Valentine's Dessert

It's too early to do a Valentine's Day table, but I found the perfect dessert for people who don't bake and want something easy, yet impressive for V Day.  I thought I would share just in case any of my readers want to use this idea.

This picture is thanks to Woman's Day magazine.

Is this impressive looking or what?

You can go there by clicking here to get the full recipe.

Books on the Art of Entertaining

I have a pretty big collection of cooking/entertaining books.  About 15 years ago I attended an estate auction of a deceased 90+-yr old woman and I bought a few boxes of her cookbooks.  She was in a book club (many of the books were labeled "book club edition").

Many appeared to have never been opened, like this one from 1960 titled, The Art of Serving Food Attractively.   There are none of the beautiful color pictures that we are used to today in this 51-year old book.  In fact there were only a few black/white drawings, like this one showing how to make bologna and cheese sandwiches look good--what fun!


This book was published in 1992, but is still in black/white.

It has a suggestion for a  reunion patchwork cake:

I work with people who plan parties, but I have never had a reunion serve a cake like this!

This book published in 1983 is one of my favorites:

It has a buffet that I have been wanting to do for years--but never have. It's now on my bucket list--seriously, before I die, I want to do this sandwich  buffet table for Halloween:

Have you ever seen a cuter way to serve a sandwich buffet than this?   It looks very easy to me.

One of my more current entertaining books is this one from Christopher Lowell--you can tell it's fairly current because he uses the word "tablescapes":

He has wonderful color pics and sets the type of tables we are all setting today.  Look, he even used zebra fabric on this one!

What about you--do you have any favorite entertaining books?