Andy Warhol was a Pittsburgh native. And Andy was a colorful, imaginative, and whimsical icon. We love him and can’t resist celebrating his all-too-short life. Our 2021 holiday cards were folders with inserts that featured Andy’s Christmas-related art each accompanied by a quote from Andy. We annually decorate our foyer bannister with decorative shoes to complement the Andy Warhol shoe rug on the floor.

Shoes were one of the things that Andy drew over and over again. In fact, he noted that he was paid for his commercial drawings per shoe. Counting shoes allowed him to know how much money he had earned.

Our annual New Year’s Brunch carried the Andy theme into 2022! Although Andy and a friend had created a cookbook (Wild Raspberries), the recipes created by Suzie Frankfurt (and hand written by Andy’s mother) were satiric and not intended to be cooked and eaten.

To plan the menu, I turned to two other sources. First, The Serendipity Cookbook, a product of the owners and cooks of Serendipity 3, a cafe in New York frequented by Andy. The book even contains Andy’s “recipe” for his beloved Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

The second was an Eastern European cookbook that included recipes from Austria-Hungary, the area where his parents lived before they came to the United States. I found recipes that I imagined must have resembled the home cooking of Andy’s mother.

Maybe next holiday season, you can create a whimsical theme of your own to add a new dimension to old traditions. After all, as Andy said, “Everyone must have a fantasy.”

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