Good Grape Wine Company

"I'm in the mood to celebrate," Lukins crows. "It's the kind of joyous mood that makes me happy to call friends and family and invite them over for good food, good conversation, and good cheer! It's the kind of mood that makes needing a reason to celebrate...." Should you find yourself banging around for a reason to celebrate, relax: Lukins provides 43 of them. She hits all the major holidays--Christmas, Mother's Day, Passover, Superbowl. And then she witches up come celebrations you probably wouldn't think up on your own--Celebrate India, for example, or Celebrate Fresh Blueberry Breakfast. This is a book of menus and clustered recipes, which is handy if you don't want to think through an entire meal. Nothing's too demanding, flavor remains the bellwhether, ingredients will be in easy reach. Piece of cake. Piece of Devil's Food Cake, for that matter. You'll find that along with Deviled Chicken Wings, Red Hot Short Ribs of Beef, Jicama Slaw, and Tangerine Sorbet when it comes time to Celebrate an Old-Fashioned Halloween.

Sheila Lukins has always been one to point the way. Sure, celebrating with food and family and friends is obvious. But Lukins moves it all up to the next level, with bold splashes of color. If you make celebration a part of your everyday life, she's saying, you'll surround yourself with everything in life that's worth celebrating. Good food is certainly part of that living equation. --Schuyler Ingle

Product Description
Time to celebrate! With one purpose only-to bring family and friends together-Sheila Lukins presents Celebrate!, a full-color extravaganza of a book with 46 festive menus, 350 foolproof, with-a-twist recipes in the Silver Palate style, 200 color photographs, and throughout, the passion that's made her one of America's most creative cooks and best-loved food writers.

Here are menus to re-energize traditional holidays-for Thanksgiving serve Maple Ginger Turkey with a piquant Cornbread Chorizo Stuffing. Menus that will turn impromptu gatherings into yearly events--a hearty selection of bowl foods for Super Bowl Sunday, a red-white-and-blue menu for a Memorial Day barbecue, an easy weekday Cozy Dinner for Two. And menus that will inspire whole new reasons to throw a party--The Big Raise (featuring a Blushing Lobster Cocktail), When Spring Has Sprung, The First Summer Tomatoes, a Celebrate Morocco Dinner with Moorish Carrot Soup, Lamb Tagine, Orange Flower Sorbet. Celebrate! is a blueprint for joy, making any time the right time to celebrate and showing just how to pull it off.

The author is a cookbook all-star, having done The Silver Palate series and New Basics and several of her own. She branches out now with this one which provides a whole thematic culinary event including recipes, music, wine suggestions, serving and decorating ideas. All centered around great food.

There are 43 themed events with 350 recipes all showing color photos organized into two main sections: A Year of Celebrations, with a dozen of the more classic events e.g. New Year, Seder, Mother's Day, etc., and the second: Celebrating Our Lives, bridal shower, graduation, cuisine & culture outings, e.g. India, morocco; and ingredient feasts such as a blueberry breakfast. There are also adequate sources, bibliography, conversion tables and a nice index. The servings are hefty, sometimes for 24, 8, 2, 16. Buffets, pool party, sit down dining room, beach, etc. venues well covered as well.

While so many could be singled out to inspire you to add this to your collection, let me tempt you with two samplings: A Toast To New Year for 8, with a Celebration Coktail ( Grand Marniew and champagne and more), Sparkling Crab Salad, Frisee Folie with Tangerine Vinaigrette, Mahogany Squabs, Fancy New Year's Pilaf, Carrot-Ginger Whip, Beet and Apple Whip, Frozen Lime Souffle, Chocolate Truffles. All of this decked out in an ambience of Old Painted Hookahs holding apricot-hued roses, with votive candles amid floating white orchids, set upon table of paisly fabriic, with pink linen napkins set off with gold wire-ribbon ties. Suggested music: Rimsky--Korsakov's Scheherazade or John Coltrane's My Favorite Things.

Anytime Sunday Brunch for 8 with Leek Frittata, Roasted Tomatoes and Onions, Rustic Chicken Salad, Tomatoes a la Tapenade, Blackberry Sorbet, and Rich Pecan Squares.

As she suggests, one doesn't have to do all the recipes, and mix and matching of them is allowable and encouraged. She has a good idea too, that of trying a more difficult recipe ahead of time as a dish to gain confidence before preparing as part of a bigger spread.

This is lush, well thought out and executed and a marvelous resource for entertaining, whether one follows it to a tee, some of it, and use for inspiration to dream up your own. This is wo well done and has something everyone can find exactly what you're into. Explore, dine and wine, bon appetit.