BiG TeA PaRtY

BiG TeA PaRtY EVENT: at SQUEAKY WHEEL BUFFALO MEDIA ARTS CENTER

Squeaky Wheel is a grassroots, artist-run, non-profit media arts center which promotes and supports film, video, computer, digital, and audio art by media artists and community members.

SCREENING OF: BiG TeA PaRtY’s Chew on This!

Friday, April 25th 8pm
712 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14202
tel: 716.884.7172

For more info on Chew on This!

Chew On This! is full of Philly food facts and fun fur hats, plus a visit from one of America’s greatest thinkers (and eaters) Benjamin Franklin. Part game show, part food show and all parts fun, this episode is a feast of eye candy and an earful of information.
BiG TeA PaRtY creates their own quiz show by playing the games Dicey Dinner and Tic Tac Tofu in which host Elizabeth Fiend tests contestants’ knowledge of nutrition and food. Yes, there’s jumping up & down, there are hugs and an audience screaming out encouragement. But there are also velvet-lined pizza boxes, fuzzy dice thrown from a KFC bucket and a game board of cartoon food held by men with green hair. This show is bound to amuse as well as inform you about the value of a vegetarian diet, what color foods have the most antioxidants and much, much more. Even special guest Ben Franklin learns a thing or two from Elizabeth while he charms her into making him a sandwich – a sandwich on a soft pretzel!

Click here to purchase CHEW ON THIS! as part of the compilation video Cha Ching

Info on Squeaky Wheel screening

SCREENING IN-THE-NEWS:

The Philly scene

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The Media Arts Council Presents
The Home Grown Film Festival

BiG TeA PaRtY’s
CHEW ON THIS!

February 23, 2008 @ 6:00 pm

Full of Philly food facts and fun fur hats, plus a visit from one of America’s greatest thinkers (and eaters!) Benjamin Franklin. Host Elizabeth Fiend takes the outrageously informative quiz games Dicey Dinner and Tic Tac Tofu to an outdoor produce market and a cheese steak take-out to test contestants’ knowledge of nutrition and food. Between rounds she travels the city to find historical tidbits and local food innovations, ending up in her own kitchen where famous inventor Ben Franklin is impressed with Elizabeth’s own unique culinary invention!

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BiG TeA PaRtY’s

SugarHouse Casino

Combining the best of GAMBLING and the DESSERT BUFFET was a huge success!

I know everyone who tasted the mystery ingredient is wondering, what the heck was it? The mystery ingredient was (drum roll please)…. Dried, salted and sweetened papaya. No one guessed it, but some came close with guesses of dried plum, ginger, coconut and the funniest guess of all, shredded eraser.

How I found the mystery ingredient: Each time I shop at the giant Asian supermarket in my hood I try to purchase an ingredient I’ve never used before. When I saw the test tube shaped package that contained the dried papaya I knew I had to give it a try. The taste was not at all what I expected. Dried, salty and sweet yes, but the papaya threw such a twist to it, it really became unrecognizable as a flavor. Experimenting and learning new things is a great road to happiness and fun times! Why don’t you give it a try?

What type of cake did your luck win for you at BiG TeA PaRtY’s SugarHouse Casino? Did you score chocolate chip cake with whipped cream and chocolate jimmies; a glazed donut with orange marshmallow frosting and sliced almonds? What, what? Tell us about your win (or did you lose?!?) Click ‘comments’ at end of post.

BiG TeA PaRtY’s SugarHouse Casino is part of: NEXUS/Foundation for Today’s Art YUMMY: a celebration of craving, compulsion and culture where the delicious, the fanciful and the abundant are made manifest in artwork by 30 plus individual artists from all over the nation. The celebration runs two months and includes a gallery exhibition featuring artwork in many mediums such as sculpture, photography, ceramics and silkscreen, painting, performance and video as well as two evenings of music and dance performance; a hands-on cake making workshop with Philadelphia’s own Elizabeth Fiend and Big Tea Party; a screening of a documentary produced by the Hunger Coalition; and a potluck dinner. YUMMY opens December 13, 2007 and runs through February 1, 2008.

Besides discovering that cheese doodles make a great cake topping, we learned a few more things. 1. Wasabi peas do not go well with cake! 2. If people have a choice, they will pick ‘tiger’ more often than monkey or alligator. 3. Girls with hats have good luck. 4. And, well, not sure what the BiG TeA PaRtY Crew (Gretjen, Allen, Elizabeth, Valerie) is discussing in that last photo…

Thanx to Mira Gohel, Anne Cecil, and Devi Gohel-Majesky for taking photos.

What type of cake did your luck bring? Tell us about your win (or did you lose?!?) Click ‘comments.’

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OUR FUND RAISER WAS A HUGE SUCCESS!

THANX TO ALL WHO CAME OUT AND SUPPORTED US!

BiG TeA PaRtY supporters enjoying the best of BiG TeA PaRtY videos; Raffle Grand Prize Winner! Photos by Valerie Keller.

Thanx to Molly’s Book Store for hosting our event. A book store turned out to be a really great and stimulating place to have a party!

Thanx to our event sponsors for their donations of gift cards to use as raffle prizes and beautiful food platters to feed the hungry masses at the Fund Raiser:

WHOLE FOODS MARKET; BEAU MONDE Creperie; FAIR FOOD: A Project of White Dog Community Enterprises; CANTINA Los Caballitos

Photos by: Elizabeth Fiend.

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The Edge

Living Life au Natural

There are a lot of things that are bad for you, but Elizabeth Fiend and her project Big Tea Party are here to change that. They’ve been around awhile — a decade in fact — helping locals naturalize their daily routines and cut out the unhealthy stuff with videos, workshops, events and a brand-new and improved Web site that provides facts, tips and helpful guidelines to a fulfilling lifestyle.

But what does a “fulfilling lifestyle” mean? Well, that’s exactly what Fiend is here to help you figure out. Her mission (now at anyone’s fingertips at www.bigteaparty.com) is to show by example and demonstration how eating healthy, being mindful of the environment and making small tweaks in daily chores and errands can make a difference.

The site itself is a resource center where people can learn anything from how to grow fresh vegetables in a tiny urban backyard to how to make vegan French toast.

“We’ve made 20 videos about do-it-yourself ways of having a healthier life and basically just having fun,” Fiend said the day after Thanksgiving (for which she had posted a special section about how to cook the feast in a healthy, delicious way). “We’ve made an environmental video for kids. We show people how to have a compost pile even if they live in the city.”

A punk rocker who played the slide guitar in the late 1990s, Fiend had a softer side when it came to her other hobbies. Living in Queen Village, she made crafts, gardened and was a stellar vegetarian cook. So when video editor Valerie Keller, who lives in Pennsport, and camerawoman Gretjen Clausing posed the idea of making movies with Fiend as the host, she ran with it.

A decade later, the ladies are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their project at Molly’s Bookstore, 1010 S. Ninth St., Dec. 8. Big Tea Party will pay tribute to its past — playing some of the first videos the trio ever made — and its future by giving a nod to the Web site.

From 7 to 10 p.m., the store will be open to the public (at a $3 donation fee) to “schmooze,” watch movies and munch on snacks (healthy, of course). And what better place to have such a party than in the heart of America’s oldest open-air market where people come from all over to buy fresh veggies, fruits, spices and herbs.

“It’s a nice thing to get people into the Italian Market on a Saturday night,” Fiend said. “And we wanted to have the event in South Philly — that’s where we live and we love South Philly.”

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BiG TeA PaRtY screens environmental videos at Fairmount Waterworks Interpretive Center.

Four showings: Saturday November 16 & Sunday November 17 at 1:30pm & 3:30pm (Philadelphia)

H2YO! (6 min.)
H2 Woe

While over 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, only 3% is available for drinking & we’re not doing a very good job of preserving it. Here are some easy tips you can do at home to conserve & preserve our most valuable natural resource.

Candelabra in a Bottle

Recycle plastic water bottles into beautiful ‘stained glass’ candelabra by inverting the bottles & covering them with jewel-tone plastic gels. Hot glue the bottles into a circular shape & place a tea candle into the lid of each bottle.
As a multifaceted lifestyle program, Big Tea Party guides the viewer toward a stand against corporate and individual greed in a down-home and hilarious way.

Program also includes:
WATER by Termite Tv Collective
(33 min.)
We have a complex relationship with this building block of life. Water
landscapes can serve as reminders of both historical events and personal memories, provide cultural touchstones, fill our need for beauty, or simply provide a source of liquid refreshment. While we attempt to restrict water use through pacts and treaties, sometimes we just can¹t stop that slow leak on the roof. Termite TV explores a variety of water-y issues, both poetic and political.
Termite TV Collective creates experimental and activist media encouraging the expression of multiple styles and points of view, risk-taking, innovation, humor and intelligent critique.

Fairmount Waterworks Interpretive Center
Is behind the Art Museum along the Schuylkill river
640 Waterworks Drive, center door, downstairs

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