Cooking 1961 theme dinner party?

[reader]

I'm celebrating my (gulp) 50th birthday with a trip to WDW in March and a cocktail/dinner party themed around the year I was born (1961). Any great food memories? I've been exploring old cookbooks and newspapers.

Menu to date includes:
loads of cocktails and appetizers (including martinis of course)
Jello mold, iceburg lettuce wedges with blue cheese dressing, Julia Child's beef burgandy (well, a updated slow cooker version), green beans almondine, rice or noodles, brown and serve rolls. Dessert: cherries jubilee (seems clear from vintage cookbooks something must be set on fire during the course of the party!) and a Bomb Shelter Cake from 1964 Good Housekeeping mag.

do you have strong memories? What was always served in suburbia in the early 1960s? It's the little details like mixed nuts? or ???

I have terrific playlist of music including tv shows' theme songs and the newspapers from the weekend I was born. should be fun!

thanks for any ideas

 

[LockShockBarrel]

I think it'll be the details that make it year specific. You can always go for those old fashioned homey type foods, almost like 50's Prime Time you know? I think you could say meatloaf or potroast is from the 50's and 60's but those are things that kind of span the ages if you will. I'd focus on details.

 

[Zandy595]

Happy 50th! I don't remember the 60's cuz I was born in 1970, but I saw this on http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html#1960s

Fondue
Swedish Meatballs
Soul Food
Tang

 

[babylisa4]

I remember Tang

 

[kittychatalot]

I think fondue was more the 70's

 

[MazdaUK]

Serve it from Tupperware for that genuine 60s buzz