennie took center stage: they were our cover-doggies, complete with a fierce “Booty & The Beast” theme. I’ll let y’all figure out who is supposed to be “Booty” and who is “The Beast.”

Ignore the glaring age disparity, mkay? Normally I don’t like pairing a young little lassie with a much older gent - seeing as how it’s a reflection of our sexist societal norms - but there’s, like, zero chemistry between the two oldest dogs, Kaylee and Ralphie. Seriously, I could not get the two to sit next to one another for more than 30 seconds at a time. And yes, I might have bucked the hetero trend with a same-sex pairing, but I thought that might have come off as homophobic and/or mockingly emasculating, given the theme. (Yes, holidays are political for me; what of it?)

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I started to think about this year’s FSMas feast well before November. Since we’re talking about a (spoof) religion which revolves around pasta and pirates, a noodle-based dish is basically a given. Last year, we had lasagna…the same as every x-mas before. What can I say? The pasta, I loves it. That, and I’m not especially adventurous in the kitch.

But in the spirit of Vegan MoFo, I vowed to try out a new dish this year - but what?

Stephen Colbert to the rescue! (@ 2.27):

Communist Manipesto - that’s the ticket. Naturally, a “Communist Manipesto” dish must involve manicotti and pesto. And sundried tomato pesto is the shit! Blend a pesto recipe with a little tofu for bulk, stuff it in a package of manicotti, and there’s a FSMas dinner to (not) die for!

So I started by Googling around the internets in search of sundried tomato pesto recipes, finally settling on this one from All Recipes:

Ingredients

* 4 ounces sun-dried tomatoes
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
* 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
* 1/4 cup chopped pine nuts
* 3 tablespoons chopped onion
* 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
* 1 tablespoon tomato paste
* 1/3 cup crushed tomatoes
* 1/4 cup red wine
* 1/2 cup olive oil
* 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
* salt to taste

Directions

1. Place sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl and cover with warm water for 5 minutes, or until tender.

2. In a food processor or blender combine sun-dried tomatoes, basil, parsley, garlic, pine nuts and onion; process until well blended. Add vinegar, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes and red wine, and process. Stir in olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Season with salt to taste.

Of course, this was only a starting point - I had to modify the recipe a bit to make it vegan. And, you know, adjust certain ingredients according to what I did and didn’t have in the pantry. And add a few extra steps.

Here’s the final version of the recipe…well, the final version of Chapter 1, anyway. I’m not in love with it, so likely there will be additional “Chapters” forthcoming. More on that below!

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Last year, when I initially conceived of FSMas, one of the first diy craft ideas to pop into my head was that of building a Noodle House. (Think “gingerbread house,” but with uncooked pasta instead of cookies and icing…and not at all edible, natch.)

I finally found some time this month to experiment with my first noodle house. Even though it turned out to be a bit of a flop - I spent a good half hour yesterday dismantling what I’d made, so I could at least recycle the cardboard frame - I’m going to blog the process anyway, share what worked and what didn’t, and hopefully hammer out some new ideas for the 2009 holiday season.

OK, well, where to begin? I started with two smallish-medium square cardboard boxes. The larger box, the dimensions of which were slightly longer/wider than the length of a lasagna noodle, formed the base of the house. I taped the top and bottom closed so that all the surfaces were level.

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I’d wanted to feature Ralphie and Rennie on this year’s holiday card, but they weren’t exactly cooperative during the photo shoot; Rennie wouldn’t sit still, while Ralphie, laying listlessly under the tree, resembled a piece of roadkill dressed in pirate gear.

Luckily, Peedee saved the day! While we were taking pictures of Booty and the Beast, we had the office door closed so Peedee, Kaylee and Jayne couldn’t distract our would-be cover dogs. But as soon we finished up with Ralphie and O-Ren, I opened the door and in ran Peedee, who promptly plopped himself down right in front of the tree. First shot, and bam! Perfect. There was our FSMas card:

Because I had so much fun making Peedee’s card - and I didn’t want to leave any of the dogs out - I created a few similar cards from the “outtakes.”

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I’ve been trying to take a bit of a break from the internets lately - too many kerfluffles to suffer, I say! - so this week I’ve kept myself occupied with two of my favorite things: FSMas crafts and Lost. On Monday, I churned out a Duggar family’s worth of Flying Spaghetti Monsters - a bunch of festive holiday ones, mostly, but I also experimented with some other colors and holiday themes. Since I didn’t elaborate much on this in Sunday’s tutorial, I thought I might share some family snapshots to give y’all a better idea of how you might diversify your brood of FSMs.

First, those festive FSMs.

You can make a larger monster by twining two (or more) pipe cleaners together before assembling the monster. Or, you can birth a baby by cutting the pipe cleaners in half first. Here’s a “giant” monster I made, along with a wee little FSM:

It’s a little hard to see in that photo, but the giant FSM’s noodles are super-long and, well, kind of undulating and hypnotic:

I also gave her a set of extra-large googly eyes, and used faux cranberries for the soy balls; the cushy pom poms were just too small for this BBW.

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Update, 12/17/08: Build a monster for every occasion - click here for more recipes!

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My favorite FSMas decoration by far is the festive Flying Spaghetti Monsters I created last year. They’re really easy to make, too; in fact, once you’ve got the process down, you’ll be birthing these babies like guppies. Recruit a friend or two, and y’all can get an assembly line going: a few Pastafarians to weave the noodles together, and another heathen to glue on the pom poms and googly eyes.

Surely I jest, right?: If they’re soooo easy to make, you ask, why did I wait until today to blog the instructions? Well, because it’s a huge pain in the ass to take pictures for illustrative purposes while your living room floor is covered with pipe cleaners and pom poms, and there’s a glue gun smoking in the background, and your nosy doggehs are running off with half-finished monsters stuffed in their maws. In other words, please excuse the sub-par photo quality. The pictures I took on Friday didn’t come out quite as nicely as I’d hoped, but there’s no way I’m doing a reshoot. I have monsters to make, peoples!

For this project, you’ll need:

* “Chenille” pipe cleaners, preferably in sparkly shades of red, green, gold and silver (for the noodley appendages)
* Pom poms (round, cushy balls), also with a metallic sparkle, preferably in matching colors (for the soya balls)
* Googly eyes (um, for the eyes)
* Either a hot glue gun or a very strong glue (to keep it all together)

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While working on my FSMas cards this week, it occurred to me that this is the first year I’ve made “generic” cards - that is, photos with generic, non-personalized season’s greetings on the photo itself. Mostly, this departure is due to technical reasons (not enough horizontal white space on which to include text); however, a unexpected side effect is that this year’s cards - all four - are suitable for Pastafarians of all surnames, not just the Garbato-Brady’s.

I’m not yet ready to unveil 2008’s cards - what would I post on FSMas day, then? - but today I did go back and rework my 2005 and 2007 FSMas cards, removing all the personal info and replacing it with non-specific FSMas holiday messages. Feel free to download and use these for your own (*cough* non-commercial *cough*) saucy CriFSMas purposes, especially proselytizing to and converting your non-believing friends and family members. (Click on each card to supersize it via Flickr.)

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smite me!

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Last year, the Mr. and I started a new holiday tradition; rather than celebrate Festivus or x-mas, we decided to observe FSMas (or CriFSMas, if you prefer) instead. Whereas FSM = Flying Spaghetti Monster, the holiday basically revolves around two things: pasta and pirates.

Since this is somewhat of a fringe (spoof) religion (for now, muahahahaha!), you can’t exactly go to the Buy More and purchase decorations off the shelves. So also last year, I started blogging my FSMas decorating ideas, if only to amuse myself, but also in hopes of giving all y’all other heathens out there a kick in the pants and away from traditional Christmas festivities. We’re in a War on Christmas, peoples - pick a side.

I started out with the best of intentions in 2007, but didn’t get to blog many craft projects before the season was over. Given that it’s already December 8th, 2008 is shaping up to be a real world busy / internet sparse-y year as well, but I promise I’ll try to blog as much as time allows. (Suddenly, starting the season a week or so before Halloween doesn’t seem like such a buzzkill.)

To recap last year’s FSMas yummyness, we had:

* FSMas cards (two, yo!);

* Magical FSMas Vaginas (for the tree, natch);

* Pasta, pirate and FSM magnets for the fridge (i.e., Her Noodliness’s Tomb);

* Community/college bulletin boards, lined with all manner of FSM propaganda;

* Flags, flags and more flags;

* Flying spaghetti monster photos, displayed in - what else? - macaroni-lined frames; and

* Pirate booty galore.

I’d intended to write about the most important of FSMas items (that would be the tree, silly!) tonight, but I ended up finishing the decorating instead. So here’s an easy one: Noodles on a cross.

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Lifelong atheists, the Mr. and I have had an increasingly ambivalent relationship with Christmas. On the one hand, x-mas is undoubtedly *the* biggest holiday of the year - and yet, it’s also a very *religious* holiday, crass consumerism and Santa hats aside. July 4th, President’s Day, Flag Day, St. Patrick’s Day…no secular holiday can compare. Even Thanksgiving and Halloween carry religious connotations. Besides protesting the holiday by spelling it with an “x” instead of a “Christ” (the weakest of protestations, I might add), what’s a godless blasphemer to do, hmmm?

In ‘06, we tried celebrating Festivus in conjunction with x-mas. Given that Festivus - having only appeared in one episode of Seinfeld - is a pretty sketchy holiday, our Festivus was “Festivus” in name only: we still decorated the house with a Christmas tree, red-green-gold-silver tinsel, stockings, Santas, etc., dressed the dogs in holiday apparel, and opened presents and devoured vegan eats on December 25th. What were we gonna do - display an aluminum pole and yell at one another over dinner? We weren’t kidding anyone: it was CHRISTmas, more or less.

Last year, I had an epiphany - why not celebrate FSMas instead? We could decorate the house with pasta and pirates, and perhaps even celebrate on a day other than the 25th. And that’s what we did - I made macaroni ‘garland’ by stringing pieces of penne together, hung maroon satin bulbs (soy balls) and red lights on the tree, framed photos of His/Her/Its Noodliness, made a pirate alter in the front window, and created festive mini Flying Spaghetti Monsters using tinseled pipe cleaners, pom poms and googly eyes. We ‘officially’ recognized the holiday on December 24, so we could lounge around and relax on the 25th. (In between phone calls home, of course.) The dogs dressed as pirates, and Kaylee posed for our FSMas card surrounded by gold doubloons and Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum.

We had so much fun that we’re doing the same this year, only bigger and better. I’m reusing many of the decorations I created last year, and hopefully I’ll find time to follow up on some other ideas (especially that Noodle House - like a Gingerbread House, but with lasagna and the like). While the general theme is pasta and pirates, I’ve kind of relaxed the rules a bit from last year. As a for instance, I stuck to red (red sauce) and gold (gold booty) tinsel last year, but am also including green (pesto sauce) and silver (silver booty) tinsel this year…because I’ve got a ton of the stuff. X-mas themed stuffed animals are also allowed out of the closet this year, but only if they agree to wear pirate hats, eye patches, and gold hooks. Pirates are again all the rage, but whereas “pirates” meant eye-patched, sea-faring thieves in ‘07, the definition of pirates has expanded in ‘08, to include much beloved space pirates as the crew of Serenity. (Where do y’all think we got the names Kaylee and Jayne, hmmm?)

Anyway, I’ll be blogging it all on Smite Me!, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out.

Also last year, we began a tradition of starting the FSMas decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. Which got me thinking about Thanksgiving, and whether I want to recognize a holiday that commemorates the genocide of millions of Native Americans with the genocide of millions of birds at all.

I’ve never been a big fan of Thanksgiving; doubly so since I went vegetarian roughly 12 years ago. Those early years, spent at my father’s mother’s house, I was lucky if there was a dish or two I could eat. I was both allergic to milk and ethically repulsed by meat, so there were precious few foods suitable for my diet. Later on, the Tofurky worked its way into pop culture consciousness and onto our table. But even then, my options mostly consisted of the Tofurky, olives (which my grandmother, having lived through the Depression, rationed out as though they were caviar) and salad. Not exactly the stuff of a feast.

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What be your pirate name, matey?

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Tagged: pirates fsm flying spaghetti monster