Last year, I wrote a post about holiday entertaining help because this time of year can be a stressful one largely due to the fact that many people are, either willingly or reluctantly, entertaining family during the holidays. For me, the holidays are a great opportunity to get together and feed people and many of my best holiday memories center on gathering with my family around some type of food (though if you remember from last year, “food” is often translated to “cookies”).

While my tips and tricks that I mentioned last year still stand for me, I thought this year, I would focus on feeding  your holiday family. In discussing this, please note that I’ve always been a firm believer that blood doesn’t make a family, love does, so know that the term “family” used here can mean anyone with whom you are close, whose company you enjoy and feel you can trust to be in your inner circle. This does not, necessarily, mean blood relatives (although it certainly can). The late, great Jonathan Larson (composer of the musicals Tick, Tick… Boom and the runaway hit RENT offered a Peasant Feast every year around the holidays in which he brought friends old and new into his home as an ad hoc family. Anthony Rapp, who played Mark Cohen in RENT described it:

[Jonathan invited] us to his home and not in a formal way… It wasn’t like showing up on your best behavior. It was, “Welcome to my house for a peasant’s feast. Bring your food. We’ll have drink and food and sit and commune and share. This is my home, and it’s your home, and you are my friend.” And, he gave a toast in which he said, “This is a show about my friends, about my life, and you are my friends.”

This, to me, is the essence of the holidays and what family entertaining should be. Bringing people together around comforting, familiar food and sharing with each other. For me, the understanding that the holidays should be about sharing takes away a fair amount of the stress for the holidays. Because I enjoy it, I tend to experiment a bit with a couple of new recipes, but by and large, I focus on the tried-and-true family favorites that bring smiles year after year. This also helps alleviate holiday stress because when the recipes are familiar, there’s far less worry about them turning out well. There’s also the sense of coming home to a familiar recipe and the process of making that recipe can bring back good memories, heightening your enjoyment of the experience, and taking some of the focus away from the final product.

If you are considering going with tried-and-true favorites that are more likely to bring smiles, you may want to check out some of these books, that focus on family entertaining a focus on ease and sharing:

Grandbaby Cakes: Modern Recipes * Vintage Charm * Soulful Memories by Jocelyn Delk Adams

Carla Hall’s forward to this book talks about good food hugging you and that seems to sum up the overall feeling of this book. The recipes in here will easily be the star of the dessert show while still focusing on unfussy presentation and classic recipes that will bring good memories like pound cakes and sheet cakes. If you want your dessert to feel like tasting it will bring everyone home again you’ll find a sure-fire hit in this book.

Al Roker’s Hassle Free Holiday Cookbook by Al Roker

The operative term here is “Hassle Free”. I wouldn’t necessarily have considered Al Roker to be a holiday entertaining maven, but with recipes like “Store-Bought Eggnog with a Twist” and spoon bread, he ensures that the recipes here are easy to follow with a light introduction that keeps the tone festive and upbeat.  His Vanilla-Cinnamon Roasted Nuts is remarkably close to the recipe I’ve been using for years and make for a *very* addictive treat. While this book covers holidays year-round and focuses on Christian holidays (sadly, no Passover sader or Channukah latkes here), who says you can’t serve his Valentine’s Day stuffed mushrooms as an hors d’ovuvre for your holiday cocktail party?

The New Family Cookbook by the editors of America’s Test Kitchen

I’ll admit that I’m not necessarily the biggest America’s Test Kitchen fan, as they tend to focus on the “right” way to do things (as if there’s only one “right” way) and don’t necessarily account for people having different tastes (I happen to like my butterscotch blondies to be sweet, Mr. Kimball…). However, if you’re looking for some classic recipes to recover a family favorite and you need some step-by-step guidance, it’s hard to go wrong with the massive collection of recipes here. Since the focus of this book is family, you are all but guaranteed to find something that will make a crowd happy. Don’t try to cook your way through this book, though. It’s best used as a reference to find a reasonably fail-proof  recipe for holiday favorites like rack of lamb or pork loin and an abundance of desserts. This book has it covered from soup to nuts (literally), so peruse and see what you can find.

FamilyFun’s Cookies for Christmas ed. by Deanna F. Cook

Let’s not forget how much fun it can be to include the kids in the holiday preparations. This slim recipe book focuses on what many of us thing the holidays do best: cookies. From old-fashioned sugar cookies and classics like peanut butter blossoms to finally finding out how exactly one makes the sugar plum that Clement C. Moore’s children are dreaming about in his poem, you’ll get some great, easy recipes that can be tackled by families together. Or you can take some of the stress off yourself and let the kids (old enough to put cookies in the oven, naturally) loose to make their own holiday favorites.

However you choose to entertain whatever type of group you call “family” this holiday season, know that the library has your best interest at heart. Till next week, dear patrons, feel free to stop by and check out anything that might help you this season, even if it’s a little “escapism” reading or watching to help keep the holiday stress at bay.