Need to spice up your next potluck? Then make your next dinner party a Dead Body Dinner party! Long before I became a gutmonger, my obsession with anatomy expressed itself through a series of potluck dinners, called Dead Body Dinners. Everyone invited was assigned a body part (thigh, for example) and what it ought to be (salad). Less talented chefs brought wine (blood) or Gatorade (bile). As guests arrived, everything was assembled into a giant edible exquisite corpse! These pictures are from a party my housemates and I hosted in Brooklyn way back in 1997. The bloody hand with a knife was a tasty meringue, and it’s hard to tell, but the tortilla-looking thing was a torso filled with carefully carved vegetable organs underneath a bread ribcage. My friend Marlene, pictured at right, made a lovely cake breast.

Beth and Laska were proud to unveil their hairy thigh, complete with varicose veins and pimples. I think it was a cake. The pizza feet with olive toenails were pretty much the best thing on the table. Here’s some tips on hosting your own:

1. Decide whether your body will be male, female, or transgender.

2. Divide the body into parts and decide what type of food each part should be (main course, salad, dessert, etc.) and then you’ll know about how many people to invite.

3. Assign each body part to a friend, giving your less creative friends to bodily fluids, and more creative/anatomically aware friends the tougher assignments like head, torso, etc.

4. Party on and bon appetite!