Forking Fantastic!

Eat, drink, and be merry without going manic this holiday season with help from Forking Fantastic!, the ultimate user-friendly guide to party perfection.

Writers Zora O’Neill and Tamara Reynolds like to party. The friends, who met while working at famed N.Y.C. resto Prune and started an underground supper club together, also like to cook, and in Forking Fantastic! they tell you how to do both at the same time. For gals scared to death of throwing a dinner soiree, this is a good place to start. The book gives menus (fall’s includes ham with bourbon brown-sugar glaze, potato and turnip casserole, roasted fennel, and an apple spice cake), easy-to-follow recipes (though hardly any photos, boo), and perhaps most helpful, plans of attack. But what they really want to impress throughout is that dinner parties should be less about matching silverware, linen napkins, and perfect place settings, and more about good wine, good food, and good company, which makes throwing one seem like way more fun.