The book is overflowing with artfully arranged food on exquisite china, set beside gorgeous glasses and beautiful flatware. make wonderful food from really good recipes, set a pretty table or a beautiful buffet, make flower arrangements cut from our own gardens,' Stewart explains.Īs always, Stewart sets the bar high. 'What I did in this book was try to capture sort of the essence of what we all like to do when we entertain. Martha's Entertaining: A Year of Celebrations shows off Stewart's superstar hospitality at her home in Bedford, N.Y., her weekend place in East Hampton, N.Y., and her summer house in Maine. Three decades later, Stewart has written a new book filled with photos of her own gatherings. 'I couldn't find a good book about entertaining in 1982 and neither could my friend, so I decided to write it.'Īt the time, Stewart was working as a caterer, so her 1982 book is filled with photos of other people's fabulous parties. 'The first book really was kind of an entertaining textbook for the homemaker,' Stewart tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. Nearly 30 years ago - long before she had her own TV show or magazine or brand - Martha Stewart wrote her very first book, Entertaining.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. (Nov.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Martha's Entertaining Subtitle A Year of Celebrations Author Martha Stewart But most of her fans will find this book inspiring and unintimidating. For the millions of urbanites who love her style, but cannot find an organic tussock, Stewart fails to suggest a substitute-say, a couple of bunches of parsley. Yet some of the rusticity espoused in the recipes verges on artificial: a country ham is to be baked atop a bed of grass. Gone are the gilded pumpkins of yore instead, Stewart's Halloween party calls for pumpkins stuffed with a savory mix of vegetables and chicken, topped with puff pastry and served with a cognac cream sauce on the side. In 20 chapters, she gives step-by-step instructions for assembling a theme party-whether a spicy Thai lunch or a fried green tomatoes brunch.

``Light'' this isn't, but preparation and menus are indeed more spare than in the author's earlier efforts.

Though she claims in her introduction that she now prefers simpler foods and fixings, Stewart's mashed potatoes still call for a stick of butter, a quarter cup of heavy cream and a cup of softened cream cheese. Just when you thought the lavish style of '80s-era entertaining was gone forever, Stewart (Martha Stewart's New Old House) releases another book destined to make party-givers want to blow up balloons and repolish their candelabras.

Martha stewart first entertaining book