Food is the Frosting-Company is the Cake
You Can Entertain Easier At Any Age
by
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Chapter 1
It’s Really Not About The Food
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There’s no place like home
Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz
If you’re a not-so-hot cook or used to be the hostess-with-the-mostest but have lost some of the air in your balloon, this book can guide you back home. One of the greatest privileges in life is being invited to someone’s home. There is an intimacy we share with people when chatting around our dining room table or patio porch that allow us to feel special. It doesn’t matter if you live in an apartment, condo, trailer, or mansion; what we are talking about is honoring the place we call home.
If you answer two simple questions you will find what is at the heart of home entertaining: Who do you miss? Who would you like to get to know better? At the end of the book there is a private place to jot down names as they come to mind while you’re reading and trying out new ideas. A hurdle for all (okay almost all) of us is how to make adjustments to having friends and family over as our lives change. This book is filled with 101 tips (to help you remember) and clear suggestions to make it easier to have guests over more often.
Use the table of contents and the index to help you look up topics you are currently struggling with. Maybe it’s planning a healthy menu, trying to involve kids when having guests over, reducing stress around holiday time, staying within your budget (we don’t have to break the bank every time we have a few friends over), or new ways to stay connected that aren’t so daunting. I also included suggestions about extravagant hotsy-totsy bashes (see Chapter 8) that we usually host only a few times in our lifetime. So whatever kind of gathering you want to have – it can be easier, I promise!
TIP#1 Food Is The Frosting – Company Is The Cake! Guests need to be the center (the cake) of our parties! And the food needs to be secondary (the frosting). It’s not that we don’t want to serve good food but we want to make sure that we don’t put all our energy into the cooking part and then discover we have nothing left over for our guests. Students often come to my classes thinking all the instructional time would be spent covering cooking techniques. It is often a surprise when they learn that the focus is on techniques to enjoy their guests.
Several years into our catering business, my husband and I got a call from an old friend inviting us over for dinner. We hadn’t seen this couple in a long time and missed them. When catering, you miss a lot of parties and holidays with friends and family because you are working when everyone else seems to be getting together. When we arrived at their home, the first thing Richard said was, “Don’t tell Lily, but she has been a wreck all week knowing she’s now cooking dinner for a professional caterer.” It was like he slugged me in the stomach! I felt horrible that Lily had been in a tizzy from the stress of having us over. We would have been happy with black beans and rice or a cup of soup. After cooking all week for others, I was grateful when someone else would cook for me, no matter what they served or how it tasted. For Bob and I, getting together was always about good company and never about the food.
TIP#2 Neighbors make great relaxed guests; invite them over. Look at the covers of women’s magazines and you’ll see we’re getting back to old-fashioned neighborhood get-togethers. Block parties (rope off an area at the end of the street, set up a barbecue, and everyone brings something); progressive dinner parties (move from one house/condo/apartment for each course); or just have neighbors stop by on Saturday for a light buffet breakfast. One of my all time favorites is a take-off of what Aloha Airlines does. I call or yell over the fence (they whisper it down the aisle), “Warm cookies coming out of the oven at
Loneliness is so prevalent today, whether young or old, rich or poor, pretty or homely—and the only cure is to get or stay connected with live human beings. It’s a comfort for me to know most of my neighbors; you can be neighborly and still have a sense of privacy. That’s where the uneasiness lies. We often ask ourselves, “Do I want to really know my neighbors?” “Can I get to know them without jumping into the middle of their lives or having them jump into mine?” I know you can.
There are advantages to having neighbors as guests—other than the obvious, that it’s nice to know a little bit about the real people who you walk by every day, other than their dog’s favorite spot is on your front lawn. If the first time you need to ask for
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About the Book
The meat and potatoes (and to her vegetarian readers, the tofu and broccoli sprouts) of this book is about opening our front door wider and making it fun and less stressful to invite people into our home more often. With a twinkle in her eye, lifestyle expert Maggie Marshall gently escorts you through the changes of life (that one, too) and how to make adjustments to entertaining along the way. This book offers practical advice as we age, 101 tips simplifying entertaining that you don’t want to miss, short anecdotes to keep a smile on your face while helping you remember the important pointers, plus delicious recipes that can be prepared 24 hours or more in advance. The book is set up as a practical guide; Chapter 1 sets the foundation. At the end of the chapter be sure you don’t skip taking the Entertainment IQ Test (you can keep your test score a secret from your best friend, the one who makes entertaining look easy). Then browse through the Table of Contents and flip to whatever chapter “speaks to you.” If you have a young family (or a grandparent trying to pass on traditions) and want to reduce tears in the kitchen, head straight to the chapter on Cooking With Kids – Ours and Theirs. If you’re ready to host a big bash, turn to the chapter called Hotsy-Totsy Parties for help with events that require more detail when planning a celebration. Maggie’s favorite chapter is Honoring Life Events During Suffering, Illness and Loss and how to remain connected while living through some of life’s greatest challenges.
About the Author
Maggie Marshall, called a “lifestyle expert” by Keisha Grant on the NBC 30 morning show in
Maggie is in demand to teach classes on making entertaining easier at any age from coast-to-coast and has been interviewed on TV and radio and has written for magazines and newspapers. One of her favorite articles was in Today’s Caregiver magazine, “Celebrating and Caregiving: Do They Go Together?” And you know the answer to that question: “You bet they do!”
She returned to her hometown of
Before entering the hospitality and caregiving world, she was the Regional Director of Resource Services for the Connecticut Department of Mental Retardation, managing community services, family support, and advocacy. Maggie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication, a Master’s degree in Education, and a teaching certificate. And when she’s not working to help support family caregivers or having guests of her own over, she loves to rollerblade.