[.ca] Special Occasions: The Best of Martha Stewart Living (ISBN 051788402X)

From Amazon.com:
With Martha's help, you've mastered Rosemary Shallot Popovers and Ina's Cornmeal Cheddar Scones. Your Thanksgiving dinners are legendary. You bake hundreds of cookies and decorate your home from top to bottom at Christmas. But do you know how to create a festive Labor Day, or a Fourth of July that goes off with a bang? Designed as a companion to 1993's Holidays, Special Occasions: The Best of Martha Stewart Living moves away from Thanksgiving and Christmas to focus instead on Valentine's Day, Easter Sunday, and other "days we choose to make special." Martha and company provide elegant menus and decorating tips for 12 theme events, from a New Year's Day soup buffet to an All Hallows' Eve potluck supper, celebrating Mother's Day, graduation day, and even simply a midsummer's day in between. Sidebars featuring food histories, tips on collecting, and etiquette are interspersed with the recipes. The recipes themselves are predictably wonderful, from a simple yet beautiful Herbed Tomato Salad to an elaborate, sinful "Chocolate Romance" cake and a Pansy Cake that looks too pretty to eat. Martha would be the first to tell you that "good company comes first" when planning a successful party, but this book can certainly help with everything else. After all, who says the first day of summer isn't as special as Thanksgiving--especially when celebrated with a Tuscan feast. --C.B. Delaney

One of my favorite books for entertaining:
Well done and illustrated, these are features from the early days of the magazine. I can personally vouch for the pear bread pudding and the torta di riso--a lot of work but like a lot of things, WELL worth the effort. I don't know if I could do all of those things at once for one activity, especially the wedding at home. But in addition to all the recipes and chapters, it's idea-inspiring. Which is what Martha is all about (that, and the stock market!)

One of her worst - a cut & paste job:
This is old articles from her magazine and the advice was not very good. There are better books.

A book for all occasions:
The menus planned in the book are delicious. Each is catagorized under a different event or holiday, but I've used them for not so special events too. There are also wonderful decorating and entertaining ideas for all seasons. The paella is wonderful!