I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever had a cheese fondue, or a fondue of any sort, actually. It was big in the 70s and then seemed to vanish for several years, and now it's rather cool again. Can shag carpeting and Dorothy Hamill haircuts be far behind?

Actually, it has always seemed like a cool thing to me, but I've just never been in a situation where someone had fondue. But I can change all that starting today. It's National Cheese Fondue Day! Here are some recipes from AllRecipes, and here's some background on fondue in general.

As if melting marshmallows, stirring them with cereal, and patting the mixture into a pan wasn't easy enough, now Kellogg's is making absolutely certain that you can have Rice Krispies Treats for your parties. No more having to buy the industrial sized box of individually cut Rice Krispies Treats snacks for lunch boxes, opening each package, and putting them all on a plate!

The Rice Krispies Treats sheet is 32 ounces of marshmallow-y, cereal-y convenience. All you have to do it cut them into bars! Of course, if you're ambitious, use cookie cutters to cut out shapes to match your party.

For the Super Bowl, footballs are a natural. Dip one flat side of a football shape in melted chocolate, let it cool, and decorate with melted white chocolate to create laces on the football.

Sandra Lee should hire me as a consultant.

I haven't made deviled eggs since I was 9 years old. My best friend Marla and I were helping her grandma make dinner and were given the task of making deviled eggs. We didn't really know what we were doing and went through three eggs just trying to figure out whether they were finished cooking or not. When they finally were done, we felt such a sense of accomplishment. As an added bonus, they were also quite tasty (oddly, that was also the first time I ever used paprika. I was very impressed by the color).

These days deviled eggs seem a little bit kitschy, but every time someone brings them to a party, they are invariably one of the first things to go. Over on Farm to Philly, Nicole has posted a recipe for deviled eggs that uses a cooked, mashed potato to enrich the yolk filling (because it does seem like there's never quite enough yolk mixture to fill all the egg halves). Her deviled eggs also have the added benefit of being made with local, free range eggs. However, you don't have to use such lofty eggs in order to make this yummy-sounding recipe.

This Saturday, a friend of mine celebrated her small summer wedding with a large fall party for all their friends and family. They borrowed a house on the New Jersey shore, pitched a very large tent and brought in tons of food from a local Trinidadian restaurant. Being the eco-friendly couple that they are, they chose to serve mostly vegan food, knowing that mass-produced meat and poultry are environmentally irresponsible.

I had never really experienced much in the way of imitation meat before, when I found myself confronted with an array of faux chicken legs (in mango or tamari sauces) and seitan spare ribs. I tried it all. The faux chicken legs were unnerving at first, because as I cut into mine, my knife hit something hard in the center. Inside was a thin wooden skewer, representing the bone. The texture was so similar to shredded chicken that my brain and taste buds kept checking in with each other, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. The seitan spare ribs were tasty, but I tend to be sensitive to too much wheat and so after a few bites, my stomach started to protest.

I'm impressed with the creativity that people possess that leads them to conjure up workable meat substitutes. However, I think that I'd prefer to have a meat-free meal than one where the main dish was one built on fake meat. How do the rest of you feel? Fake meat or no meat at all?

I'm not really sure what to make of this recipe from iconic British Australian comedienne (comedian?) Dame Edna. It's for Aftermath Quiche ("Aftermath" as in what you should eat the morning after a late night party), but some of the instructions are rather vague. "Assorted canapes and party leftovers in general?" What exactly does that mean? Can I throw in vegetables? Party dip? Leftover chili? Candy corn?

Looks interesting though. Full recipe after the jump (and check out the other cool celebrity recipes at Frank DeCaro's site).

Awhile back I told you about a really great book titled Fashionable Food. It details the history of food decade by decade, and includes a lot of cool recipes. I'll be highlighting some of the more interesting recipes from the book, and today it's Porkers.

This recipe is from the 1960s and was originally in the book How To Keep Him (After You've Caught Him) - I guess it was for the ladies. It uses Saltine crackers and bacon and...well, that's it actually. Mmmmm ... bacon. Full recipe after the jump.

When I first laid eyes on a Sloppy Joe, I was about 5. I had no idea what it was and my parents had certainly never tried to serve one to me. A Sloppy Joe is essentially ground meat cooked in a skillet with a tomato based sauce and tastes more like a chopped up hamburger drowning in ketchup than the pasta-topping meat sauce it is related to. In fact, I'm fairly certain that the first one I ever had was simply ground meat in ketchup - a combination likely to win the heart of any 5-year-old. Another big selling point was the fact that it made for messy eating, hence the name.

I've had a love affair with tapas from long before I ever set foot in Spain (for the record: April 29, 2003. Madrid. Honeymoon. Met or exceeded expectations). I first started noshing on shrimp and romesco sauce, blue cheese-stuffed olives, and little toasts with jamon serrano when I was still just a budding gourmet in my early 20s. Tapas first entered my life in a party, and I feel that nothing says cocktail food so much as a good tapas spread.

I can't recommend these salty Spanish bites enough as the menu for your New Year's party (whether it's for a formally-dressed crowd or just one or two in your jammies with a good bottle of bubbly). They are easy to make at the last minute ('cause if you're like me you haven't planned, much), they don't require much in the way of recipes or thought, they're highly-flavored, they're often packed with protein to counteract the effects of your tipplin' ways. They're pretty, too.

Last night I called my husband on the way home from dropping off our babysitter. "What should we bring to the party?" I asked. We were doing potluck with some of my best mama friends, plus hubbies and kids. I knew there would be brie en croute (Olivia's specialty) so my husband's first suggestion was off the table. I thought a minute, back to the snack I'd eaten in the midst of shopping at Bar Pastiche.

Tapas, I thought.

So I stopped at my fave Italian market and ordered a range of Spanish and Italian cured meats - jamon serrano, mortadella and a new kind of salami suggested by the woman standing behind me in line (sorry for taking most of it!), and a jar full of pitted green olives. I had Oregonzola at home and, once we arrived at the party, quickly shoved some blue cheese into the olives. My husband set the lovely meats out on a platter with the olives and extra crumbled blue cheese, making dirty martinis with some of the extra olives. Cured meats, blue cheese stuffed olives, and a nice pink Spanish wine - salty and refreshing and delicious, a total hit. What do you bring at the last minute?