Recipes for Entertaining: Salads, Soups, Desserts and the Stories Behind Them

Fifteen years and nearly 600 recipes. Here is how I cook, how I entertain, and where to find what you are looking for.

I never set out to write nearly 600 recipes. Fifteen years ago I was simply writing about the life I was living — and food has always been at the center of that life. The table has always mattered to me. The ritual of cooking for people I love, of setting a proper place with linen napkins and candles and whatever the garden has to offer, of sending guests home with something homemade tucked under their arm. None of that ever felt like content. It felt like living — and like remembering every happy hour I stood next to my grandmother and my mother baking, and every memory Bill and I have made cooking and hosting together. And yet here we are. Come in. Let me pour you a cup of chocolate — or tea, or something stronger if you prefer. I do like a good cocktail, especially if it has cranberry and copious amounts of lime juice. Pull up a chair.

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How We Entertain

There have been two chapters of entertaining in my life and I love them both for different reasons.

In what I think of as another life — the years when my husband’s work brought colleagues and clients to our table — we hosted two large parties every year without fail. At Christmas the house was full of finger foods and carved meats and a dessert table that took the better part of a week to assemble. Every guest left with a box of homemade candy: caramels, chocolates, confections made from my mother’s family recipes, which she came the week before to help me make. We served a signature cocktail, wines collected from our travels, and champagne. For weeks ahead of time we poured over cookbooks to get the menu exactly right. It was some of my favorite holiday entertaining — not only because my mother was there, but because the preparation itself was part of the pleasure.

In summer we threw a sangria party with Spanish tapas and paella. The sangria recipe came from a restaurant in Spain — my husband charmed it out of the kitchen, then spent an evening translating the measurements from restaurant quantities down to something manageable for forty people. We still make it more than twenty-five years later, and it will have its own post very soon. The paella pan and the recipe came from our Spanish neighbors before they moved back home. Some gifts you keep forever.

Nowadays our entertaining is smaller and more intimate, which suits us very well. We still go all out — a Momofuku Bossam pork dish with all the sides, large family gatherings at Christmas and Easter, a Fourth of July barbecue that my husband commands from the grill. He handles the grill, the seafood, the oysters, and whatever else he decides to attempt that year. I handle everything else: the salads, the sides, the desserts, and the table itself.

The table is always set properly. Linen napkins, candles, flowers — foraged from the garden when the season allows, a handful of fresh herbs and blooms when it does not, seasonal greens at Christmas. The table is part of the meal. It makes it feel special. That same instinct for creating a space that feels intentional and alive is something I wrote about in The Bower Bird Home — How I Decorate and Why I’ll Never Be a Minimalist.

Starting this May I am joining Cindy Hattersley of Cindy Hattersley Design each month for The Seasonal Table — seasonal recipes, table inspiration, and the small rituals that make a meal feel like something worth remembering. More on that very soon.

How I Cook

I am a home cook who loves good food, good cookbooks, and the pleasure of finding a recipe that works and then making it my own. Most of what is on this blog began somewhere else — in a beloved cookbook, in the pages of a magazine, from my grandmothers’ recipe box, in a restaurant kitchen in Spain. I’ve adapted things, tested them, made them again and again until they feel like mine. I will always tell you where something came from. The story of a recipe is part of the recipe.

What I cook is traditional, sometimes with a twist. Salads that are interesting enough to be the meal. Soups that make the house smell cozy on a cold afternoon. Desserts that people ask for by name and remember long after the evening is over. Nothing that requires equipment I don’t own. Just good food made with love for the people sitting around my table.

The Desserts and Baking

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time you already know that I bake — a lot. It is my thing. What I do when I want to show someone I love them, when I need to think, when I find myself on a Saturday morning with the house quiet and nowhere to be. It brings me joy in a way I have stopped trying to explain.

These are the recipes people ask for by name. Hershey’s Chocolate Chocolate Cake with Fudge Filling and Buttercream Frosting — adapted from the classic — is the most requested cake I have ever made. The Baked NY Brownies are the brownie that made me stop looking for brownie recipes, and are apparently Oprah’s favorite too. Ina Garten’s Outrageous Brownies live up to the name. The Banana Cake with Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting is the one everyone wants the moment they hear it exists, and the Cinnamon Cream Cheese Coffee Cake is the one that disappears before it has properly cooled. The Almond Kringle has become a holiday tradition in this house and will be, I suspect, for a very long time.

The full baking archive is a work in progress and will hopefully be categorized by the end of this month— fifteen years of cakes, brownies, bars, quick breads, and things that fall somewhere in between.

The Soups

A good soup is one of the most satisfying things a kitchen can produce. It makes the house smell welcoming and it is, almost without exception, better the next day. I make soup all year — lighter and chilled in summer, deep and warming from September through April.

The Roasted Butternut Squash and Pumpkin Soup is velvety and warming and the one I make every October without fail. The Layered Chili is not a quick recipe but absolutely worth the time — it has been a cold weather weekly staple for years. The Barefoot Contessa Rosemary White Bean Soup is simple, hearty, and exactly what you want on a cold afternoon. For summer there is a Roasted Green Tomato and Basil Soup and a Golden Healing Cauliflower Soup that is delicious and good for you too, which feels like a healthy win.

The full soup archive is here.

The Salads

I have strong opinions about salads. A salad should be interesting. It should have texture and contrast and something unexpected in it. It should be worth eating on its own and not just something you put on the table because you feel you should eat some greens. A beautiful bowl helps too.

The Celery Apple Salad is crisp and bright and the salad that converts celery skeptics — and there are more of them than you’d think. The Viral TikTok Carrot Salad: I came to it late, but I understand completely why it went viral. The Roasted Beets and Summer Berry Salad is summer in a bowl — nothing more needs to be said. The Strawberry and Candied Pecan Salad is easy and beautiful and made for a long June evening. The Grilled Zucchini and Tomato Stack Salad with Pesto is as beautiful as it is delicious, which is the best a salad can be.

The full salad archive is here.

A Note on the Archive

Nearly 600 recipes is a lot of recipes. I know that. They are not organized the way a proper food blog would organize them because when I started writing them down I was not thinking about organization. I was thinking about recreating and sharing some of my favorite recipes from long-gone restaurants, beloved cookbooks, and family.

Almost everything here falls into one of three categories — salads, soups, and desserts — because that is genuinely what I cook. My husband handles the grill and the seafood and the main event. I handle everything that makes the meal complete.

Use the search bar, browse the recipe archive, or follow along each week. I publish new recipes regularly and there is always something coming. If you are looking for something specific and cannot find it, leave a comment and I will point you in the right direction.

Food as Intentional Living

Food is intentional living. I have never called it that until recently but it is the truest thing I can say about why there are nearly 600 recipes on this blog. You cook for the people you love. You set the table because it matters. You send people home with something homemade because that is just what you do.

If you want to read more about that, the post that started all of it is here: Intentional Living After 50: What It Really Looks Like. Everything on this blog — including every recipe in this archive — connects back to it.

What is the recipe you are most known for — the one people ask you to bring, the one your family requests every year? Tell me in the comments. I am always curious about the food that carries the most meaning.

If you enjoyed this post, I’d love it if you shared it. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and X — I’d love to have you along.

You might also enjoy:

Intentional Living After 50: What It Really Looks Like

The Bower Bird Home — How I Decorate and Why I’ll Never Be a Minimalist

How to Make Real Drinking Chocolate

The Sniffer Walk: What My Dachshund Taught Me About Slowing Down

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