Nothing complements a good meal with friends like a rustic oak table laden with an exquisite selection of fine cheeses: a grape leaf-lined platter of ricotta with honey, red pears, and roasted chestnuts, or a decorative Spanish tile topped with sheep's milk cheeses, toasted almonds, and oven-dried tomatoes, or a simple Italian salad of crostini dripping with melted fontina and white truffle oil. The elegant tradition of the after-dinner cheese course is rapidly gaining popularity as a part of home entertaining. Written by best-selling author and award-winning food writer Janet Fletcher, The Cheese Course decribes the wonderful array of artisanal cheeses now available, offering suggestions for presentations as well as wine pairings and fruit and nut accompaniments. The Cheese Course is rounded out with 50 sweet and savory recipes for salads, breads, and desserts that match deliciously with cheese.

Mark Kurlansky is one of our most erudite and entertaining food writers: the bestselling author of Salt and Cod, winner of the prestigious James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing. Now in this delightful collection he serves up a true smorgasbord of "choice cuts" by the world’s most discerning gourmets and gourmands through the ages—from Plato on the art of cooking to Louis Prima at the pizzeria.

Choice Cuts offers more than two hundred mouth-watering selections, including Brillat-Savarin on chocolate; Waverley Root on truffles; M. F. K. Fish on gingerbread; Pablo Neruda on French fries; Alexandre Dumas on coffee; and a vast variety by Escoffier, Elizabeth David, A. J. Liebling, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Dickens, Balzac, Chekhov, Orwell, and Alice B. Toklas, among others. Filled throughout with recipes, menus, classic photographs, and Kurlansky’s own original drawings, Choice Cuts is a must-have for any serious lover of food.

Chosen by the Lion is Linda Gregg's fourth collection, and her most eloquent, bespeaking a deeply personal reconciliation with the loss of love. Gregg is able to take common experience, to see it clearly, in all its mundane and ordinary complexity. But in her poetry, that experience is also explored in its affinity to the gods, to the ways of nature. The result is an experience that is firmly grounded in the ordinary, yet transformed spiritually.

Linda Gregg's other books of poetry include: Things and Flesh, The Sacraments of Desire, Alma, and Too Bright to See.

A collection of twenty recipes for holiday fare, each illustrated in full color, features easy-to-follow directions and a simple format.

From spicy Gingerbread to simple and elegant Biscotti, The Christmas Cookie Book offers up a mouthwatering collection of forty traditional and contemporary cookie recipes. Classics like Sugar Cookies and Spritz make an appearance alongside more modern takes on long-cherished recipes such as French Lemon Wafers and Mahogany-Iced Brown Bears. Baking expert Lou Pappas shares the enchanting history of Christmas cookies and demonstrates which are best for shipping, which are fun to bake with kids, and which make the most elegant cookie-tray displays. With tempting photographs throughout, this book is a joyous celebration of baking, giving, and most importantly, enjoying everyone's favorite Christmastime treat.

This book has many christmas cookie recipes from gingerbread men to gumdrops.

Christmas Entertaining

Christmas is a time for entertaining, and for the host that means hours spent planning, shopping, cooking, and decorating the house. With a good guidebook in hand, the work of holiday entertaining can be one of the joys of the season. In Williams-Sonoma Christmas Entertaining, you'll discover everything you need to know to welcome guests into your home with style and ease.

Organized around six festive holiday occasions, this book provides complete menus and decorating ideas, all designed to fit the way people like to entertain and spend time together today: a cozy Fireside Cocktail Party; an Italian Christmas Eve supper; a chic Christmas Eve in the City; a lavish, traditional New England Christmas; a sparkling Snow Country Breakfast; and a casual New Year's Day Open House.

There are some fifty easy-to-master recipes for everything from make-ahead finger food to appetizers, main courses, and desserts. The beautiful color photography and step-by-step tyle and drink ideas make it easy to create elegant centerpieces, signature beverages, and delightful welcoming touches that transform the table and the house. helpful reference sections provide guidelines on tableware, setting up a buffet, selecting wine, and more.

You can follow the detailed work plans included in each chapter to create a complete party, or mix and match recipes and ideas to assemble your menus. Either way, you'll find everything you need for hosting memorable holiday get-togethers with style and confidence.

The holiday food recollections of some of today's leading chef-writers are brought together. For them, Christmas is wrapped in a warm mix of steaming kitchens, spicy fragrances and carefully laid tables as they share with readers home memories.

Author Nancy Mitford transplants a group of confirmed Londoners to the Cotswolds and takes the reader for a romp through British society, both country and city, during the '20s and'30s.