The Dinner Party Project: A No-Stress Guide to Food with Friends

Dinner parties can be wonderful, but they’re usually fraught with anxiety and involve a great deal of work. Feldman, who has a YouTube cooking show called Nosh with Tash, posits that dinner parties are so important that they should be part of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But how does anyone throw dinner parties when everyone has busy lives and essentially no time to spare? Feldman offers three paths: going solo, group cooking, or potluck. Her book includes cartoony flowcharts, various menus, and lots and lots of inviting, tasty recipes. All aspects of party food are covered—drinks, appetizers, veggies, mains, and desserts. The intro gives advice about picking and planning, along with good kitchen hints like how to read a recipe. The point of the book is that dinner parties are important social activities and most of all should be fun. It is easy, reading this, to imagine three or four friends in the kitchen dividing the work and enjoying each other’s company before the event.