How To Host A Dinner Party

A fun, informative guide to hosting the perfect party every time. "Every dinner party experience I’ve had in the last ten years at Corey’s has been incredible. But practice really does make perfect and I can now honestly say there is nowhere I’d rather be in the world than at his table ... I can’t begin to express the relief I felt in reading this book and realizing there was a method to his success." - Sarah Polley, from the introduction We’ve all been there: twenty minutes before guests arrive, and you’re unsure if you’ve got enough wine, or enough chairs, or whether your friend is a vegetarian or a vegan. Hosting a dinner party is hard, but Corey Mintz can help. For his popular Toronto Star column, "Fed," he has presided over 115 dinner parties, every week opening his home to strangers and friends alike in an effort to perfect the craft of hosting. And in How to Host a Dinner Party, he shares everything he’s learned in a hilarious handbook that will appeal to everyone — from those throwing their first dinner party to seasoned entertainers looking to enhance their skills. This book guides readers through everything they need to know about hosting, starting with the golden rule — that the goal of a dinner party is to have fun with our friends, not to show off our cooking skills. It will explain why we like to gather for dinner, when we should host, who we should invite, what we should cook, and how we should cook it. Featuring recipes, anecdotes, expert analysis, and an endless bounty of how-to tips, it is the essential guide to perfecting the art of welcoming people into your home.

National Winner for Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2017 - Family Books Winner of the 2018 Taste Canada Awards - General Cookbooks, Silver Delicious, wholesome family-friendly recipes from the creator of the award-winning Simple Bites blog Toasty warm in the winter and cool in the summer, Aimée’s comfortable kitchen is a place where the family gathers, cooks together, and celebrates everyday life. In The Simple Bites Kitchen, she brings her love of whole foods to the table and shares heart-warming kitchen stories and recipes that are nutritious, fairly simple to make, and utterly delicious. Aimée knows the challenges that come with feeding a family and tackles them head on by providing lunchbox inspiration, supper solutions and healthy snack options. Aimée’s collection of 100 wholesome recipes draws on her experience as a mom and a seasoned cook and is brimming with fresh ingredients and simple instructions so that you can cook with confidence knowing you’re providing your family with healthy and great-tasting meals. You and your family will enjoy recipes from Overnight Spiced Stollen Swirl Buns and Maple-Roasted Pears with Granola for breakfast, Tequila-Lime Barbecue Chicken and Strawberry Rhubarb Pie for a fresh air feast, garden-inspired recipes like Harvest Corn Chowder and Lentil Cottage Pie with Rutabaga Mash, and family dinner favourites like Roast Chicken with Bay Leaf and Barley and Cranberry-Glazed Turkey Meatloaf with Baked Sweet Potatoes. Filled with beautiful photography, The Simple Bites Kitchen also includes recipes to keep your preserves pantry well-stocked all year, tips, simple tutorials and inspiration and ideas for homespun hospitality.

An inspiring visual guide to a richer life. “If there’s a thinker to steal from, it’s Jessica Hagy.”—Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist and Newspaper Blackout How to Be Interesting is passionate, positive, down-to-earth, and irrepressibly upbeat, combining fresh and pithy life lessons, often just a sentence or two, with deceptively simple diagrams and graphs. Each of the book's more than 100 spreads will nudge readers a little bit further out of their comfort zones and into a place where suddenly everything is possible. It’s about taking chance—but also about taking daily vacations. About being childlike, not childish. It’s about ideas, creativity, risk. It’s about trusting your talents and doing only what you want—but having the courage to get lost and see where the path leads. Because it’s what you don’t know that’s interesting.

Inspired by her travels around the globe, Niki Webster gathers some of her favourite recipes together into this rebellious new book. You won't find any limp lettuce or boring old-school vegan dishes here. Expect to find all kinds of awesomeness, such as mouth-watering spicy Indian crepes; baked aubergine with cashew cheese and pesto; sweet potato, cauliflower and peanut stew; and chocolate cherry espresso pots. While a number of vegan and plant-based books focus on health, Rebel Recipes is unashamedly about taste; it's all about pleasure, vibrancy and flavour – food for the soul. Niki's delicious recipes are bought to life with photography from Kris Kirkham.

This beautifully illustrated vegetarian cookbook features 100 simple yet delicious recipes inspired by the author’s rustic California home. Erin Gleeson made her dream a reality when she left New York City and moved into a tiny cabin in a California forest. Inspired by the natural beauty of her surroundings and the abundance of local produce, she began writing her popular blog, The Forest Feast. This volume collects 100 of Erin’s best vegetarian recipes, most of which call for only three or four ingredients and require very few steps, resulting in dishes that are fresh, wholesome, delicious, and stunning. Among the delightful recipes are eggplant tacos with brie and cilantro, rosemary shortbread, and blackberry negroni. Vibrant photographs, complemented by Erin’s own fanciful watercolor illustrations and hand lettering, showcase the rustic simplicity of the dishes. Part cookbook, part art book, The Forest Feast will be as comfortable in the kitchen as on the coffee table.

The supermodel, television and internet personality, busy mom, and author of the New York Times bestseller Everyday Supermodel shares a new set of tips and tricks for creating comfortable, inviting, organized spaces throughout your home—while making them beautiful and stylish too. Once upon a time, Molly Sims was a single girl who used her oven as a sweater drawer. Today, the model turned home chef, design diva, organizational guru, entertaining expert, and blessed mama uses her stove to whip up fabulous fare for family and friends. While she loves to cook, Molly also loves to entertain, and to make the home she shares with her husband and young children both beautiful and inviting. Juggling a successful career and growing household, Molly had to find solutions that worked for her busy life. In this inspirational guide written in her fun, sophisticated, relaxed girlfriend-to-girlfriend style—and flavored with just a touch of Southern—Molly brings together expert advice and her own insights to help you add that little "extra" to make your everyday life a little better, a little easier, and a little more special. Inside you'll find secrets and real life advice for simplifying, streamlining, and beautifying, including: Kicking clutter to the curb. Applying the accessory rule to your home—removing one piece. Feeding your family without stress. Using the right tools to plan parties like a professional, and tackle easy DIY projects. Prioritizing the positive without getting hung up on the perfect. Filled with lovely and instructive color photos from Molly’s own house, personal anecdotes, insight from Molly’s go-to experts, and easy-to-follow how-tos and lists, Molly’s charming guide will help you create the stylish home and life you want.

A call to arms against BRUNCH . . . and a how-to guide for fighting back, from the hosts of the hit podcast and public radio show The Dinner Party Download Society is under threat. The culprit? BRUNCH. Not merely a forum for overpriced eggs, brunch is a leisure-time-squandering hellscape, embodying all that is soul-killing and alienating about modern life. How to fight back? By throwing dinner parties -- the cornerstone of civilized society! Dinner parties -- where friends new and old share food, debate ideas, and boldly build hangovers together. If we revive the fading art of throwing dinner parties the world will be better off, and our country might heal its wounds of endless division, all without having to wait in a 9-hour line to eat toast. To that end, Brunch is Hell takes hesitant hosts through every phase of throwing a great dinner party, from guest list to subpoena. Loaded with wit, celebrity advice, and tongue-in-cheek humor -- plus sincere insights about how humans can be more generous to each other -- Brunch is Hell is a spirited guide to restoring civility, in the bestselling tradition of Adulting, Amy Sedaris' I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, and the Bible.

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.