Creating Trophy-Worthy Oscar Party Menus

March 5, 2010 — -- So, your invitation to the Academy Awards got lost in the mail? No worries! Throw an Oscar party, invite some friends over and you can all feel like members of the audience.

"The Oscars is a great excuse to have a party," Lara Shriftman, party planner for the stars and author of "Party Confidential," told ABCNews.com.

And what's a party without food?

Take it from renowned Hollywood hostess Dani Janssen, who has hosted A-listers Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand for Oscar night: Food is the way to a guest's heart.

Shriftman said Janssen cooks her partygoers' favorite foods, like black-eyed peas for Quincy Jones and sweet potatoes for Bruce Springsteen, then sends them home with a goody bag of leftovers.

Shriftman recommends keeping the menu simple by offering something guests can eat with their hands.

"Slumber party or diner food," such as mini grilled cheese sandwiches on skewers, mini hamburgers and pigs in a blanket always go over well, she said.

Even if you're not cooking, you can present the food in a chic way, Shriftman said. She likes to put out big containers of popcorn, candy and chips and let guests create their own snack bags to eat during the show.

Need more ideas? Foodie Web site Epicurious.com put together a list of menus inspired by each of the 10 best picture nominees. Pick the menu of the movie you think will win. Or pick and choose among the different menus to create your own. Either way, you have a wide range of options:

'Avatar': An Homage to Blue

'The Blind Side': A Southern Tailgate

Yellow Rice

Riesling

Melktert

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To get the recipes for these menus, go to: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/oscars/bestpicturemenus10