Decorating Ideas for your Holiday Table

Congratulations to Angela S from San Francisco who won our Kitchen Tools sweepstakes. Enjoy your new tools!

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

We are not doing an annual Christmas party this year. We had the last big holiday party, ever last year. And now I’m done.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t in a festive holiday spirit. The tree is decorated, the swag is hung and the wreath is ready for the door. All the decorations we treasure – the nutcrackers collected in Germany, the snow globes, the hand-knit stockings from when the kids were born – are adding joy to our household.

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Special Fork’s Holiday Gift Guide

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

As a family of food lovers, specialty food and kitchen tools often make their way into our Christmas stockings or under the tree.

Steve and I already have a well-equipped kitchen but Steve is a serious amateur cook. So the boys and I give him cookbooks or high-end kitchen tools for Christmas.

Dave and his wife Lynn are fairly recently married and are still building their “batterie de cuisine.” Last year one of the presents we gave Dave was a Le Creuset Dutch oven – the larger ones are so expensive, it’s nice to get one for a gift.

Chris lives in a tiny apartment in Queens in New York. He’d rather figure work-arounds than stock the appropriate tools, so even the pop-up colander was returned after Christmas. He’d as soon drain his pasta using a pot cover. Still, Chris is the most likely one to slip foodstuffs into our stockings. Traveling for work or vacation, he brings back treasures, such as canned French foie gras or Hungarian paprika for us.

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Party Tips from a New York Caterer

Chef Ro Howe

Special Fork celebrates Entertaining Week beginning today. Stay tuned for party tips and recipes from our Special Fork bloggers all week long. This week also kicks off our annual holiday kitchen tools sweepstakes. Please check our Facebook page to learn about the tools we’ve selected for the giveaway and how you can enter to win our prize package (retail value: $122).

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Chef Ro Howe is a talented caterer in New York City who is in demand for weddings, fundraising galas and private parties. I had occasion to use her company, Barraud Caterers, this spring for a magazine food editor event for Kerrygold, my PR client. Impressed by the quality of the food, presentation and service, I made a date to check back with her for holiday entertaining tips to share with you. We reconnected last week and as expected, Ro was a fount of excellent advice.

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Thanksgiving Tips from Mom, with Love

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Congrats to Stephanie H. from Dallas Texas who won our Logitech wireless speaker sweepstakes!

All this week, Special Fork bloggers will highlight Thanksgiving with tips, tricks and recipes for your holiday, culminating on Video Friday with a stuffed delicata squash demo, the perfect Thanksgiving main dish for vegetarians and a wonderful side for everyone else. For more recipes, visit our Special Fork database of recipes. Use the keyword, “Thanksgiving,” for your search.

When Dave made his first Thanksgiving dinner while at grad school in Massachusetts, I was prepared to be his personal Thanksgiving hotline until the meal was done. Actually, my son seemed to have survived his first major entertaining experience unscathed. As he pointed out with a chuckle, since many guests were international students, they had no great expectations.

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A Cook-it-Yourself Dinner Party

By Sandy Hu

My friend from Alaska, Mary Deming Barber, was coming to San Francisco for a conference and I was looking forward to inviting her to dinner. Problem was, I myself was returning from another conference in St. Louis the night before our get-together. So, rather than cook for Mary, I invited her and four of her friends attending the conference to cook dinner with me.

I’d never done this before, but having such a large, open kitchen, it had always been my dream to host a cook-together party. I thought it would be really fun, a great icebreaker among new friends and less work. (Two of the three turned out to be true – guess which?)

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