That’s when I realized that all the nuance and pageantry of cheese-worshipping cultures, especially the French, will never be entirely understood by devotees from less fromage-fetishizing places. However, with a reliable roadmap, hungry curiosity, and openness to adventure and discovery, we mere cheese lovers can harness cheese’s pleasurable powers for affordable, efficient, high-impact entertaining on holidays and every day. A good cheeseboard also doubles as your eye- and palate-tempting table or buffet centerpiece, making your cheeseboard an incredible time and cost saver.

Here’s how I do it and you can too!

Watch me do it here!

Particularly outside France, Italy, and, to some degree, Britain, conventional cheeseboard-building wisdom is a formula, something like: choose five cheeses—one hard, one soft, one spreadable, one made from sheep’s or goat’s milk, and one novelty, like spiced or fruit-studded.

That simplifies choice but reduces a universe of electrifying possibilities to the same dull clichés served at everyone else’s parties.

Instead, my flexible framework promotes opportunistic discoveries and cost savings, for delightful, surprising, once-in-a-lifetime experiences neither you nor your guests will soon forget!

SHOP SALES, AND LET AVAILABILITY AND OPPORTUNITY SET YOUR MENU!

• Making a cheeseboard quickly becomes extremely expensive. However, visit a good cheese shop, even if that’s a decent grocery store cheese case, and select the combination of full- and reduced-price options that fit your taste and budget.

• Spend about half your total budget on solid foundations and the other half on punctuations of thrill and novelty.

INCLUDE AT LEAST ONE CHEESE MOST GUESTS WILL LOVE.

• This is a gateway cheese that even skeptics, and children, will feel safe trying. Once they like it, they might become more adventurous. If not, they will have at least one cheese to eat and still participate in the communal eating ritual.

  • Think of familiar cheeses like Cheddar, Gouda, Provolone, Swiss, etc.

  • For a crowd-pleasing Bleu, try Gorgonzola (or my favorite iteration, Gorgonzola Dolce)!

INCLUDE AT LEAST ONE CHEESE THAT’S UNEXPECTED BUT MOST GUESTS WILL BE EXCITED TO TRY.

• The main idea here is to choose a cheese that is familiar-but-different in some perceptible way. This sparks curiosity and invites comparison tasting and conversation.

• This is most successful when you choose an unusual variation of a familiar cheese.

  • The example I use in my YouTube demonstration is a Cheddar, usually made of cow’s milk; but this time, I’ve chosen a surprising Cheddar, made of goat’s milk.

  • As another example, you might explore BellaVitano, a cow’s milk cheese from Wisconsin, in America. Similar to a well-aged Cheddar, BellaVitano first reminds the eater of Parmesan and finishes with buttery richness. That’s where the novelty begins because BellaVitanos are available in a tasty range of rubbed or soaked flavors, from bourbon to espresso, wines, and spices. Interesting, appetizing contrasts and surprises can be drawn from many points in this product range.

INCLUDE VARIETY.

• This includes variety of cheeses. Serve at least three, but more than five to seven become unwieldy to offer and confusing to eat.

• Variety also includes mild, strong, sweet, and savory flavors and contrasting textures, appearance, and color.

  • Serve a range of whole wheels, slices, pats (yes, you can serve excellent butter on a cheeseboard, either as a stand-alone offering, like you would a Chèvre or Gruyère, or as a condiment), leaf-wrapped cheeses, ashed or moldy rinds, fresh and aged or smoked cheeses, etc.

  • You can also select cheeses made in different countries, regions, or from different milks—buffalo, cow, goat, sheep, etc.

INCLUDE AT LEAST ONE LOCAL PRODUCT.

• Even if the place we live makes one or two local cheeses, we’re likely serving cheeses from at least across our country and, often, around the world. Therefore, serving at least one local cheese or accompaniment brings the experience of eating close to home.

• You can either make or buy this item.

  • I often use a jar of honey from my family’s own apiary, a jar of fruit jam or pepper jelly (an extremely Southern choice), or homemade crackers or simple, not-too-sweet cookies.

  • My Classic Cheese Ball is also a fast, easy, addictive, make-ahead, homemade option, that helpfully ticks several criteria on this guide!

• The more closely you tie the food you’re eating to the place it was grown and prepared, the better. For that link is the poetry and unity of assembled parts, particularly when many ingredients traveled far to reach you!

CONSIDER EASE OF EATING.

• Standing guests engage a cheeseboard on buffet, for example, differently than one served on a table, around which they’re seated.

• If cheese will be taken from one side of the board only, style your board accordingly. Style all-around cheeseboards to be equally accessed from all sides.

• If, for example, service circumstance might make cutting and spreading difficult for some guests, facilitate their access and enjoyment by portioning cheese in advance, skewering portions with cocktail picks, and choosing accompaniments that can be picked up rather than spooned or spread (for example, dried fruit and olives rather than tapenade or chutney), etc.

• Think through the practicalities of each service step upfront, and serve your cheeseboard such that all guests can easily enjoy it without juggling utensils or dropping plates. A little advance planning and preparation make service and enjoyment easy for your guests and you, when no one drops their plate or spills their drink on your new white carpet!

SERVE CONDIMENTS.

• Again, consider ease of serving and eating.

  • Avoid serving red-/dark-colored beverages and sauces if you’re concerned about protecting household furnishings, especially for standing parties.

  • Those points considered, a variety of sumptuous fresh and dried fruit, olives and pickles, crackers, breads, spreads, jams and jellies, honey, nuts, etc., are all appropriate enhancements to offer.

  • For my guide on offering bread and crackers with elegant simplicity, watch my film on Bread Service.

PROVIDE APPROPRIATE UTENSILS.

• If you have a collection of specialty cheese-serving flatware, use it; but there’s no need to overextend to buy new.

  • Sturdy dinner knives work well.

  • Sharper, generally non-serrated, steak knives serve firmer cheeses easily.

  • Remember spoons and forks for accompaniments and condiments too.

• Mix and match china, glass, and flatware for a casually elegant presentation.

• If, for example, dates or olives contain pits, or spent cocktail picks must be discarded, provide containers to receive them.

  • These should be on the table, near enough the chessboard that guests intuit their use, but not immediately on the board, touching still uneaten food.

  • Before the party starts, put one or two clearly spent picks or pits in these receptacles, to communicate their purpose to guests.

    • Psychologically, for fear of embarrassing ourselves, people will generally not soil a clean bowl with trash.

    • Conversely, when they feel confident that this is their host’s intent, guests will use containers as indicated by example.

MAKE YOUR CHEESEBOARD AN ADVENTURE OF DISCOVERY.

• Whether you build your cheeseboard on a porcelain chop plate, a wood breadboard, or directly on your slab stone countertop, organize offerings in zones, not a scattered confetti.

  • This helps guests enjoy, understand, and navigate the dazzling romp you’ve laid for their pleasure!

INCLUDE FRESH, NON-DAIRY OPTIONS.

• As you choose accompaniments and condiments, ensure offerings are substantial enough that people who either don’t like, don’t eat, or cannot digest dairy foods have other options available.

  • This both satisfies appetites and welcomes all to participate in the shared eating experience.

• When in doubt, pile your board high with fresh, plump, peak-season seedless grapes, which just about everyone can eat in abundance.

  • They’re visually gorgeous and fill ample space on your cheeseboard too!

CENTERPIECE?

• Variety is experienced as opulence. Compose it beautifully, and your tantalizing cheeseboard will double effortlessly as a charming, memorable centerpiece!

• Simply place the cheeseboard prominently on your buffet, or in the center of your dining table, in lieu of flowers or other decoration.

  • Yes, good cheese costs, but you’ve shopped the sales and saved the cost of additionally buying flowers!

• For evening parties, strew your table with a few (unscented) tea light candles in clean, attractive votives.

  • Just place candles such that all guests can safely reach the cheeseboard, without flaming shirtsleeves or forearms!

    • For casual presentation, place candles in saved canning jars. This subconsciously echoes your cheeseboard accompaniments.

    • I have a collection of vintage clear pressed glass French and Italian fruit, olive, and mustard pots that I use in this way, always to enchanting effect (and constant compliments).

• What if you’re serving the cheeseboard for a specific course, say several courses into a seated dinner, and you’re concerned guests will plunge in too soon?

  • When you seat guests, simply mention that you will all enjoy the cheese together, later in the meal. Hunger and anticipation heighten delayed gratification. Use that to your advantage!

For more details on choosing ingredients and assembling your cheeseboard, including ideas about creating lively visual impact by using unexpected serving pieces (and how to source them at tremendous savings), watch my full demonstration on YouTube.

With that, totally free from whether you do or do not celebrate upcoming holidays, may all your days be delicious, merry, and bright, in ways that ring true for you! Particularly this year, when many bodies, souls, and budgets are exhausted, remember that the more we can do beautifully for ourselves, our loved ones, and our community, the richer all our lives become, in ways that have little to do with money. And no prize is given for martyrdom. Relish your most rewarding priorities, and let the rest go! Excess is not needed when making human connections takes precedence.

With deepest gratitude to each of you for being part of my year, I leave with you with encouragement to use what you have, and what you can do and learn, to make your Winter marvelous, in ways that depend less on money. To quote the great Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors, “One is only poor, only if they choose to be!” So, happily stay home more. Mend and make do. Share responsibilities and surplus. Welcome the lonely. Do it with people who thrill you to be briefly alive together, and if any of my content can inspire or help you do it, you can find and access it in-full, for free, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and, of course, here on Substack. Find me everywhere as mathertonbaber.

This post concludes my 2025 season, but please explore my content and Comment as you feel inclined. I will respond along the way, as I use the next few months to rest, reorganize, and prepare to greet you afresh next Spring.

Meanwhile, visit my website, to catch-up on all my paid masterclasses, on-demand!

Peace, joy, fulfillment, and rest from my heart and home to yours—and happy New Year!

Like Howard Carter handkerchief-waving away ancient dust to breach Tut’s mysterious tomb, I stepped through the coffered door with the slow gasp of magnificent discovery. This new world stopped time. With tender-footed amazement, and Tchaikovsky’s twinkling celesta luring my imagination, I crept through the silent reception hall, paneled two-and-a-half-stories high in Brazilian Purpleheart, sunlit through ruby and sapphire stained glass windows. I was five years old. Above my warm camel coat’s plush velvet collar, my sparkling eyes spied the magnetic prize. Straight ahead, like a road block, barring entrance to the party: a table. To enter, I had to pass it. So, I breathlessly tip-toed up to its eye-high edge.

Antique gilt bronze putti, the size of children on first birthdays, laughed and tumbled down the table’s gleaming, Sienna-veined, black marble allée, bearing candles and plates amid tiered silver servers, glass cake stands, and old porcelain bowls, lashed in cerulean, violet, and rose. Like Madame Pompadour vaunting her petticoats at court, the whole confection swished in buttery vanilla swirls and oozed caramel seductions, fudging fragrant ganache tracks through a heaving confetti of polychromed mignardises and salted cashews the size of strong men’s hairy thumbs!

Awe-struck, I carefully strained and sniffed closer, for a touch-free taste. Powdered sugar brushed through my precocious eyelashes, delicious, melting snowflakes waltzing Chaînés across my flushed and breathless cheeks! No matter what followed, I was transported to the exotic world of my host’s design. With her smart use of one table, my inhibitions eased. My appetites piqued, and I unconditionally surrendered. For a few unforgettable, unrepeatable hours, that magical world became my universe, and its entrance portal, that splendidly and strategically laid table, taught me how to start fantastic parties by creating that same magic for my guests!

FIRST IMPRESSION

I made this memory at the first Christmas my family convened in a particularly grand house some of my relatives built in my childhood. Though, with equal bedazzlement, I recall visiting The Mayflower Hotel, in Washington, DC, not too many years later. There, the entrance to the hotel’s now sadly defunct restaurant, Café Promenade, was splendidly blocked by a salivatingly tower of mortal sin: the desserts buffet. All the cakes and puddings sat on graduated gray marble slabs, and each honed slab rested on the gilt wings of spectacularly carved, much-larger-than-life swans!

That same entrance table effect is used in hospitality the world over. From The Ritz in London to Le Grand in Paris, The Royal Sonesta in New Orleans, close to my home at The Seelbach and Brown hotels in Louisville, and even at events held in rented venues and everyday people’s homes and gardens, the technique always works the same.

I have used my entrance table method to style fabulous parties for glittering clients for over 20 years. Thinking of upcoming holiday entertaining and how I can best help you succeed in your hosting, I have filmed my guide to adapting my entrance table technique to your situation, so you can glean its many benefits too!

As I wrote about entrance tables in my previous post, Making Magic: A Designer’s Guide to Giving Unforgettable Parties:

“The first decoration guests encounter sets the tone for the entire party.

Whether a large floral centerpiece on a grand center table, a few garden blooms on an existing credenza, or dramatic live plants in urns flanking an entrance door, welcome guests with a confident statement of generous hospitality.

Even if you add no additional decor, guests will notice the point of entry and how seeing it made them feel. They’ll retain that feeling through the party and often later remember the whole party overflowing with flowers, even when this was not at all the case.”

It’s true, but when any element falters, the whole design and its impact suffer. Conversely, getting each element right is easy. That’s why I’ve created this guide to help you to do it well, every time!

Watch me do it here!

PRIDE OF PLACE

Hold your party in a space that allows you to use some kind of entrance table.

• Generally speaking, entrance table height should be approximately dining table height, around 30 inches from floor to tabletop, measured straight up the side of the table.

  • An existing center or library table works well.

  • The example I opened with, above, was sofa table. I use a similar configuration in my home now, also with a sofa table. This furniture arrangement suits my everyday life and easily doubles as an effective entrance table for parties, making setup and cleanup a snap.

• What if your existing table sits off to one side, like a foyer credenza? This can work but requires creating additional drama to draw guests’ attention away from their traveling path—generally, directly through the center of the room, en route to the main action of your party (and their first interest is usually the drinks station or bar).

  • For such cases, read the following steps with the understanding that you may need to amplify the impact of entrance table aesthetic choices to compensate for using a table that guests do not necessarily have to engage to enter your party.

• You can also temporarily move a table to your desired location for this purpose and remove it after the party.

Every rule has exceptions, but, generally, to determine the diameter of table to use, simply add room width, in feet, to room length, in feet. That sum is the table diameter, in inches.

For example, for a room that is 15-feet square:

15 feet (room width) +15 feet (room length) = 30 feet = 30 inches (tabletop diameter)

How do you calculate table diameter for a vast space, like a ballroom, where this formula would suggest an impossibly huge table?

• Within the larger space, at the room’s entry point, determine a smaller portion of the space that feels like an appropriate arrival area.

  • Consider the overall space, use of that space, existing fixtures and furniture, your number of guests, and how guests will move through the space.

  • Define the dimensions of that imagined room, in feet.

    • Most simply, use masking tape to mark the floor area you intend as your arrival room-within-a-room. Adjust the tape til you’re satisfied with the designated area. Note that area’s dimensions, and remove the tape.

  • Then, proceed with the formula, as above.

• Always test your estimate well ahead of your party too.

  • Many rental venues, for example, have round- or rectangular-top folding tables on-site in six- or eight-foot dimensions.

    • Call ahead to schedule your site visit and ask if you might briefly use one of their tables to test your estimate.

      • After you’ve confirmed your future booking in their venue, most good site managers will gladly accommodate such reasonable requests.

    • Alternately, you can ask to visit when the venue is being setup for another client’s event.

      • Taking all care to never impose on other people’s activities, watch how tables about the size of your estimate fill, and function with people, in the space.

    • If all else fails, make a paper template the size and shape of your estimated table dimensions.

      • Roll it up, and carry it into the venue under your arm.

      • At a time when you’ll disturb no other activities, unroll your template onto the floor.

      • Move around it, as if you are the guests at your party, and adjust your estimate according to your observations.

• For reference: even in cavernous spaces, I most often use round tables, rarely larger than eight-feet diameter, for entrance tables.

  • If, for any reason, you need to slow guests’ entry into the space, use a square or rectangular table. People subconsciously navigate sharp corners more slowly than round.

  • Remember that larger tables require larger decorations.

    • When cost is a concern, keep table size proportionate to the size of the room, but err toward using a slightly smaller diameter table.

Regardless of your exact situation, always prioritize guest safety! People must comfortably and safely pass, and ideally circulate around, the table in both directions, coming and going, at the same time.

The grandest effect is pointless, and harmful, when using it causes injury. Parties are not thought experiments in glossy editorial magazines. They must truly function properly, in the real course of real use, in actual life. Guest safety is always the responsibility of their host and everyone that host engages to help them produce the party!

DRESSED TO THRILL

Your entrance table may be skirted or not. The idea is to make a polished, intentional first impression that sets and carries the tone for your entire party.

• If your table is handsome and stylistically aligned with the mood of your event, proudly show your beautifully bare table!

  • Just remember to protect its surface from left drinks or flower arrangement condensation, spills, etc.

    • A quarter-inch-thick tempered glass top, custom-made to your exact table size and shape, is the most tailored and effective solution.

    • Alternately, neatly cut a piece of floral gift wrap-type cellophane to your exact table size and shape. Lay it directly on your tabletop to discreetly protect the surface.

• Conversely, if your table is temporary, like a rented folding table, or otherwise out of character with the rest of your event decor, dress it with a lovely linen.

  • The strongest visual choice is a linen that drops from the tabletop all the way down to the floor.

  • If you’re going to make one custom linen for your party, this is the place to use it.

  • Remember: the detail and finesse of your entrance table sets the mood for your entire event. Sloppiness conveys one message, and precision conveys another. How do you want to portray yourself and your hospitality to your guests? The old saying that first impressions last a lifetime holds true here, as does the wisdom that you never overcome a bad first impression.

That said, custom linens are not always possible or necessary. Watch my companion film on YouTube for additional suggestions on making exquisite custom linens, properly sizing linens for your entrance table, adapting rented linens to this purpose, and layering linens to protect tables and create perfect presentations.

KISS HELLO, KISS GOODBYE

How entrance tables are decorated matters. Flowers, food, architectural and garden elements, and even art objects can all dress stunning, impactful, eminently successful entrance tables. The positive impact results from choosing table decoration that inherently communicates your event’s quality and style, is proportionately sized to the table, and its intent and use are intuitively clear, or communicated directly, to guests.

When choosing or designing table decoration, key questions to answer are:

• Is your event casual or formal?

  • For example, is this the occasion for a basket of daisies or an antique urn overflowing with opulent garden roses and rare orchids?

• What height and diameter is my entrance table? Understanding proportion and scale is key to decorating your table for maximum impact.

  • In this application, most visually attractive decorations are about two-thirds the visual size of your table.

    • For example: if your table is about 30-inches tall and 30-inches in diameter (an approximate visual square always makes an attractive presentation), your decoration’s visual size should be about, give or take, 20-inches deep, wide, and high.

    • That rule applies both to individual objects, when used alone, which might be one large plant or flower arrangement, and to the overall visual size of an assembled group that’s viewed as one cohesive unit, like a variety of cakes on stands or a collection of wire topiary forms.

• Lastly, how will guests engage the entrance table? Is the table and its decoration intended only to be admired as guests pass? Are guests intended to engage the table? If so, how? when? why?

  • For example, entrance tables are often an ideal place to offer guest place cards, like at weddings and other formal affairs; but this is only effective when guests understand they are intended to find their card on the table and carry it away.

  • Similarly, if food is offered on the entrance table, when will it be eaten? Will it be served by staff, or are guests to serve themselves? If self-service, do guests use their hands? utensils? Have you provided the necessary equipment, like plates and napkins, etc.?

  • Communicate everything clearly and directly. Small signs are often helpful.

    • Print signs in an attractive typeface that echos the overall design of your event, or work with your calligrapher for formal parties.

    • Either way, leave no expectation to chance, because guests cannot read your mind.

    • Take the example of my own wedding: My husband and I decided that the two punches offered tasted obviously alcoholic enough that guests would not want to add more alcohol to their punch from bottles offered on a separate self-service bar. We, therefore, did not label the punches, and several rather dear bottles of rare Kentucky bourbon, intended for civilized sipping, ended up drained straight into the punch bowls, by guests who, by all stumbling measures, keenly enjoyed our party!

Remember that entrance table decorations need not be complicated to enchant guests. When I often entertained in what is now the National Center for White House History, expectations ran high and budgets low. I draped a four-foot round pop-up-type folding table in a Navy blue cotton twill linen, to the floor, exactly as I demonstrate in my YouTube film. On it, I stood a tall glass cylinder vase, filled with a wild, exuberant gathering of seasonal gold-flowering branches—Forsythia, when I could get it. I simply spiraled the stems, unbound, and have seldom received more consistent compliments or requests that I repeat any other of my designs, ever!

OVER-THE-TOP

When cost is no concern, most of the party happens well away from your entrance table, you have the help to pull this off seamlessly, and you want to make a truly unforgettable party even more remarkable, wait til all your guests have passed the entrance table and the party is well underway.

Then, swap out the entrance table decor with a stylish, thoughtful offering of parting gifts!

• This is often cellophane bags of candy or specialty cookies, tied with jaunty ribbon.

  • Though, when parting guests may yet drive a fair distance home the same night, gift bags of sweet and savory snacks, headache tablets, and canned espresso soften long rides home.

    • Once, after an outdoor wedding during an emergence of periodical cicadas, I sent guests away with custom-made Belgian chocolate bars formed in the shape of cicadas, complete with cinnamon-red candy eyes!

    • And the most lavish parting gifts I ever offered for a client were diamond tennis bracelets for the ladies and Smith & Wesson revolvers for the gents. (And if I name the client on that job, or the occasion, I might no longer be around to write more posts like this one, later!)

With that, happiest holidays and entertaining! While all this may seem ludicrously grand, particularly in our present moment, when so many have so little, the underlying ideas herein adapt just as well to simplicity as extravagance. The best hospitality is given freely, from the heart. Just do that.

THANKSGIVING

I have one more big idea for you yet this year, but I hope my 2025 content has inspired you to connect with people who thrill you to be alive! Whether you loved my Yeast Rolls in April (just-right for holiday party hors d’oeuvres sandwiches or to accompany a great holiday meal), my Caramel-Pecan Sticky Buns in May (a perfect warm welcome to loved ones on cold holiday mornings), my Cheese Ball in November (marvelous for holidays and every day), my flower and gardening content all year long (if you’re thinking about how to decorate your entrance, buffet, or dinner tables, have a look), or you found my writing and returned for more, thank you for being a part of my year!

To a business as small as mine, every Like, Subscribe, Comment, and purchase matters, and I consistently give you all I can, as generously as I’m able. For each of you gives me the greatest gift of all. In a world that is increasingly hostile to art and ideas for their spiritual, not commercial, value to lift our lives, you empower me to democratize the knowledge and skills I used for years to entertain some of the world’s most illustrious clients but could have personally never afforded to buy, for myself. But I have learned that we can all afford anything we can do for ourselves. That makes us rich in ways that depend less on money. Regardless of our sameness or difference, that power’s time is now, and I hope that is where you and I meet.

If that’s your heart as well, thank you, again, and, if you have not already done so, please take the next step and subscribe to me here on Substack, follow me on Instagram, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Also, watch for opportunities to learn with me Live and Online in 2026. I’ll post dates on my website, and I am planning a banner new year that I am elated to share with you soon!

As I proposed in my last essay, a helpful response to challenges in our present moment is to start connecting authentically—and more in-person, less online—than many of us have done in recent years. It only works when done freely, from the heart.

Such radical freedom often hides behind secrets kept in fear of embarrassment or upsetting people we love; but the stakes are far too serious to pretend.

If life is hard right now, say so. You’re not alone. If your situation is easy, look around. People near you need help now. And if your guests care that your chandelier has not been lately cleaned, or that you don’t have a chandelier, invite other guests! Worries about saying the wrong word or using the wrong fork are about your host or guests, not you. Be considerate. Invite or attend with clarity and intent, and do not shred yourself tidying up, buying excess, tolerating nonsense, or channeling Escoffier.

Instead, gather friends who make you happy to be alive. They will come for you, as you are, regardless of your housekeeping or peanut brittle.

In that spirit, a recipe! To make it, you’ll only need a few widely available ingredients and ten minutes to stir them together.

The preparation, however, is best served chilled, overnight. While you wait, watch me make the recipe on YouTube. You can also read my companion essay. It is my most personal, and personally revealing, publication ever, and I wrote it with you, my reader, and my country in mind.

A CLASSIC NEVER DIES

This recipe came to me through a popular steakhouse in my hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky. Beginning possibly as early as the restaurant’s opening in 1971, a giant three-pound orb of this cheeseball stood like the bronze bust of a local luminary, with a serrated steak knife in his head, at the terminal end of the restaurant’s beloved—and genuinely excellent—salad bar, surrounded by bowls of sunflower seeds, Craisins, and Chow Mein noodles; a crock of house-made croutons; baskets of Club, Saltine, and sesame breadstick crackers; and commercially sealed single-serving butter cups. From workday lunches to wedding rehearsal dinners and celebratory occasions, I knew this scene all my life, til new owners recently changed the cheeseball recipe and service. Loss of the original cheeseball on the salad bar is lamented by everyone I know who still frequents the restaurant.

I can’t swear that this is the restaurant’s exact original proportions, but it’s extremely close. With the exception of my substituting fresh herbs for the restaurant’s use of dried, I’ve printed it here as it was recited to me by a long-time waitress, who often made the recipe at the restaurant

Watch me make it here!

CHEESE BALL OR ROLL

Makes one three-quarter pound cheeseball.

• Serves three to four people as an appetizer, six to ten people if offered with plenty of crackers and other appetizers or before a substantial meal.

• This is a formula more than a recipe. Keep the cheese ratio 1:1:1, and make the batch as big as you please!

• Shred cheeses while cold. Then, warm to room temperature for easy mixing.

REQUIRED INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 pound original Philadelphia cream cheese, room temperature

  • Do not substitute.

• 1/2 pound extra-sharp yellow Cheddar cheese, room temperature

• 1/2 pound Pepper Jack Cheese, room-temperature

  • May substitute Habanero Jack or any other buttery, creamy, semi-soft, preferably Monterey Jack-based cheese.

• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped, or a mixture of chopped fresh parsley and chives

  • May substitute 2 Tablespoons each dried parsley and chives.

OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS

Other than fresh chilis, only use one of the following additions, if any. The restaurant uses none of these, but using them expands one base recipe into useful variety.

• Fresh Habanero, Thai, or other chili pepper, finely chopped, seeds and membranes included or removed, to your taste, or a few dashes of hot sauce

• A few grinds of fresh black pepper

• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard—implies a flavor toward Rarebit or Beer Cheese

• A few shakes of Worcestershire sauce—heightens savoriness with a hint of sweetness

METHOD

1. In bowl of a stand mixer, combine the cheeses and any other additions, except herbs. With paddle attachment, beat til smooth and homogenous, scraping bowl and paddle occasionally, about three minutes.

2. Form mixture into ball or roll, as preferred. Wrap tightly in parchment paper or plastic wrap, and refrigerate til ready to serve, preferably overnight.

3. An hour before service, unwrap cheese mixture. Roll in herbs to coat. Serve with crackers, etc.

Unsure how to present crackers, bread, and other accompaniments beautifully? Watch my Bread Service film on YouTube!

Some details have been changed to protect identities.

OMERTÀ

I’m from all the household furniture being dusted every morning and cotton percale bedsheets hand-pressed snap-crisp, changed at least twice a week. I’m from dishes washed, brasses buffed, and neat houses gleaming to greet even surprise visitors with an effusive, “Well, hello! Please, come in. Whatcha drinkin’?” That welcome proved host’s surety that their domestic hygiene would humble any white-glove snob and guests would oblige with reflexive praise and deference.

Everyone I knew either employed or worked as domestic help. Both sphere’s inviolable law was each person, and generation, knowing and playing their part to sustain the show and advance their family’s standing. The French polished flame veneer of gentility made bare-knuckle social climbing virtuous, and performative righteousness runged the ladder.

When I decided to attend the same Southern Baptist university that my family’s creakingly earnest preacher attended a half-century before, my grandmother sizzled with aspiration! Over country club chicken salad luncheons, her friends would share that their grandchildren fell off chairs or had beans removed from their nose, but she would say that her grandson’s sterling piety was marked in invitations to read Scripture aloud at convocation, lead congregational prayers, and, by Christmas, represent his freshmen class in the ceremonial Hanging of the Greens!

But by first boxed lunch of freshman orientation, I discovered that none of the other students’ mothers worked outside their homes, except mine; everyone’s father was a prominent doctor, lawyer, or pastor, except mine; and my playing the part birth and society gave me at home would not excuse my not being the part at school.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD-ON

“How’s your new school?,” fussed Caroline over our fitful mobile line. “I haven’t seen you since… when? You moved me out of my sorority house for Summer break. That’s right! How’s… Ohio? Anyway, we’ll catch up when I see you. I’m getting married! Come to my shower! At my parents’ place, in Buckhead. Right before Christmas. Bring a friend!”

Indiana. I had started my sophomore year in Indiana, at a big state school with excellent opportunities in all my interests. Top of that list? My wary study of other young men.

That’s ultimately why I left my hometown, The South, my first college, and the few tenuous friendships I made there, like Caroline. She and I were freshmen the same year. Over shared caf meals and campus walks, we became the kind of cordial that scans packed halls after class to find the other, someone to know in crowds. Manners were our only tie, but to a pariah exiled in situ, hoping to glance two smiling eyes is survival.

I had not told Caroline I was gay. Telling was too risky. My other friend Chelsea had a hard time fitting in too. In a land that ultimately worshipped library-reverent conformity, Chelsea laughed with her full boisterous soul and winked at cute jocks with playful wide-eyed waves that stopped clocks with envy of her freedom! Chelsea was present, whole, and fun, and she paid the price. A routine infirmary exam was some sanctimonious nurse’s cue to ring the university President and say that Chelsea was not a virgin. Since Chelsea was unmarried, and premarital sex was sin, she was expelled, right then, with no questions, proof, or self-defense.

Beyond school, my risk loomed larger. Every Sunday, all my life, with my family, I attended church that told me just how hotly homosexuals burn in Hell. Then, the year I started high school, my grandfather sat on the Board of Directors of a religious group that fired a then-closeted-at-work lesbian employee, because she was gay. That employee fought her firing in a nationally scandalous case both parties brawled to the United States Supreme Court. My adolescent diffidence was bullied at school and mute at home, where, for the thousandth fist-pounding time, I heard that those! god! damn! fags! were diseasing! America!

So, no, I had not told Caroline. I thought she knew. She accepts me, I hoped. Why else would she invite me to her shower? at her parents’ house? 500 miles away? with a guest? We had barely even kept in touch…

WELCOME

Through the constant pink-gray chemical haze of Hagerty’s silver polish and a tall case clock gonging my formative years in quarter-hours, I was raised that every blink was a black-and-white choice between good and evil; and I must instinctively think and do right, because, like that school nurse and every adult I knew, God saw and directly rewarded or punished all.

Before I was old enough to receive all that, I already knew I was different. Consequently, being gay never swayed my sense of morality. Whatever other gays were doing, I knew I had done nothing wrong. But because I did not see gay accepted around me, I hide in boat-shoes-and-Oxford-cloth plain sight, synched in the closeted homosexuals suffocating belt, anguishing whether I dare loosen the buckle, just to breathe, or release a trouser button, before the hidden parts spilled out in gasping rescue and ruin! Caroline’s invitation forced me to unzip, all the way.

I was dating a classmate I wanted to take to her party, but I dared not confirm my homosexuality by appearing with a date on her parents’ doorstep. Did not etiquette, and God, require me to think of other people’s sensibilities? “I’m seeing a man I’d like you to meet,” I told her on the phone, when I called to accept her invitation. Without too much pause, she insisted I bring him. “Of course,” she assured, resolving neither her fears nor mine.

With every gas lamp below Louisville flickering ho!, ho!, ho! and all Atlanta swagged in Magnolia, my boyfriend and I made the trip and dressed the part. At the appointed hour, we exchanged buoyant smiles and rang Caroline’s parents’ doorbell. Confident we had navigated her invitation with honest respect for all concerned, we stood tall, eager to congratulate my friend with the silver tree ornament gift we’d brought her. After an uneasy wait, the door opened, and we were received like a roadkill possum in the punch bowl!

THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

Now, 25 years later, American life feels like Caroline’s party. One lip begs please come while the other sneers why are you here? We’ve arrived here because a few profiteers maximally exploit and intentionally divide society, till both sides are equally broken. And this system’s victims, the American people, avoid, deny, escape, over-consume, and turn against each other in ways that further enrich and empower our abusers. Why?

What if, 25 years ago, I had followed life scripts written for me, by other people and generations, to benefit their comfort and conventions, at the expense of me reaching my full potential? Their lives would have been as dishonest and limited as mine, because my compliance enabled their fantasy, and their fantasy denied reality.

What if I had only learned skills from, or worked for, people exactly like me? I would still, today, be unfulfilled because I never achieved my goals, experienced the actual world around me, or developed deep, mutually vulnerable relationships.

What about now, as a business owner? How could my business survive if I tested every potential client’s and student’s beliefs, to be sure they aligned precisely with mine, on every point, no matter how small, before I sold to them?

As a gay man who has been out-of-the-closet for decades and does not fit neatly into any of the social, political, or religious realms in which I live and make my way, I have learned that differences are more about past than future. If I had waited to make decisions and build my life til I could do it only with people just like me, I would have died alone and, on the way, lost decades to miserable, dysfunctional inaction. Sound familiar?

In his 1962 Defense of Politics, Bernard Crick framed social differences with politics, which feels right for our 2025 moment too. “Politics,” he wrote, “arises from accepting the fact of the simultaneous existence of different groups, hence different interests and different traditions, within a territorial unit under common rule.” Crick continued, “Politics involves genuine relationships with people who are genuinely other people, not tasks set for redemption or objects of our philanthropy. They may be genuinely repulsive to us, but if we have to depend on them, then we have to learn to live with them.”

HOPE

If not persuasion or charity, then, what is each person’s responsibility to society, self, and their sincerely held beliefs? What use is any way that cannot wrestle hard questions and accommodate living real, dynamic life, in actual community?

Back at that Southern Baptist university where I first started my undergraduate education, my Religion professor taught me that real faith in any belief requires true believers to courageously accept that everything we believe might be wrong; to bravely and constantly test our beliefs for ourselves, against empirical facts and lived experience; and change our beliefs, and therefore our actions, when we learn more.

Like that wisdom changed me, following it has taught me that real authority, leadership, and power empower others. Just as my original community was full of imperfection, it was also full of sincere souls seeking happiness, and to help others, within their convictions, different but often largely similar to mine. As long as we do not harm our fellow person, arriving at the same destination is equally valid, whether reached by one road or another.

Now, 40 years on, critics from my past have become some of my strongest supporters, and I strive to return their good faith and fervor. Why? Doing life alone lands everyone precisely where American society flails, sinking, today.

Among people I know, how did we reconcile differences to progress together? Real-life relationships! Person by person, heart-to-heart, usually over food we both love, always offline, we set aside assumptions and prejudices and met each other afresh, as we are today, neither one trying to change the other.

Doing this also reveals that most of us have the same core concerns with the same common sense solutions. But we conceal personal struggle, when, in reality, we are all struggling against similar challenges, in silent, isolated, individually helpless parallel. Just scratch the surface. There’s our common cause.

For much of my life, I could not see good for difference. That’s normal when we’re young, but this moment requires us to find common ground for common good and unite in ways that steel us with joy to make better together!

Power is held by consent. We consent to all we do not change. Hope is vital; but, like I hoped Caroline understood and accepted my true self, hope is neither action nor solution. Our moment’s pivotal questions are who are we allowing to externally define us?, and, like I did, when I left that first college to realize my vibrant, authentic future, how can we reclaim our power, define ourselves for ourselves, and make the world we want, because of our differences? That is the real strength and exceptionalism of America’s founding ideas, and it remains our only recipe for a future we want to inhabit.

If you’d like an easy, delicious recipe to fuel such connections, and perhaps create a new tradition with people you love this year, here it is. To make it, you’ll only need a few widely available ingredients and ten minutes to stir them together. You can watch me make it on YouTube too—enjoy!

LUNCH

In December, 2004, while producing twenty-seven major holiday parties in Washington, DC, I bid to design, decorate, and cater President George W. Bush’s second inaugural luncheon, to be held the next month.

The lunch is staged quadrennially, between the new President’s public swearing-in and parade. Packed into the Capitol Rotunda, the new administration makes go-to contacts they’ll hire for years, and top designers bleed to win that job!

Of all proposals submitted, the Inaugural Committee narrowed candidates to the East Coast Goliath, who had dominated high-society party-giving longer than I’d been alive, and a tiny challenger, barely on scene 18 months, me. In the tastings, site visits, and after-hours charm campaigns that sign such deals, I met Luxury.

CLUES

When I grew up in Kentucky, walking barefoot bore one risk: agricultural, manufacturing, or oil fortunes squishing up between your toes. But Protestant Christianity equalized society, and the old guard cared less about status than character. Counting threads, one called it. Like an expensive shop with scuffed upholstery, when claims betray observable fact, probe deeper.

The person I call Luxury was different from all that. She wore South Sea pearls too fat to drop her chin. Her clothes were custom-made by the costumier to the Paris Opéra, from Brocatelles and silk Jacquards usually reserved for palaces and thrones, invariably pinned by Schlumberger. She chose daily from dozens of Birkin bags, stacked in their original boxes beside decades of Blahniks and Viviers. She gardened in Gucci, Stubbs & Wootton to blasély clad her show horse in cashmere. Suddenly, I was Luxury’s golden boy. We dined in the best restaurants, were served—by name—in the most exclusive shops, and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel was our HQ.

Though young, grateful, and rapt, I saw that Luxury’s hem was frayed.

EDUCATION

Luxury lived a lavish drive from town. Her stately house was studied perfection: chic griege walls, legions of white Phalaenopsis orchids in smart cachepots, Art Deco monuments by René Lalique, and wall-to-wall Axminster rugs.

I visited occasionally, but years passed before I spent a night in the house. When I did, my attempt to make tea pulled that ravelin’. I found kitchen appliances inoperable, not electrified, like a stage set. Save a few cracked cups, kitchen cabinets were bare.

Walking upstairs broke the seam. Opening one bedroom door, then another, and another, the fine rugs stopped at each raw tack strip threshold. Particleboard sub-floor spread to unfinished sheetrock walls. Stained mattresses laid on wire frames.

Between Luxury’s public face and private truth, I saw a ruin. Like mist in sun, when the mask burned off, only debt and fear remained.

MORE THAN MONEY

I, by no means, call all luxury fraud, but particularly in prestige flowers and floristry, anyone keen on quality and value gains to count threads. This begs the questions: what is real luxury, and how do we know it in a crowd?

“Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty,” said Coco Chanel. “It is not. [Luxury] is the opposite of vulgarity.”

Similarly, Carl Fabergé said, “Expensive things interest me little if their value is merely in so many diamonds and pearls.”

If not only price, materials, or volume, what is luxury?

Arrigo Cipriani, second-generation proprietor of the original Harry’s Bar, in Venice, said that luxury is simplicity perfected by many details. Voilà!

DETAILS

Use the following points to recognize real luxury flowers. In each category, the key question is: where’s the value?

OUTSTANDING VARIETIES

Even within one flower type, all varieties are not equal.

For example: a generic rose, bred to be commercially grown and sold in grocery stores, with priority for maximal efficiency and lowest commodity price, is entirely different from an heirloom rose that has been meticulously developed to have, and maintain over time, precisely most desirable qualities, like exact bloom shape, size, color, petal count, disease resistance, and scent.

Another example is Carnations. Common varieties are cheaply bought in gas stations, but highly sought Japanese Minami and African and South American Nobbio varieties are sold in premier outlets, at comparatively premium prices, because of their rare colors and variegation.

The question of value is not cheap or expensive per se. It’s the exceptionalness of singular traits, evaluated individually.

It’s also vital to learn what you like. If gas station Carnations make you happy, understand their provenance and costs to people and the environment. Then, make the informed decision that’s right for you.

Alternately, pay a fair price for high-quality artisanal blooms.

Choose what you like. The key is to avoid paying premium prices for inferior stems!

EXPERT HANDLING

Is a flower commercially grown with industrial fertilizers and pesticides, minimizing human touch and, therefore, costs and quality, or is a flower lovingly home- or small farm-grown, with expert human tending, using no industrial chemicals at all?

Once cut, how was a flower handled? With care, by skilled human hands, for optimal performance through its full life cycle, or hacked down and shipped with crushed leaves and bent stems, out of water, so you inevitably receive inferior flowers, regardless of where you bought them and what you paid?

What of growing location? Did a flower fly around the world to reach you a week after harvest, or did it grow locally and reach you the day it was cut?

Past supply chain, how—if at all—does your florist prepare stems before sale? This is called conditioning. It cleans and hydrates cut flowers to perform at peak and is best done stem-by-stem, with constantly sanitized equipment, keeping each type of plant material separate from others til they’re arranged. Properly conditioned flowers last longer too, and long vase life is value!

However, by far most—even eminent, purported luxury—florists I’ve known skip conditioning for convenience. Others hastily chop bunched stems en masse with dirty tools.

Every step adds or subtracts value!

DESIGN VIRTUOSITY

Remember Fabergé? “Expensive things interest me little if their value is merely in so many diamonds and pearls.”

He meant that whether an object is made of diamonds or glass, beyond the value of materials used, high-quality design and skilled execution add their own value—as Mr. Cipriani said, “…simplicity perfected by many details.”

To that point: Can a bouquet of stereotypically humble flowers be more valuable than a bouquet made of more typically prized blooms? On the value of a high-quality design and its skilled execution, absolutely!

Charles Masson, second-generation proprietor of the lauded—and, sadly, recently shuttered—La Grenouille restaurant in New York City, said, “…creating something out of nothing. …that’s the essence… of an artist is to, not necessarily take diamonds and make diamond necklaces but take something very modest and use the right color, the right scale, the right proportions, while not having the means to do it. That’s art.”

It’s also value! And strength of artful design, rendered in masterful technique, is the most elusive aspect of any creation, be it jewelry, food, architecture, or flowers. Anyone can arrange flowers. Art reveals the soul of its creator with precision, inspiration, and style!

PERSONAL SERVICE

Years ago, my hair was routinely cut by the best hairdresser I’ll ever know.

His technique was superb, his manner confident yet understated.

When I called to book a service, he never saw me in less than about three days. His schedule could serve me sooner, but his process could not.

“What must your cut do over the next two weeks?,” he asked when I called. “Are you attending events? At what time of day? What will you wear?”

Between that call and my appointment, he thought about his familiarity with my hair, my personality, all I shared. He referenced editorial fashion photographs for designer cuts on men about my age, with about my features. He consulted classic art. He filtered those references through his personal knowledge of me, over time.

Then, at my appointments, every cut was perfect.

Whether styling hair, sewing couture, or supplying flowers, that is luxury service. Its value is its customization to you alone, with nuance, specificity, and time. Its value is the relationship.

When a supplier’s name is on the door but you, the customer, can only reach shop staff and intermediaries, that is not luxury.

Not nearly everyone requires luxury service, but if you do, understand its value and pay for what you get.

COUNTING THREADS

Back in Washington, I lost my bid to produce President Bush’s inaugural lunch. My competitor did the whole job at a huge loss, because they could. I learned that today’s loss is tomorrow’s stepping stone, til you look back and realize you’ve climbed a mountain.

As for Luxury: I saw her plight and offered my hand, but she could not face herself. Knowing her taught me that there’s no external substitute for internal wealth. Yes, she gave me experiences I could never have afforded on my own; but she used consumption to avoid and hide, and I used those opportunities to master the knowledge and skills to make life beautiful and fulfilling for myself. Those same skills also equipped me to serve some of the world’s leading luxury brands on my own terms and merit. Pursue mastery, and your only competition is yourself.

I hope this article similarly empowers you to see fake from fact, make more informed choices, and support businesses that consistently deliver the quality they promise, high or low. There’s no shame in choosing what we like and can afford, but we each have a responsibility to ourselves and our situations to know, for sure, that we get what we choose and pay for.

I’ll leave you with an exercise: The next time you’re scrolling social media and see posted a vast ballroom decorated beyond capacity with fresh flowers, ask yourself: Is this luxury? Then, return to this list, view the post again, and, point-by-point, ask yourself not where’s the cost? but where’s the value?

If you’re interested in flowers but need more information to confidently answer that question, please consider subscribing to my accounts, here on Substack as well as Instagram and YouTube, all at mathertonbaber. From generous free content to professional masterclasses and one-to-one mentoring, find my content that’s right for you.

My business exists to highlight that the best floristry is highly skilled and to teach you the skills to achieve what you want with flowers. That freedom is the ultimate luxury!

“Trash it all,” scoffed my client, the bride! “What’s the problem?,” she mocked. “You still have hours!”

Two years of tedious planning, three endless days of meticulous floristry production, the tightest possible—mere three-hour—installation, and, one hour in, I was tearing $44,793.00 of David Austin garden roses (some 20 years ago!) off a famous hotel ballroom’s walls, with 500 White Tie guests imminently arriving.

Why? While dressing for the wedding, the bride whimsically changed her lipstick color and insisted the new shade clashed with her reception flowers.

A long ceremony gave my team moments to redecorate. We escaped as guests arrived, without a second to spare!

START WITH THE END IN MIND

If you’ve followed me for a while, or read my prior essay Threshold, you know that I have decorated hundreds of events in all types of place. From jewel box luxury shops to cavernous cathedrals and private homes alike, I’ve learned that decorating chic parties is always more or less the same, and doing it well has little to do with the common focus on centerpieces.

Instead, thoughtfully decorate the total space as a cohesive whole. Refine elements you make and add to maximize efficiency and impact, and your mind, body, budget, and guests will thank you!!

FIVE POINTS TO RECALL ON THE FINGERS ON ONE HAND

• POINT ONE: Set the right tone by choosing the right space.

  • If renting a venue, choose one you like, as it stands, without needing a total redecoration.

  • If at home, conceive, design, and decorate your house and garden with entertaining in mind. That happens long before any party is given.

  • In both cases, this includes architecture, lighting, and enough seating, tables, floor space, and loos to comfortably and realistically accommodate your number of guests, for the style of entertaining you intend.

    • For example, using a patio or courtyard might already feature an attractive stone or ivy-clad wall as the foundation of your decor, and such spaces often include existing dining tables, chairs, and ready access to public facilities. All this minimizes costs to add these separately. The less you add before the party and take away after, the better!

• POINT TWO: People are the most important decoration.

  • Add nothing that distracts from guests.

    • Also, the more guests that fill a space, the less visual and physical room remains for decor.

    • Avoid clutter, fuss, and hazards, like temporary chandeliers that could fall or pooled drapes that can trip people.

• POINT THREE: After guests, whether standing reception, buffet, or seated, at table, the food stars.

  • Do not distract from the menu. Keep it tidy and perfectly simple.

    • For example, design and serve a cocktail buffet that does not require flatware, replacing costly equipment with a thoughtful menu.

  • Answer guests’ key questions, like where do I get my napkin and plate? and where do I deposit spent glassware?, with obvious, intuitive layout and flow.

    • As a general guide, remember that in The West, we read from left to right. This is consequently a service flow most guests instinctively understand.

DECORATE THE ROOM, NOT THE TABLE

To review (on your first three fingers): so far, we’ve chosen a venue with inherent advantages and efficiencies; considered guests’ comfort, safety, and physical space; and devised an intelligent menu that is equally elegant in preparation, presentation, and enjoyment.

Now, we consider decorations to add, if any.

• POINT FOUR: The first decoration guests encounter sets the mood for the entire party.

  • Whether a large floral centerpiece on a grand center table, a few garden blooms on an existing credenza, or dramatic live plants in urns flanking an entrance door, welcome guests with a confident statement of generous hospitality.

    • Even if you add no additional decor, guests will notice the point of entry and how seeing it made them feel. They’ll retain that feeling through the party and often later remember the whole party overflowing with flowers, even when this was not at all the case.

  • Next, without going overboard, add a few extraordinary blooms to loo vanities.

    • One small vase per sink works well, up to three sinks.

    • Four sinks or more? One or two small posies, total, works best.

    • Either way, add fresh-cut eucalyptus, mint, and rosemary foliage for a green scent guests will notice and enjoy.

  • Beyond these essential placements, you may need nothing more. When you want more, however, think of using potted plants, like my favorite Kentia palms and English Ivy, before cut flowers.

  • Choose chairs, table linens, china, glassware, flatware, etc., each as equally vital design elements. When every element is intentional, nothing is wasted, and adding more detracts.

  • For more thoughts on choosing and pairing foundational furnishings, watch my YouTube film on Table Setting.

  • Want more impact? Add thoughtful decor at guests’ few highest touch points, like bars and buffets. Otherwise, impact is lost when viewed at distance or so much is added that individual elements cannot be discerned from an overwhelming horror vacui.

• POINT FIVE: Only now do we consider dining table centerpieces.

  • If you’ve done the previous steps well, often centerpieces are not needed. China, flatware, linens, glassware, and the sparkle they provide is easily the only interest required.

  • However, when a centerpiece is in order, choose quality over quantity, and never crowd dining tabletops or obscure guests’ eye contact or conversation.

    • For an effective idea for a ravishing, restrained centerpiece, watch my new YouTube film, where I make a simply chic grouping of garden roses.

    • When centerpieces are used, keep them low. They’re generally best viewed from above, and guests will mostly see them while seated.

  • Also, remember lighting, which often includes candles.

    • If you’re in a castle, tall candelabra may be appropriate as table decoration. Otherwise, never use tall table decor of any kind on more than about one-third of your total number of tables and only for bigger parties, say nine dining tables or more.

    • Add more tall candelabra, or other tall props or plants, around room perimeter, if you must.

    • Otherwise, use votive candles on tables, unscented, of a size and composition that will safely burn the entire length of your party.

    • I recommend using 100% beeswax candles with lead-free wicks. If not contained in glass, or you're concerned about cleaning fine crystal containers later, choose drip-free candles.

    • Only light candles after 6:00 PM. If candles are not lit, they are not used. So, if your party begins in the afternoon and continues into the evening, plan the lighting and distribution of votive candles accordingly.

WHY BOTHER?

No matter the scale and formality, or casualness, of our entertaining, the best parties are not about making impressions or showing off. They’re certainly not about Pantone colors or matching nail varnish to nosegays. They’re about thoughtfully combining people in ways that nurture mutual ease, pleasure, and understanding. That’s why come for dinner is the invitation extended to broach diplomatic détente, welcome new members into families, and create the spark in which two strangers just might fall in love; and it only works when the whole occasion is freely given and received, straight from our hearts.

Whether you’re an old pro or just wondering how to host your first small dinner party in a cramped walk-up flat (some of the best parties I’ve ever given or attended happened exactly like that!), I hope you have received these points with adaptation to your situation in mind. For as at least some of us shift from socializing largely on social media to more often connecting face-to-face, reviving these few timeless skills may be just the salve we need to smooth transitional edges and rediscover the joy of being briefly alive together!

If you’d like to know more about any of my suggestions, or how you might use them well, please let me know in Comments. I’ll answer all the questions I can, below or in future posts.

I hope you devoured my Summer series and still savor my peachy proposals with the season’s warm, slow fade. If not, catch up here, while great fruit remains available!

Meanwhile, before we launch into my Fall content together, I have a more conceptual piece for you. I hope you’ll make yourself comfortable and read—and think—through it with me, to the end.

There come times in life and work when we must re-evaluate what we do and how and why we do it. This essay is my reflection on that, shared sincerely, from my heart to yours.

Some details have been changed to protect identities.

PARTY CRASHER

“Right into the Great Hall,” I waved, decanting tables, chairs, and precisely packed contents from tractor-trailer trucks, lined nose-to-tail down G Street.

It was blunt, sweaty work. I wore a freshly pressed suit, tie, and polished leather shoes, regardless. “Liquor, wine, and bar fruit equally distributed to the four corners,” I led, walking. “Irons, power cords, and table linens to the center floor, please and thank you! Only clean sock feet on chair cushions if you are holding a cord for an ironer,” I insisted, “And NO ONE FALL INTO THE FOUNTAIN! Guests arrive in six hours,” I clocked. “The client in five. I need you set and dressed in four-and-a-half!”

Step by heave, my nearly 150 staff laid the monumental stage for a must-see, one-night-only gala performance, and snagging entry was high society’s obsession.

The brief: 1,600 VIP guests, including 12 Directors of national museums, 19 Directors of government agencies, four Supreme Court Justices, and the American President and First Lady for standing cocktails, seated three-course dinner, performances by members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and keynote address by the President, all served in one of America’s most spectacular spaces.

The National Building Museum’s colossal Renaissance Revival façade, made in 1882 from over 15 million bricks, fills a Northwest Washington, DC, city block. Originally the Civil War Pension Building, its two-feet-four-inches-thick exterior walls are clad in a terra cotta frieze three-feet high and 1,200 feet long.

Inside, the Great Hall spans 36,656 square feet. Its metal and glass ceiling vaults to 15 stories of breathtaking open, sun-lit atrium in seemingly endless miles of arched arcades, stacked in 360-degree double galleries.

The whole pile rests on eight of the world’s largest Corinthian columns. On bases eight feet in diameter, each column soars 75 feet high, with a circumference of 25 feet. They were hand-built with 70,000 bricks each, then plastered a la Scagliola. Now, more than a century on, they’ll greet Black Tie guests in aching grandeur.

I was Maestro, caterer and event commander extraordinaire! Designing and producing over 300 major events per year, if an ingredient, furnishing, or flower was chosen, I chose it. If it happened before, during, or after one of my parties, my staff and I made it happen, without fail, in elegantly cool, scratch-made, sky’s-the-limit style.

This night, that meant 15,000 hors d’oeuvres, 12,800 crystal drinking glasses, 9,600 pieces of hand-polished flatware, 6,400 pounds of ice, 4,800 bone china plates decorated in 22-karat gold, and 3,192 David Austin garden roses to dress 200 round dining tables, plus heavy security, staff meals, loading in by lunch, and out, debris and magic whisked away, by midnight.

And that was one venue, one night. The night before, I designed and catered the wedding of an international businessman’s daughter with 450 guests, cocktail reception, and a five-course seated dinner at the palatial pink marble Beaux-Arts National Museum of Women in the Arts. The night after, I served 2,200 guests for a buffet reception at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and a private house party in nearby Potomac, Maryland. Notes of gratitude and future bookings piled high from happy A-List clients, but something was dead wrong.

TRAINING

One month and one day after my undergraduate graduation, I reported early for my first job in Washington: junior designer and assistant to the owner of a prominent event design and production company. I was paid a pittance, plus one percent commission on all the work my boss and I sold and produced together. I had to pay too: steady obsequious tribute for my rare entrée to this exclusive club.

As my trainer dictated the company’s way of working, I asked a few questions. “You’re telling me to discard enquiries from prospective clients with modest budgets? Unless they're famous? Because we need to be seen serving prestigious clients?” I felt sure less flush callers rang because they needed our help too, but my $1,200-a-month rent (in 2004!) would be awfully steep to meet without this job. Plus, I spent my childhood watching Martha Stewart give big, professional parties on tv, dreaming I could do it as well. Beyond dreams, I made the contacts, landed the job, moved half-way across the country to take it, and I had beat trials before. So, I swallowed hard. “And you want me to sell pheasant entrées at the premium price but serve wine-dyed chicken instead? To maximize profit?”

“Look,” my trainer interrupted. “Honesty kills careers. This is only about the numbers.”

QUAM BENE NON QUANTUM

I stayed in Washington long enough to prove to myself that my skills are unusually suited to fly in the big league. I also learned that my terms of employment were unique neither to my employer nor any one aspect of the industry and my convictions were irreconcilable with the business. Advancing as far as possible with my integrity in-tact, I left.

Over the interim years, I have sought the inner rewards of making higher art, with finer skills, that exploit neither art, artist, audience, nor environment. This recently led me to another dream’s doorstep: writing my first book. However, talking with leading publishers was the typical joke. Instead of curiosity about subjects on which I have something singular to say, 100% of the internationally dominate publishers I’ve met to date invariably asked two questions: Are you on peak trend now, and how many followers do you have on Instagram?

SAME SONG, DIFFERENT VERSE

My life and work embody the flesh-and-blood questions asked by principled artists for time immemorial: perception versus reality, merit or scale, education or entertainment, and, ultimately, purpose—learning every day and creating work of real, deep quality, insight, and lasting value, by moral means, profiting enough to live.

This struggle has led myriad makers onto particularly short-form social media, like Facebook and Instagram. Many small businesses, including mine, became internationally viable by these tools, but the platforms of the past were algorithmically different from those we have now.

Big Tech has programmed its endemic conflation of luck and talent into systems that run on homogeneity and outrage. This reduces complexity and nuance to an insidious, fleeting instant gratification that artificially creates winners and losers while giving users the illusion of gain. However, in lieu of actual achievement, this illusion exploits human psychological vulnerabilities to maximize users’ time spent chasing desired outcomes on the platforms, entirely to the platforms’ favor. And the only consent we users give is our using the platforms.

PAY TO PLAY

To fry an egg, I use a skillet. To turn an egg, a spatula. To baste an egg, a spoon; but when a tool does not, or no longer, perform the function asked by the user, the intelligent user either uses the tool differently or changes to use a more effective tool.

Modern psychology classifies a person overly concerned with pleasing other people along a continuum, between emotionally immature and mentally ill. How, then, do we classify a whole society that has changed their lives and engagement with work, the world, and their fellow human to please unappeasable, ever-changing, inhuman algorithms—algorithms which, in many cases, no longer produce users’ desired outcomes?

I’ve quoted Einstein on this before, but it bears repeating: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And as Marcus Aurelius noted: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

We cannot use these platforms today on the memory of how they worked yesterday, for their true intent—and ours—is proven not in talk but action. The bigger question is: how much longer will we profit our abusers, hoping for the occasional kiss?

THRESHOLD

I won’t blame all society’s woes on one boogieman, but social media has tapped the vein that will bleed us to death if we let it. A key result of chronic bleeding is confusion, and confusion is one of social media’s most effective designs.

As I lately stepped back from short-form socials to consider if, or how, I will use them differently in the future, I have found clarity; and, to quote the poet Etel Adnan, “To see clearly is an act of resistance.”

What are we resisting? How is serving a vulgarian boss, a short-sighted publisher, or an insatiable algorithm different? In his classic poem Defeat, Khalil Gibran wrote our answer: “To be enthroned is to be enslaved.” This asks: what price will we pay to meet our aims, and when do we change our aims toward goals and lives we can realistically achieve, at costs we’re willing and able to manageably sustain?

Goethe wrote: “All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause.”

In this pause, I remember my graduate class on Animal Psychology and its central theme that an animal’s intelligence is generally observed by the number of exposures to new stimuli that animal takes to learn enough to change its behavior.

As still relatively new short-form social media gleefully ladle fuel on our burning world, I wonder what openings this threshold offers us all to identify and understand the technology and its “gods” for what they are, take active responsibility for our own use of—or abstention from—these platforms and their consequences, and innovate new ways to either harness platforms’ value for real, everyday users and society or replace them with more altruistic, effective-for-users alternatives.

If anything I’ve said resonates with you, and you care about the character and integrity of the intellectual workers and businesses you support, as well as your actual social network, online and in life, I hope you’ll continue thinking on this with me. For we will only make the future we want by doing it together!

Unless otherwise noted, the ideas in this essay are mine, but they have been shaped by those of other thinkers.

For a deeper dive into the ideas I’m pondering now, read the books I’ve listed for you, below. They’ve shaped my views for this essay and my thoughts about what is happening in our world today and how we may engage those happenings ethically and productively.

I hope you find these resources as interesting and helpful as I do.

Adrift: America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway (2022) Penguin Random House.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (2024) Penguin Press.

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols (2017) Oxford University Press.

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway (2017) Random House.

We are two recipes in to this three-recipes series, and I hope you’re cooking along as we go.

That’s both because the preparations are too good to miss and because my general approach is to lead you, like any good teacher, from first foundational steps through confidently combining those steps in greater glories.

So far, we’ve had marvelous macerated peaches. Then, we used those peaches to make sensational Shortcakes. Now, we’ll use both elements, the macerated peaches and the Shortcake biscuits, to prepare a luscious Peach Cobbler, inspired by my mother’s own well-loved example.

My mother’s cobblers always have top and bottom pie pastry crusts, which you can do too. Just sprinkle the top crust with coarse sugar, dots of butter, and perhaps the barest rasping of cinnamon before baking.

The following biscuit-topped cobbler, conversely, more reflects my husband’s family’s cobbler connotation. And since using either pastry or biscuit top crusts otherwise changes the recipe none at all, consider this method two-in-one!

As for the conclusion of this series, for lovers of peaches and variety, I’ve given you both: three reliable recipes with several easy adaptions. All that’s left to do is invite people around to enjoy them with you, in the spirit of real hospitality among equals. After all, even Shakespeare observed that a cobbler is a mender of soles!

In Comments, please let me know what cobbler is, and means, to you.

This recipe reflects the cobblers of my and my husband’s places, and I hope you enjoy it—not only as much as we do, but also as much as all my clients and friends have done for over 20 years. From coastal Maine to South Beach, Miami, I’ve cobbled fresh seasonal fruit and pastry together, in more or less this way. Each time, my cobblers are received with multiple portions eaten and fervent demands for my recipe!

Watch me make it here!

Southern Peach Cobbler

• 1 batch of prepared macerated peaches, already juiced. That’s about 6 cups of peach slices in at least a cup of accumulated juices.

• 1 recipe of my Southern biscuits, prepared and cut but unbaked (you can also use them directly from frozen)

• 1 double recipe of your favorite pie pastry, a quantity usually considered enough to make two 9” or 10” pies or one double-crust pie

  • Get, and watch me make, my recipe for all-butter pie pastry on YouTube, or use a recipe you like.

• 2 Tablespoons of tapioca starch (not tapioca pearls)

• 2 Tablespoons cool water

• 1 egg, beaten with 1 teaspoon water, to make an egg wash

• 3 - 4 Tablespoons Turbinado or coarse clear sanding sugar

1. Position rack in lower third of oven, and preheat to 500º F.

2. Dissolve tapioca starch in cool water to form a slurry. Stir slurry through peaches mixture, and reserve.

   1. Remember that cobbler is not pie. Pie holds a slice when cut, and cobbler does not. Cobbler’s fruit filling is looser, more self-saucing.

   2. Experiment with these ratios for thickening, and adjust future preparations according to your experience, taste, and, of course, the fruit you’re using.

3. Roll prepared pie pastry to about 1/8” thick. Lay it in a well-buttered tempered glass or ceramic baking dish, about 7.5-inches x 11-inches, and dock well.

   1. Dish should be large enough to hold the whole volume of peaches and juice, without overflowing in the oven.

   2. I use vintage rectangular Pyrex baking/casserole dishes that I’ve collected from dead relatives and thrift shops. They’re pretty well all that’s used for this type of baking in The South, though enameled cast iron works well too.

4. Place baking dish on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet to save cleanup, in case of bubbling over while baking.

5. Tip prepared peaches mixture into prepared, unbaked crust.

6. Top filling with my Southern biscuits, as I demonstrate in my companion YouTube film, or a second layer of rolled-out pie pastry.

   1. If using a pastry top crust, cut a vent in the center of the pastry, large enough to see the fruit beneath when baking.

7. Brush biscuits or top crust with egg wash.

   1. If desired, sprinkle with coarse sugar for extra crunch.

8. Place cobbler in the oven. After one or two minutes, as soon as oven temperature has recovered from opening the door, lower oven temperature to 400º F. Bake cobbler about 45 minutes to a good hour, maybe a bit more.

   1. You’ll know filling is done when you see the filling bubbling up in the very center of the cobbler. Do not remove from oven before this happens!

   2. If your biscuits or top crust begin browning too quickly before the fruit is fully bubbling in the center, loosely tent the whole cobbler with aluminum foil. Remove foil to finish browning in last few minutes of baking, as necessary.

9. When filling is fully cooked and biscuits or pastry beautifully browned, remove cobbler from oven. Cool before serving. How cool?

   1. Tapioca starch does not fully set til it’s cooled to 85º F. Keep that in mind when timing the making, baking, cooling, and serving of your decadent cobbler.

   2. You can hold and eat cobbler at complete room temperature for up to one day, about 12 hours. Just eat cobbler the day you make it. By the next day, the filling’s moisture softens crust past prime. Do not refrigerate before eating!

Offering cobbler without vanilla ice cream simply isn’t done. I suggest you serve the cobbler barely still warm, with big spoons, the best ice cream you can find, and everyone’s cell phones locked away. Be fully present in the ecstasy of its eating, and leave. no. evidence.

In my previous post, I gave you an easy, no-fail method to lift ripe, succulent, peak-season peaches to their sublime ultimate expression.

Whether daintily spooned from a fine bowl with vanilla ice cream, slurped from an old shoe, or gorged from your lover’s lap, this is all you need for a passionate life-long love affair with peaches nonpareil.

Still, some people like variety. So, in my next two posts, I will share equally effective, direct routes to transform that ambrosial preparation into variously divine iterations.

Up first: Peach Shortcakes, which requires I give you my fabulous recipe for a Southern Biscuit that can’t be beaten. (You can even make and freeze them ahead!)

Simply prepare these biscuits, as directed, below. Cool them slightly. Split them in half, horizontally, with a dinner fork, and pour on that daringly peachy maceration. Top with vanilla ice cream or slightly sweetened Crème Chantilly (better yet if you whip in about a heaping dessert spoon of sour cream or Crème Fraîche per about cup of liquid cream). Eat immediately, with people you trust, because these Peach Shortcakes turn Sunday School spinsters to shameless tarts!

To amplify biscuits’ impact as Peach Shortcakes, right before baking, you might sprinkle their egg-washed tops with finely ground cornmeal, for added crunch. The corny combination with peaches is classic!

Biscuits, You Deserve Butter

Making biscuits, like making love, is done most successfully with the benefits of experience, confidence, and adjustments to feedback as you go.

No matter our pursuits, we all have a learning curve. I can, therefore, forgive anyone who regards a Southern biscuit as a mere vehicle to carry more interesting fare. For I too once held this uninitiated view but have since repaired my heretical err. In fact, so complete is my conversion that I now occasionally pray, “If I don’t have a really great biscuit soon, I just may lose my composure!”

What changed me? Meeting my husband! Tender, flavorful, and oh-so hospitably Southern, one taste plunged me past that quivering point of no return: BISCUITS!

Growing up and living most of my life in the American South, how could I have reached about age 40 never having previously encountered such a fine twinkle of baking magic? Most biscuits, like most everything, are average. I assumed, like many other people, that the sort-of doughy, sort-of crusty, always disappointing, almost inevitably bland biscuit I knew represented biscuits writ large. But just like meeting one person, or even one group of people, doth not represent all people, everywhere, let the average biscuit hoodwink you no more!

Whether you’ve long loved great Southern biscuits or found this article, or its companion YouTube film, in search of your first transformative taste, the biscuits I’m rhapsodizing about are, like most high ecstasies, achieved through a combination of reliable information (the recipe), practice (technique), and experience (learning from trial-and-error and adapting to your individual situation as you go, based on your practice of the plan).

Few of us play a Beethoven sonata or dance the Tango perfectly our first time trying. Biscuits are the same. Approach them as a medium-range project. Perfecting them takes practice, but compared with building a castle or flying to the moon, you’ll master it in no time; and the rewards will repay you generously, all the rest of your days!

Here’s how I do it and you can too.

Watch me make them here!

My (Husband’s) Southern Biscuits

Adjust oven rack to center position, and preheat oven to 500º F, at least a half-hour before baking.

If you’re making this recipe straight through, prepare and heat oven now.

If making, cutting, and freezing the dough to bake later, perhaps obviously, don’t prepare and heat oven til a half-hour before you’re ready to bake your biscuits.

To make about 16 medium-large size biscuits, around 3.5” diameters each (that’s the size I typically serve to accompany a meal), you’ll need:

• 6 cups All-Purpose flour—This must be milled from 100% soft red winter wheat, and White Lily is the almost universally preferred brand throughout the American South.

  • If not White Lily, use another lower-protein All-Purpose flour, no more than 10% protein.

  • In America, Gold Medal brand All-Purpose flour is an acceptable substitute, as are many pastry flours. Just check the label to know what you’re working with.

  • Do not use cake flour.

  • Do not user higher protein All-Purpose or bread flours, which have protein profiles closer to 12 - 15%.

• 1 Tablespoon Kosher salt

• 1 Tablespoon sugar

• 2 Tablespoons baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 3 sticks (3/4 pound) unsalted butter, cold—I would not use all lard or all shortening, but you can substitute either of these alternatives for up to half this amount of fat.

  • If so, use the alternative fat in the first stage of flaking in, and save the butter for the second stage, in which leaving larger flakes of butter in your dough is pivotal is achieving the desired layers.

    • Keep in mind that using half lard or shortening will lend either ingredient's respective characteristic flavors and produce an overall tenderer but also more crumbly, sandy crumb, compared to an all-butter biscuit.

    • When in doubt, all-butter never disappoints (and we typically buy butter by the pound, allowing enough to prepare this recipe and serve the resulting biscuits with the remaining quarter-pound).

  • As I mention in the companion YouTube film, these biscuits are richer, meaning fattier, than most, which makes them more delicious, flaky, and pastry-like than more mainstream, even budget-conscious biscuit. However, as I also mention in the film, you can reduce the total amount of fat by up to 30% to yield leaner, less expensive biscuits. You’ll still have about as flaky, tender, and decadent result in a biscuit that is more suited for, as one example, making sandwiches. You can also eat more of them, which matters for occasions like picnics and buffets, where the biscuits perform both satiety and carrier functions.

• 2 cups buttermilk (You may need to use anywhere from 1/4 cup less to 1/4 cup more, depending on ambient conditions. See film for more details.)

  • Use full-fat buttermilk when you can get it. Otherwise, low-fat buttermilk is fine.

• For the optional egg wash: 1 large egg, well beaten and thinned with 1 teaspoon water

• Best table butter, for finishing and serving

1. Sift together dry ingredients. Mix well.

2. Place cold butter between two layers of parchment paper. With a rolling pin or heavy-bottomed saucepan, in just a few whacks, beat butter into a flat piece, about a slim 1/4 - 1/8 inch thick, to soften without warming the butter.

3. Divide the butter in half. Drop half the butter into the dry mixture, and toss to coat.

4. Between your thumbs and middle three fingers on each hand, flake in the butter finely, as if making the international hand sign for money, til mixture roughly resembles Panko breadcrumbs.

5. Drop the second half of the butter into the crumbs mixture, and toss to coat.

6. Using the same motion as before, flake in the remaining butter, this time leaving larger curls and flakes, ranging in size from roughly peas to small marbles.

7. Stir in enough buttermilk to gather the mixture into a shaggy dough. Dough will look undermixed, and a few crumbs and dry patches may remain unincorporated. Resist the impulse to add more buttermilk or fully mix the dough.

Here’s the Operative Technique!

Once liquid has been added, overworking the dough forms gluten. Gluten toughens dough, which we want to minimize. So, working confidently and efficiently, smooth the rough, unruly mass into a cohesive dough by folding.

1. Turn dough and any dry bits onto a moderately floured board. With floured hands, gently pat dough into a vaguely rectangular mass, about one inch thick.

2. Using a bench scraper, working right-to-left for right-handers (or reverse for lefties), lift about half the dough off the board, and fold it onto the remaining half, without breaking the dough at the vertical crease.

3. Rotate dough a quarter-turn to the left, slightly pat out again to about one or one-and-a-half inch thickness, and fold again, as before, right over left.

4. Repeat turning and folding about two or three more times, adding as little flour as necessary to prevent sticking to board or scraper, til dough is basically smooth, with at least a bare hint of horizontal layering, like a rustic puff pastry.

5. Pat dough to about a flattish 1 inch thickness.

   1. For even taller biscuits, pat dough to about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch thickness (almost always my preference, except for making sandwiches, when a thicker biscuit might skew the proportional balance of biscuit to filling).

   2. Thicker biscuits will decrease total yield and increase baking time.

6. With a floured knife or cutter, cut biscuits, as desired. I use a chef’s knife to even dough’s rough edges into a general rectangle and cut about 3.5” square biscuits.

   1. If using a cutter, press straight down and lift straight up, without twisting, since twisting can later interfere with biscuit rise.

7. Now, either immediately freeze cut biscuits flat, and store frozen, in heavy zip-top bag, to bake when needed (up to about three months), or bake them directly, as below.

   1. If freezing to use later, take directly from freezer to baking tray, and proceed as follows, baking from frozen. Do not thaw before baking!

8. Place biscuits on heavy, parchment-lined baking tray with their edges slightly touching. Brush tops with a thin layer of beaten egg; for deeper golden tops, repeat with a second brush of egg wash.

9. Re-rolling trimmings destroys the dough’s layers. Instead, lay dough offcuts around perimeter of baking tray, glaze with egg wash, bake alongside biscuits, and enjoy as snacks. In The South, these baked bits are traditionally called the dog’s biscuits, but humans equally enjoy them as tasty snacks or even tossed into a bowl of soup, as slightly curious croutons.

10. Immediately place biscuits in well-heated oven. Close the door. Wait one to two minutes for oven temperature to recover. Then, turn the oven temperature down to 450º F, and set timer for 10 minutes.

    1. Depending on your oven, biscuits may bake in as little as 12 minutes or as much as perhaps 22 minutes. Watch them through the window in the oven door, opening oven minimally, to maintain heat while baking.

    2. If you know your oven bakes unevenly, you might rotate the pan 180º about half-way through baking.

    3. Baking biscuits from frozen will simply add a few minutes to their baking time.

11. You’ll know they’re done when biscuits are risen high, tops are evenly golden brown, and bottoms are dark blonde.

    1. When in doubt, test a less beautiful biscuit by splitting it open and looking at, even tasting, the internal texture. Obviously, cook underbaked biscuits a little longer. If over-baked, note your cooking time to bake future batches a little less.

12. When done, remove from oven and cool about 10-15 minutes before serving, during when you might, if desired, fork a large chunk of best table butter and run it over still-warm biscuit tops to imbue their steaming humps with a panting wave of matte-sheen delight! (You’ve gone this far. Why not?)

In my world, there is never any debate as to whether biscuits are served with butter or jam. Be the accompaniment honey, sorghum, or preserves, even at lunch or dinner, the answer is always a resounding, steadfast both!

As you eat them, note what you successfully achieved and how your biscuits and their making can be improved, so you know where to aim the next time you bake a batch.

Shortcakes aside, for ideas on how you might serve biscuits easily and elegantly, watch my film on bread service.

For a surprising twist on the delectable Biscuits and Gravy, make your gravy thick, something like three Tablespoons each drippings and All-Purpose flour to every cup of milk. Season generously with salt and plenty of freshly-cracked black pepper, spread on split biscuits as the condiment, close biscuit halves around a crispy round of fried sage breakfast sausage, and you’ve got Sausage Biscuits to-go (awfully popular made as two-bite miniatures at cocktail parties too—just serve them at least lukewarm, because cold gravy isn’t terribly appetizing).

Enjoy!

To wit, are not food's sensual pleasures the same? Whether tastes or occasions are fancy or plain, cooking at home or professional kitchens, for a swift snack or the haughtiest high table, the key to great cooking and eating is simply selecting the best ingredients, developing their most alluring, seductive character through minimal effective preparation, and serving them without distraction.

I don’t know about you, but I sense that many of us, myself included, can stand to invigorate our experience of life about now. Being peach season, let’s make that stone peachy!

Just lay your hands on at least one ripe, fragrant, utterly in-season peach—local, if you can get it. Gather the few additional ingredients that follow. Try my method for yourself; and, based on the outcome of your experiment, decide how you like this radically bare, disciplined, mindful approach and its advantage of producing far superior outcomes by infinitely faster, easier means than every tired cliché and alleged convenience combined.

Indeed, questioning assumptions for better results seems a superb suggestion for our tumultuous time, in and far beyond our kitchens. It’s sure something to consider while luxuriating in the most epically peachy peaches around!

Watch the full method here!

To Evoke Peaches’ Profound Natural Character

Remember: We are celebrating the fruit and its quality, not the method of preparation, and certainly not the cook. We are merely coaxing our peaches to sing!

• 6-8 ripe, fragrant peaches, matured on the tree and picked in-season, preferably local to you, and all the better if you've grown your own!

  • For more details on selecting prime fruit, watch my companion YouTube film.

  • Use freestone varieties, to save yourself tormenting battles with firmly clinging pits!

• Best peach preserves—your own is ideal, but if you don’t make jams or prefer to save your most precious conserves for eating directly, buy a good brand, whose first ingredient on the label is peaches and contains no high-fructose corn syrup.

  • If you can’t find peach preserves, substitute apricot jam or simply add a bit more honey—see below.

• Kosher salt, non-iodized, to taste

• Freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste but, to be prepared, squeeze at least one large juicy lemon and perhaps hold a second lemon in reserve, in case you need it.

• Good honey, light to medium in color and flavor, whose taste you love—again, preferably local. The honey will amplify the natural peach flavor as a supporting player; so, avoid dark-colored and -flavored varieties, like buckwheat.

• Dash of good dark rum—it’s a shame to use a precious treasure rum for this purpose, and it’s not necessary. I often have Plantation Original Dark Rum around for general purposes, which works beautifully.

  • Otherwise, you’ll never find a bar of mine without Kirk and Sweeney Gran Reserva Superior, an admitted indulgence, and I have splashed it in when it’s all I have to hand.

• Dash of sweet or sweet-ish white wine—For this purpose, I love the entirely non-pretentious, widely available (at least in America) Chateau Ste. Michelle Harvest Select Sweet Riesling, from Columbia Valley, in Washington state.

  • Do not substitute wines with strong non-fruit or dark, aged flavors, like fortification or Oaky Chardonnay.

• A few thin slices from 1 fresh basil leaf, finely minced with a sharp knife—hopefully, you’ve cut and washed a leaf from your own homegrown plant.

  • Alternately, you can use a few (no more than 1-2) drops of basil oil, though use it sparingly and add it incrementally, mixing and tasting as you go.

  • Do not substitute dried basil. If you don’t have fresh basil or oil, leave it out.

• Pure almond extract, to taste—usually just 3 - 4 drops

*If you don’t cook with alcohol, simply omit the rum and wine, and add a splash of white grape juice. The effect will not be quite the same but will get you close.

1. Wash peaches, and cut a shallow X in the bottom of each peach, opposite the stem end.

2. Drop peaches into vigorously boiling water for about 30 - 40 seconds. Immediately, remove peaches to well-iced water. The temperature shock will loosen skins, so you can peel them easily.

   1. Once peeled, remove and discard pits, and cut peaches, as desired. For most purposes, this recipe included, I generally slice them in wedges.

   2. As you work, toss peach slices in a little lemon juice to prevent discoloration.

3. Once all peaches are sliced, sparingly add to them all the other ingredients before stirring. Mix gently but thoroughly, and taste analytically.

   1. Adjust balance of ingredients as you work, stirring carefully to minimize breaking fruit.

   2. Your aim is to make the peaches taste maximally peachy, to elicit the peaches’ strongest natural, deeply resonant essence, without supporting flavors obscuring the pure potency of PEACH!

4. Cover peaches, and set aside to juice, about 2 - 4 hours.

5. Serve at cool room temperature, as desired.

   1. Lightly vanilla-scented Crème Chantilly or ice cream are hard to beat!

For more details, I encourage you to watch my YouTube film, where I demonstrate the full method.

I’ll see you in the Comments—you’re most welcome! xx

Years ago, one of the best teachers I’ve known taught me one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about effective teaching.

“Before you start the lesson,” she began, “Take the temperature of your class. Then,” she warned, “Take your own temperature. Between those two measures,” she honed, “Determine the deepest understanding you can realistically achieve in the allotted time. There is your lesson, and that,” she pointed, “Is successful education!”

Taking the temperature of my audience and our collective time, from politics to nature’s wrath and beyond, this hardly seems the ripest moment to propose ambitious food and flower projects.

Taking my own temperature, days are heavy. While profoundly feeling real unrest in even my small town, extraordinary business and family duties eclipse my usual laser-focus and require I adjust plans to meet needs now.

Meanwhile, since I began writing on Substack, I’ve looked for ways to refresh my highest quality, most popular former website blog content for you here.

At this intersection, opportunity knocks!

Another mentor often reminds me to never underestimate the restorative powers of a truly great meal!

In these three spirits, I have created a three-article series on peaches, with YouTube films to demonstrate further.

After all, ‘tis the season! If you live in the American South, prime peach harvest continues for another month, at least. Further north and abroad, you may have this honey-sweet fruit’s fragrant, sun-warm nectar juicing down your chin for three months more.

This series is my invitation for you to use the season’s plenty, without fuss, in ways that compel us, in our bodies, to the joys of being alive together.

Relish the work and the reward, friends. Share hospitality generously, and please let me know how you fare as we go along. Watch for the first article in this series to appear next week, right here on Substack!

I’ll see you in the Comments. xx

High Style, Low Rent

Winnie, my impeccably presented, globe-trotting late grandmother, kept a standing appointment with Sue, her hairdresser, for over 50 years. When in Kentucky residence, Winnie was meticulously coiffed by Sue every Friday morning, at 10:30, whether she needed it or not. Varying only by day, time, and hairdresser, every grande dame I then knew kept similar habit, and decades passed before I realized the exceptionality of that tradition in its particular place.

On one hand, the salon scene could have unfolded at Mr. Kenneth’s, Raymond Bessone, or Leonard of Mayfair—elegant ladies of leisure, celestially transformed in the latest international styles, by civilized hands of truly professional experts.

On the other hand, Winnie’s salon, the same shop weekly sought by many similar ladies, had its name and prices of popular services boldly hand-painted on the floor-to-ceiling shopfront window. “Mr. Jim’s Beauty Salon,” headed the bill in rarely washed varsity-red letters, shadowed in ivory-colored italics, slowly fading, like the salon herself, since first opening with glitz, gleam, and new Terrazzo floors, some 25 years before.

Centered in a rapidly dilapidating retail strip, Mr. Jim’s now slumped beside a dusty corner grocer, somehow always overrun with barefoot children and their befriended stray dogs. On the opposite side stood our town’s best ladies dress shop, Town & Country. Its awning-shaded windows showed the season’s freshest frocks, often with hat and gloves to match. Three steps past, opening Mr. Jim’s screeching door relieved entrants of all pretense while trumpeting arrivals. The gauntlet of glitter-pink vinyl-upholstered drying chairs led to a confidently grotty loo, whose door was held nervously closed by the shaking foot of the occupant’s strained leg. Back on the shop floor, among the jumble of newspapers, Hairdressers Journals, an antique dime-operated Coca-Cola machine—still in service, and the occasional XXX magazine, work station vanities were strewn with trade junk and temporarily removed real jewel earrings and magnificent pearl necklaces.

This seedy shack was a boy’s club for polished society ladies. Therein, rare birds relaxed and restored their swept and shining locks. Prim matrons kicked off patent leather pumps, smoked cigarettes, and howled at filthy jokes! Debutantes soothed shame and stabbed rivals with new highlights and bangs. Chic professional women blew through too. And when set-iron steam and dusting powders cleared, real, bare women had climbed snugly back into their knit-suit-and-Sunday-School public personas and disappeared behind Sylvia Weinstock sunglasses, in a wisp of freshly dabbed Chanel No. 5, wafting up the $30 Perm Wave promise slowly flaking off Mr. Jim’s grimy shopfront glass.

These privileged women could have been groomed in much swanker shops. So why, lacking ostentation and obvious comforts, did they so loyally flock to Mr. Jim’s? The shop’s dingy carpet bore more silver flakes than the work station mirrors retained. The roof leaked buckets, and the ancient air-conditioner roared like a train, when it ran at all. But none of that mattered because of the consistent quality of the hairdressing, unrivaled far and wide.

Refusal to Play the Game

On my most recently past birthday, a dear friend I’ve always known—she was literally present at my birth—paid me a great compliment: that my joyous, uninhibited belly laugh has remained unchanged since I was a little boy.

How, I wondered, had my soul sailed life’s vicissitudes so remarkably in-tact? Like many in my generation, expensive university educations plopped us into evaporating industries. A decade later, clawing back up a still-tenuous economy afresh, The Great Recession crushed our shaky footholds, dropping us back down stable earning’s rocky face. And since, from global pandemic to unregulated greed and bad-faith politics, the most agile among us have barely survived by constant white-knuckled adaptation.

This is nowhere truer than in creative employment, where—let’s face it—a luxury florist, which I am, easily fails fast in prevailing culture's ever more convenience-, instant gratification-, and profit-first values. The same applies to fine studio artists, musicians, tailors and dressmakers, and many other highly specialized trades. Why, then, in a society that respects and rewards directly efficient, scalable paths to maximal accumulation of material wealth and performance of its prescribed symbols, do some people pursue, instead, efficiency’s polar opposite, mastery of craft? Furthermore, does the survival of fine crafts and their masters still matter? What of renegades and rule-breakers when society rapidly tightens coercive screws toward homogeneity?

Making Magic

When I was a lambent four-year-old towhead, I dressed as a pirate for Halloween. Patching my eye, brandishing a plastic scimitar, and sashing my mother’s silk scarf around my school-day corduroy jumper, we were off to church. Once we dressing-gown sorcerers and bedsheet ghosts had bobbed for apples and crumbed our painted faces on the church ladies’ homemade cakes, our parents corralled our glitter wings and spangled tutus into the gymnasium, where a magic show—and my life, really—was about to begin.

Other kids rattled wrappers, licked fingers, and compared candy hoards, but I sat still and watched closely, in wide-eyed silence, as the tuxedoed magician strode to center stage. Suddenly, from thin air, he conjured a lively, flapping white dove! Sheer elation flashed through me as my true self exhaled its first animating gasp in an exuberant, spontaneous belly laugh!

The dove settled on the magician’s finger and the audience cheered, but I was spellbound. Thrilled as I was at the illusion, I intuitively knew the magic was not real. But the feeling it gave me, and the integrity with which that feelings was produced, were the most real things I had ever encountered. I also knew these were the intended result of a series of carefully practiced and performed steps, like brushing your teeth or writing your name but reverent, from the heart. Instinctively knowing that magic was not just for tricks on a stage, and that I could learn the steps to make magic for myself, and provoke that magical feeling in other people, across nearly every sphere of life, I suddenly saw magicians making magic everywhere. From the church pianist to the bakers at my corner cake shop to the beauticians in Mr. Jim’s salon, the question of how magic was made instantly sparked more passion in me than a million briefly beguiling tricks could; because the real power of sincerely practiced process, or craft, mastery, was mine!

Gesamtkunstwerk

My local society florist, Gary Tunget, was an extraordinary magician too. I was so charmed by his miraculous craft that when I was old enough to work, I only applied to him; and he employed and trained me through the late 1990s. I quickly learned that the most skilled florists, who create the most visually powerful designs, and are the most valuable to their clients, are far more than accomplished arrangers. They are also orchestrators of all the aesthetic and lifestyle specialties, from etiquette to interior design, gardens to grande cuisine, and infinitely more. After all, in even a basic household toolbox, is not the adaptable, adjustable, convertible wrench invariably more useful than a uni-tasker?

If floristry is an all-encompassing complete work of visual and experiential art, then florists are its creators. How, then, can a typically trained, relatively unskilled flower arranger, with no grasp of art’s big ideas, like color or style, compete with a thoroughly trained and roundly experienced artist? For to the master florist, flowers and floristry are mere expressions of virtuosic aesthetic taste, technical facility, and the florist’s humanity and soul. Furthermore, as a florist, how could I respect my clients and deserve their trust, let alone their payments, without being at least the best in my market, certainly, but also the most discerningly cultivated version of myself, constantly learning and evolving toward fulfillment of my highest potential?

Insanity and Its Alternatives

Beauticians and florists as artists? Grand ladies styled to perfection in a sleazy shack? Where do these intersect, and what does that teach us?

Over a century ago, a father of the Arts & Crafts Movement Elbert Hubbard wrote that art is not a thing; it is a way. I add that this way necessarily contrasts against mainstream cultural values. In a world of performative material acquisitions and public portrayals of typical symbols of fiscal and social status, art’s way is a slow, steady path toward deep, humble, personal growth. The question is often less what we know but what we’re yet panting to learn. Mastery without reflects mastery within, and it needs no fanfare.

I’m fortunate to have grown up knowing highly skilled master craftspeople—by and large, the best among the bakers, chefs, cobblers, and hairdressers of my childhood, who proudly created their too-often under-paid work, day in and day out, serving generally materially richer clients from the modest digs these masters could afford. Because their reputations, clientèles, and unshakable inner confidence were based on actual expertise and finely honed skills, the florist with whom I started my career, for example, had no shame about the shabbiness of his shop, of which my grandmother said when he first opened under his own marquee, “That building would fall down if not for all the overgrown ivy holding it up!”

Am I criticizing slick high street shops? Do I hate profit? To quote Nobuho Miya, third generation owner and operator of Kamasada Ironworks, an artisanal workshop producing traditional handmade kettles in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, “This is a business, so we need to make products that sell. But we don’t create products that don’t meet my aesthetic standards just for the sake of selling.”

Like Miya, why do a small handful of us pursue mastery as our way? Toni Morrison said that all good art—and I’ll add the pursuit of mastery—challenges the status quo, and she was right. From the ancient Greeks devising democracy to a handful of rag-tag Nineteenth Century painters rejecting conventions to birth Impressionism, and across every arena, the pursuit of mastery has taken us into space, realized incredible human understanding both within and far beyond ourselves, and will solve our countless looming crises, from climate to healing self and social chasm, if we let it.

Despite what feels like the whole world—particularly, social media and its most fetid flatulents—constantly insisting that maximum profit, ruthless competition, and flaming controversy are life’s only currencies, some of us wake up each morning and ask how much is enough? What can we learn and contribute to make life a little better, more civilized, or beautiful now? By championing mastery today, what advances and achievement may be possible tomorrow?

Mastery is a path, not a destination. It is a love affair that necessarily binds its disciples to the quiet, daily, free magic of being briefly alive! This is the path I've chosen—with no complaint. It gives me a life both poorer and richer than many—generally Western, especially American—families and cultures teach us to see, let alone seek, and now is my time to teach this sacred way. For aesthetes, broadly, and florists, in particular, if you are looking for more and better from your creative work and artist’s life, I am here for you. My business exists to help you grow. I absolutely do things differently from most others, in my field and beyond. For questions on that, I refer you to Albert Einstein’s famous truth that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Join the Revolution!

David Brooks said that culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy. I add that both consumers and suppliers of creative work have vital roles to play.

No one I take seriously thinks the current state of our world is good. Therefore, we must all actively change our way to make the kind of world we want to inhabit and leave future generations.

If you buy retail floristry, for example, who you buy from matters. How does that business source their materials and serve their clients? If the owner’s name is on the door, are they on-site, personally filling your order, or is the work done by less masterful hands?

And for buyers of floristry education, the question is not only what is taught but how. Few makers are masters, and even fewer masters are also effective teachers.

Everyone has limited time and money. Our spending directly proves our priorities. In a precarious world, where distraction is the common drug, do masters and mastery still matter? If so, please support exceptional creative work however you can, as often as you can, specifically with your purchasing power. For mastery and art are endangered species on display. We practitioners daily prove our priorities while the world watches in awe; but we will not survive by touristic admiration, behind glass. And once we’re gone, what more will be lost, and who will cut your killer bangs?

In my previous article, All Rise, for example, I described how my Yeast Rolls dough becomes an endless array of braids, knots, twists, and more. Below, I’m giving you one of my favorite of those adaptations: Caramel-Pecan Sticky Buns.

I’d happily serve these rolls for breakfast or brunch, with scrambled farm eggs, crispy bacon, fresh seasonal fruit, and hot coffee or tea. I would also serve them in lieu of cake for a festive coffee or tea, or even a casual friend visit. And I’d bake any unlikely leftovers with custard, as a no-frills-needed bread pudding, served with, as we say in The South, Hard Sauce (which we just might lick straight from the saucière on spirited occasions).

As you see, Theme and Variation is a best strategy for zero-waste cooking and hosting too. But before I lose you in a litany of variations on the variation, you might start by reading my companion article here on Substack, Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow, and watching my companion YouTube film, where you can see me make these buns, beginning to end. Et Voilà, without further ado, the recipe!

Watch Me Make The Buns Here!

Caramel-Pecan Sticky Buns

Makes 12 large rolls (about 4-inches diameter each) or
16 small rolls (about 2.5-inches diameter each)

The dynamic impact of this simple recipe’s rich, complex flavor comes from using top-quality ingredients. Here, the character of cinnamon, pecans, and vanilla extract matter most!

• I like a ground cinnamon blend from Penzey’s that includes a warm, fragrant balance of Ceylon, China, Korintje, and Vietnamese cinnamons.

• Real orchard pecans have no approximation among mass-produced nuts on grocery store shelves. If you live in a pecan-growing place, buy and use locally grown pecans. If you’re lucky enough to have your own tree or grove, even better! If not, look online, starting around the state of Georgia, USA. Lane Southern Orchards grows some of the finest pecans I’ve found, but others are also excellent.

• Real, pure vanilla extract somewhat speaks for itself—the purer and stronger, the better! High-quality blends of real vanilla extract enhanced with vanilla flavoring can also create good results at considerable cost savings. Just avoid ultra-inexpensive alternatives that do not list vanilla beans as their first ingredient.

INGREDIENTS

For the Dough:

These rolls begin with a half-batch, about 20 or 21 ounces, of my Yeast Rolls dough. Find that recipe here. For these Sticky Buns, start with the dough already prepared to Day 2 stage—that’s mixed, kneaded, and chilled at least one overnight. Then, use the cold dough to make these Sticky Buns.

If you’re hosting houseguests, for example, bake and serve the first half-batch of dough at dinner one night, as dinner rolls, and serve the second half-batch of dough the following morning for breakfast or brunch, as Caramel-Pecan Sticky Buns.

Alternately, bake and serve Yeast Rolls and Sticky Buns from the same single batch of dough, on the same breakfast or brunch menu, to make an outsized impression with ease. That would certainly serve 8 to 10 hungry guests and likely a few more, if supplemented as suggested, above.

For the Caramel:

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick | 2oz | 57g) unsalted butter

3/4 cup (5.5oz | 160g) light brown sugar, lightly packed

2 Tablespoons (1oz | 35g) heavy cream

1 Tablespoon (12g) light corn syrup

1 teaspoon (5g) vanilla extract

Pinch of non-iodized Kosher salt

For the Filling:

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick | 2oz | 57g) unsalted butter, softened to just shy of melting and cooled

3/4 cup (5.5oz | 160g) light brown sugar, lightly packed

2 teaspoons (5g) cinnamon

For Assembly:

1 cup (4.5oz | 125g) premium pecan halves, toasted and broken or chopped into about pea-sized shards

METHOD

1. Combine all ingredients for caramel, except vanilla extract. Heat to melt sugar completely, but do not cook or boil!

   1. This can be done in microwave or on stovetop.

2. Off heat, stir in vanilla extract.

3. Pour caramel mixture into bottom of ungreased pan.

   1. To make 12 large rolls, use a 9-inches by 13-inches rectangular stainless steel pan.

   2. To make 16 small, elegant rolls—my preference, by far—I use an 18-8 stainless steel hotel pan, that is approximately 10-inches by 12-inches.

   3. Avoid dark-colored, glass, tin, uncoated aluminum, and disposable aluminum pans.

4. Sprinkle pecans over caramel. Reserve.

5. Remove prepared dough from refrigerator. Immediately, on a lightly floured surface, roll cold dough to an even rectangle, about 18-inches high by 24-inches wide.

   1. Rolling dough this thin takes practice. If you’re new to this kind of task, the first time you make this recipe, roll dough to more like 12-inches by 16-inches, and proceed as directed. Try rolling the dough a little thinner, and larger, each time you make this recipe, and you’ll soon reach 18-inches by 24-inches with confidence!

6. Paint dough evenly with 4 Tablespoons of extremely soft, cool butter, all the way to three edges. Leave a 1/2-inch border of plain, unbuttered dough along the long edge nearest you.

7. Mix remaining brown sugar and cinnamon together, and sprinkle evenly over buttered dough.

8. Press sugar mixture lightly into buttered dough, to help filling stick.

9. Beginning at the long top edge, furthest from you, begin slowly rolling dough toward you, length-wise, like rolling up a carpet.

   1. Use a flexible bench scraper to help guide the dough, if necessary.

   2. Add small amounts of bench flour to hands, tools, and countertop as you work, as necessary.

10. Rolling dough slowly, maintain a tight, even coil all the way toward you, to the unbuttered edge.

11. Pinch the dough log and unbuttered edge together, to seal steam.

12. Cut the log into 12 or 16 equal rolls, according to your preference and pan.

    1. Even a sharp knife will crush your carefully rolled log. Instead, use heavy-weight sewing thread or unflavored, unwaxed dental floss to make clean, decisive cuts.

    2. See me do it here.

13. Place rolls evenly in pan, cut-side-down, on top of prepared caramel and pecans.

14. Cover pan with a dry kitchen towel. Set in a draft-free place that’s slightly warmer than room temperature, about 70º to 80º F (20º to 27º C).

15. Let rise 60 to 90 minutes, til rolls have approximately doubled in size and rebound slowly when gently poked with a lightly floured finger.

16. Half-way through rising, adjust oven rack to lower-third position and preheat oven to 375º F (190º C).

17. Uncover and place rolls directly into preheated oven. Bake about 20 minutes, rotating pan 180º half-way through cooking.

    1. Baking in the oven’s lower third is essential, to ensure caramel forms in exactly the same time as dough bakes.

18. After about 15 minutes of baking, begin using a probe thermometer to check doneness. Remove from oven when centermost rolls temp. around 160º to 165º F (71º to 74º C) and outermost rolls temp. in the low 180ºs F (82º to 85º C) range.

    1. When rolls are golden, they’re done, but avoid overbaking!

    2. Rely on internal temperature and visual cues to determine doneness.

    3. When first removed from oven, rolls will gently finish cooking to perfection from carryover heat.

19. Cool rolls in pan 5 minutes.

    1. Use an offset spatula to ensure no rolls have stuck to pan, around edges, and loosen any adhesions.

20. After five minutes, immediately invert rolls onto rimmed baking sheet or serving tray.

    1. Invert when caramel has solidified enough to cling to rolls but not so much that it glues rolls into pan.

    2. For me, the right caramel consistency is reliably achieved when I invert the rolls after a precisely timed 5 minutes.

Serve, as desired, warm or at room temperature. My mother would serve them with additional softened butter, for those who wish to gild the lily with an extra dollop of indulgence, and who am I to sneer at that?

To store leftover buns for later, cool completely, wrap well in plastic, and keep at room temperature for a day or two, though eat them only for personal use. For guests or gifts, these buns are by far best made and enjoyed immediately. I would not make them ahead in any form, other than, of course, preparing the Yeast Rolls dough at least one day before, as directed in the recipe.

To reheat—again, for purely personal use, microwave on about 60% power til warm throughout.

If you love this idea but the caramel and nuts and rolling and cutting and inverting slightly daunt you, take heart and watch my YouTube film. There, you can see me make this same dough and simple cinnamon-sugar filling into braids, twists, and lots of knots, no goo or guile required (and they store a bit better than the Sticky Buns too, so you might make these no-caramel variations the night before an especially early do, the next day).

Now, pause your diet, make these buns, devour them with people you love, and please let me know how you fare in Comments—Happy Mother’s Day! xx

Every morning, I dashed out our kitchen door, across the open field, through the school’s playground, in to class. At nap time, I laid silently on my cot and listened. While other students slept, teachers gossiped outside the open classroom door. By lights-on, I knew everyone’s business in the whole school! When the last bell rang, I beamed home, panting to enter the same kitchen door and tell my mother all I'd learned as she prepared dinner and laid the table.

Roast beef with carrots, lemon fish, roast turkey, and Spaghetti Bolognese Americano featured frequently. Green beans accompanied almost everything, and their preparation rotated from Almandine to barely buttered to Southern slow-cooked with smokey bacon or ham. Scratch-made mashed potatoes were equally de rigueur, lavished with butter and black pepper, though rice and other pastas occasionally appeared, to my father’s protest.

But my trained and practiced home economist mother persevered! A pretty, popular high school senior in 1975, she won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow prize. As an undergraduate Home Economics major in college, she orchestrated grand receptions and vast banquets and whipped the Home Ec. house into ship shape! The epitome of a respectable young wife and mother, her widely celebrated personal homemaking duly soared, polished by her gracious, understated style.

A life-long public schools educator, my mother made family dinners after school. I invariably sat on the kitchen countertop, recounting my day’s adventure, as she taught me each skill and step she used. She also precisely identified the part of every food that she thought tasted best and instructed me to always eat that one part last. Prior eating was proem, she advised, and every sniff and nibble, a pleasure-heightening signpost to my final climactic reward: the sacred heart.

Rarely, my father had an evening appointment, so my mother and I ate dinner at a nearby cafeteria-style restaurant. Its barnwood paneled walls were decoupaged with old Saturday Evening Post magazine covers, and fresh, well-cooked meals were served with hot-from-the-oven yeast rolls and plenty of butter and honey. After dinner, my mother habitually asked if I’d like one of the raisin-studded, fragrantly vanilla-frosted cinnamon rolls offered under glass on the cashier’s counter.

From my first approving grin, my mother used those cinnamon rolls to teach me how to eat. “Start with this loose end,” she modeled, pulling a two-bite crust from the spiral’s outer edge. Feeding me the first taste and eating its second half from her own hand, I watched her slowly unravel the bun. By whiff and crumb, its yeasty coil disappeared toward that tightly wound, slightly under-baked, centermost fold at its caramelly core, the one curl where its supreme character would be savored most absolutely.

With pull and whorl, we analyzed every flaky, buttery layer, insisting each enthralling revelation was better than the last, til we reached and shared the sacred heart. We instinctively moaned in closed-eyes unison and kissed our golden fingers clean in a breathless brush with bare, gluttonous glory.

I grew up and, more or less, forgot those cinnamon rolls but soon noticed that I do not eat like everyone else. I saw that many people eat, and for that matter encounter the world, by vague associations. They perceive more by conceptual caricature—generalization—than actual singular observation. Some might assume, for example, that all cheeseburgers taste, and are, about the same. A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger. Like them or don’t, but nuance, or differences, be damned!

I, conversely, learned—literally, from my mother’s hand—that, beyond mere survival, eating is, specifically, the art of discovering and identifying those differences that discern traits I enjoy most from traits I enjoy less. The mindful eater’s task is to consistently seek more of the qualities they prefer. That is the cultivation of taste.

Good cooking, therefore, is reliably identifying and creating those favored characteristics for yourself. Most simply, that is also the definition of technique: the methods by which we actualize our vision. Technique matters because, whether cooking or composing operas or playing sport, technique equips us to succeed with more moxie than money. My goal is to empower you thusly. And in our expensive, uncertain era, lifestyle self-sufficiencies, in particular, are the sustaining ethos and safety net of our time.

To that end, for American Mother’s Day: my recipe for Caramel-Pecan Sticky Buns! They’re the best I’ve tasted anywhere, yield a disproportionate impact for their ease to make well, and are deliciously inspired by childhood memories that taught me the transformative superpower of living bountifully within means but far beyond budget with technique!

I’ll publish the recipe on May 6th, here on Substack, to honor my mother and all mothers, aspiring mothers, motherly figures, and those who resourcefully use what they have to make what they want for themselves and their loved ones.

I hope you, and perhaps the mothers and children in your life, cherish these decadent buns even half as shamelessly as my mother and I do!

I’m delighted and so appreciative that you’re here. Please, come in and enjoy yourself!

Thank you for joining me on Substack, and many thanks to everyone who also follows along on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you’ve not yet found me in these other places, please join me on all those platforms you use. That lets us dive in and keep current together.

As I say in my new YouTube film that’s a companion to this piece, let’s start by breaking bread together. And I mean that quite literally, for I am about to give you a recipe for precisely that.

This yeast rolls recipe is one of my favorite recipes of any kind, ever. In fact, I can’t quite believe I’m giving it away for free, but such fabulous treasure must be shared generously! In fact, that’s one of my best top tips for all entertaining and hospitality, that I extend to the way I run my business: No matter whether you’re giving a stranger a lift across town or your whole community the party of the century, always give your guests better than you give yourself (and I give myself awfully good and encourage you to treat yourself equally well).

But I digress! These rolls are inspired by the story I tell in my prior Substack post titled Sunday Lunch, and I began developing the recipe over 20 years ago. It is tried, true, and more recently perfected with the addition of mashed potatoes, in the form of instant potato flakes reconstituted in water, to improve moisture retention, softness, and shelf life.

Aside from their spectacular mature yeasty flavor, buttery enrichment balanced with well-developed gluten, and ease to make, these rolls have an additional major advantage. Although they can be conveniently made ahead, their already fantastic character improves dramatically further when they are made ahead and held at least one overnight before eating.

This delicious, versatile dough is infinitely adaptable too.

First, make the recipe and experience it exactly as I specify. Then, reinterpret the exact same dough and method in other dinner roll forms, from cloverleaves and crescents to Parker House and any iteration you dream.

The same roll served to accompany a meal can be just as quickly sprinkled before baking with sesame or poppy seeds, or even dried onion flakes, to vary the standard roll. As easily still, split baked rolls and fill them with sliced ham, crab or chicken salad, or even shaved roast beef or turkey for some of the tastiest hors d’oeuvres or party/picnic sandwiches around!

For further variety from the same base dough and method, simply split round, baked rolls and serve with the appropriate cream filling for excellent Cornish Splits; Devon, Indian, or Scottish Cream Buns; Dutch Roombroodjes; Hong Kong Sweet Buns; Italian Maritozzi; and Swedish Semla. Add jam alongside the cream filling, and you have Northern Ireland’s Sailor’s Doodles. Omit the filling, drizzle the cut roll with good dark rum, and you have Baba au Rhum better than you’ll eat in most of France!

If you’re not in the mood for filling per se, add a brush of butter and sprinkle of flavoring to make endless braids, knots, twists, and sticks, sweet or savory. Alternately, dip bite-sized pieces in butter, then spiced sugar, bake in a well-buttered Bundt, and you have Monkey Bread!

By my count, with just the variations I’ve listed here, this one recipe easily gives you at least three dozen preparations. As a former top cater and private chef, that’s a pro tip any home cook benefits to copy—one recipe, countless simple variations. This empowers you to serve remarkable variety with little help, and such versatility is a defining mark of a great recipe to boot—you’re welcome!

Watch Me Make the Rolls Here!

The Best Yeast Rolls to Ever Cross Your Lips!

Makes 40 to 42 rolls (1 ounce each)

Before you begin making this recipe, know these two points:

1. Accurately measuring ingredients is vital to your rolls’ success. Be precise. I don’t always use a digital kitchen scale, but this is a helpful time to bother so doing. I’ve consequently given you the recipe in volumetric and weight measures. While your scale is out, use it to portion rolls. When the dough performs as intended, and finished rolls have baked evenly, you’ll be glad you did!

2. These rolls are designed to start making two days, that’s a full 48 hours, before serving. Almost all of those hours are inactive time, but they’re important to achieve best results. Do not let the advance planning requirement discourage you from making this recipe. Instead, use pro tips I suggest herein to improve the quality of your cooking, entertaining, and time management.

To reassure you on ease and timing, here’s what to expect:

DAY 1

Active Prep Time: 30 minutes

Chill overnight.

DAY 2

Active Prep Time: 30 minutes

Proof: 60-90 minutes

Bake: about 20 minutes

Cool to room-temperature: at least three hours

Seal in heavy zip-top-type gallon-size freezer bag(s) overnight.

DAY 3

Serve as desired.

INGREDIENTS

For the dough:

3 1/2 cups (15 oz | 450 g) bread flour—I use King Arthur brand.

1/2 cup (1 stick | 4 oz | 113 g) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and very well-softened

1 cup (8 oz | 224 g) water, boiling

1/3 cup (3.5 oz | 100 g) sugar, granulated white

1/3 cup (1 oz | 28 g) instant potato flakes—not flavored/seasoned, just potato flakes!

1/4 cup (1 oz | 28 g) dry milk powder—Substitute lactose-free if you wish.

2 large (3.5 oz | 100 g) eggs, room temperature and well-beaten

1 teaspoon (5 g) kosher salt, non-iodized—I use Morton’s brand.

1 teaspoon (8 g) neutral-flavored oil, such as canola, corn, or grapeseed

To proof yeast:

1/2 cup (4 oz | 112 g) water, 110º F (43º C)

1 Tablespoon (12 g) sugar or honey

1 envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons | 7 g) active dry yeast—I use Fleischmann's brand.

Please note that Rapid Rise and instant active are not the same as active dry yeast.

To glaze rolls before baking:

1 large egg well-beaten with 1 teaspoon water and strained through fine-mesh sieve

METHOD

1. Use 1 teaspoon oil to coat interior of a sealable container large enough to contain finished dough and accommodate rising. Oil under-side of lid too. Set aside.

   1. Alternately, oil interior of a large mixing bowl.

2. To bowl of stand mixer, add butter and boiling water. Stir briefly and allow to fully melt.

3. Separately, stir 1 Tablespoon sugar or honey into 110º F (43º C) water. When sweetener is dissolved, add yeast, and leave to proof til bubbly, creamy, and fragrant, about 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, to melted butter and water in stand mixer bowl, add sugar, salt, milk powder, and potato flakes. Stir to combine.

   1. Mixture should now be about 105º F (40º C).

   2. If hotter, you risk killing the yeast and scrambling the eggs. Do not proceed til mixture has cooled to about body temperature, which you can check with a clean finger if you don’t have a thermometer.

5. Once yeast is proofed, add yeast mixture and eggs to wet ingredients in stand mixer bowl. Stir to combine.

6. Add flour. Stir to combine. Scrape down bowl.

7. Use dough hook to knead dough about 15 minutes. Scrape down bowl and hook occasionally.

   1. Dough is fully kneaded when surface looks slightly matte, extremely smooth, and lightly balls around hook, with most dough remaining in bottom of bowl.

   2. Dough will also look loose and will not completely clean bowl.

   3. This is the intended texture to produce desired outcome in baked rolls. Do not add more flour!

8. Immediately scrape dough into oiled container. Turn dough to oil on all sides. Cover, and refrigerate overnight, at least 12 hours and up to 5 days.

   1. Refrigerated dough holds beautifully, and its yeasty flavor improves with additional refrigerated fermentation.

   The next day, or the day you want to bake rolls, a scant two hours before you plan to bake your rolls, remove dough from refrigerator.

   1. I often only bake half the dough at once, making roughly 20 or 21 rolls, for a single use, and save remaining half-batch dough to bake separately, over the next few days.

9. Immediately turn out dough onto lightly floured surface.

10. Working swiftly, while dough remains cold, divide into 1-ounce portions.

    1. I like using a digital scale for precision.

11. Form each dough portion into a smooth, round sphere using repetitive circular gestures, applying slight tension on dough between lightly floured hand palm and work surface, as if turning a car steering wheel using only the palm of your hand.

    1. Watch me do it HERE.

12. Arrange formed rolls closely together on a parchment-lined flat sheet pan or buttered and parchment-lined 9-inch round cake pan with at least 2-inch-high sides.

    1. If baking the entire batch of dough at once, in round pans, this will require two 9-inch cake pans.

    2. Bake in heavy-gauge professional-quality aluminum or steel pans. Do not use glass, stoneware, or disposable aluminum pans.

13. Cover rolls with a dry kitchen towel. Set aside in a draft-free place that's slightly warmer than room temperature, about 70º to 80º F (20º to 27º C).

14. Let rise 60 to 90 minutes, til rolls have approximately doubled in size and rebound slowly when gently poked with a lightly floured finger.

    1. Half-way through rising, adjust oven rack to center position and preheat oven to 350º F (175º C).

15. At end of rising, immediately before baking, brush roll tops lightly with egg wash.

16. Place rolls directly into preheated oven. Bake about 20 minutes, rotating pan(s) 180º half-way through cooking.

17. After about 12 minutes of baking, begin using a probe thermometer to check doneness. Remove from oven when centermost rolls temp around 160º to 165º F (71º to 74º C) and outermost rolls temp in about low 180ºs (82º to 85º C) range.

    1. Tops will brown more or less depending on many factors, so rely on internal temperate as well as visual cues to determine doneness. Avoid overbaking!

    2. When first removed from oven, rolls will gently finish cooking to perfection from carryover heat.

    3. If you prefer to serve rolls now, while still warm from the oven, just cool about 20 minutes first, to set internal structure. However, I strongly encourage you to proceed as directed and serve the next day!

18. Cool rolls completely, at least three hours.

19. Once cool, place rolls in heavy zip-top-type freezer bag(s). Squeeze out air. Store at room temperature, overnight.

20. The next day, remove from bag(s) and serve as desired.

    1. I accompany them with the best grass-fed butter I can find and also jam, honey, or sorghum molasses!

    2. Sealed in bags, rolls keep well at room temperature for several days.

    3. Wrap additionally and freeze for longer storage.

       1. Thaw completely, in wrapping, at room temperature.

       2. Unwrap and reheat in a single layer at about 325º F (165º C), for about 12 minutes, though watch closely to avoid burning!

For more helpful hints on beautifully serving these rolls, and table bread, generally, watch my YouTube film. Again, on YouTube, you can watch me make this exact recipe.

With that, happy baking and even happier eating!

Please let me know in Comments how you enjoy and use this recipe. Though, two last notes, if you please:

1. I insist you prepare this recipe, exactly as I’ve written it, at least once before you serve it to guests. This saves disappointment and last-minute redirections, even when the learning curve is simply due to becoming familiar with a recipe that's new to you.

2. I cannot address complaints that my recipe allegedly failed when my recipe was not followed. Changing ingredients, measurements, or method makes a different recipe, in which I’ve had no hand. I can only urge fidelity to my original recipe, as I’ve published it here.

That said, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again! Should you need a little practice to master this recipe, just roll up your sleeves afresh. For I too often make new-to-me recipes time and again to confidently master them in concept and use. Simply identify specific methods and outcomes to improve. With those in mind, review the recipe. Revise the way you’ll follow the recipe. And each time, you’ll advance.

Forward together! xx

Leave a comment

Come weekends, my whole family drove 28 miles south of town to my maternal great-grandparents’ old homeplace, in a two-stop-sign country town that had already been dying for a century when I arrived. Its only prominent feature was a pair of white clapboard churches, whose equally fanatical congregations represented the whole town’s population. Their respective sermons pit sibling against neighbor in the local pastime of competitive Christian piety. Between churches, a mauve and mothballs funeral parlor united both camps, and its grounds occasionally hosted conciliatory covered-dish picnics espousing the one carnal allowance everyone agreed could be enjoyed without shame of sin: eatin’ good food and plenty of it!

One long street ran straight through town, and an affectionate, mangy Boxer named Duke ruled it, trotting. Hung with blood-fat ticks, Duke stood watch beneath a brown-painted metal sign that read Population 802. Directly across the street, the sign could be plainly read through my great-grandparents’ front window. The modest house slumped on rusty wrought iron porch posts, and an old carport heaved to a salvaged timber barn and rigged-up peacock coop behind. Yet, in all its unpretentious candor, this house was a palace compared to my great-grandmother’s yet humbler origin.

Despite determined striving and refusal to rest (or accept assistance from able kin), Cassie Brown started life and raised her young family in abject poverty, on a literal bare dirt floor. She was nonetheless universally admired as a most meticulous homemaker, and she marshaled her three daughters, including my grandmother Winnie, into exhaustive housekeeping as young as they could drag buckets or wring rags. The poorest family in town, they stood out equally for being always perfectly presented. Each member may have only owned one garment, but it was invariably immaculate—pristine-clean, starch-pressed, and worn with unflappable dignity.

Cassie was known for her exceptional hospitality too. She grew a vegetable garden, used and served its produce with remarkable style, and was consequently widely revered among the best cooks around. Despite her fiscal limits, she shared her hospitality with real pride and generosity.

One of my earliest memories was made around her big oval dining table. It sat with at least a dozen mismatched chairs in the middle of her sunny linoleum kitchen. Despite donated, scavenged, and home-patched appointments, no royal menu outshined hers! She spread at least eighteen beautiful, bountiful, entirely seasonal homemade dishes over a consummately pressed double damask cloth, which she certainly saved for ages to buy; but she never showed off. She respected her guests by giving them her best.

Four family generations crowded around the table. I was about two years old and the first, and at that time only, great-grandchild born. As Sunday lunch began, the adults passed me from person to person, lap to knee, all around the table, feeding me at each seat and examining my response to every bite. My grandmother Winnie fed me a spoonful of her favorite fried sweet corn with black pepper and green onions. Aunt Linda pushed two greasy, painted fingers of slow-cooked runner beans into my smacking lips as I smiled and licked my bacony chops for more. Her sister Nancy fed me a soft and crunchy bite of Banana Salad and asked me how I liked that twangy vinegar dressing. Everyone laughed at my grimace, before I thought, beamed, and took the spoon to try again. Great-grandaddy Grover gave me a bitter sip of his weak, tepid coffee and horsely rasped that drinkin’ some more would grow hair on my chest!

Next, I arrived on the still, elegant, linen-draped knees of Winnie the elder, my great-grandaunt. Winnie was Cassie’s sister. In much younger years, Winnie had pulled on a pair of men’s pants, driven herself to town, and saved enough money rolling cigars in the local factory to attend some swank parties at Louisville. There, she met a dashing young gambling tycoon, freshly arrived from Athens, Greece. Together, from horse race to casino to one dazzling hotel and fine restaurant after another, they lived high, traveled the world, and returned to Kentucky in a butter yellow Cadillac convertible with smooth lavender-gray leather upholstery. Between being coiffed at the London Ritz and touring the Valley of the Kings on camelback en route to the Hôtel de Paris at Monte-Carlo, Winnie transformed herself into an internationally esteemed truly grande dame of unsurpassed grace and ultimate soigné. Now well in her 80s and nearly blind, she tenderly cradled me in her gaunt shoulders and warm, redolent swathes of Jean Patou’s scent Joy. Reverently reaching her superbly jeweled arms around me, out to the table, she drew her diamond pinch back to my chin. “Honey,” she barely whispered. “This is fried chicken. In this world, you’ll eat things fancier but none better.”

Along my psychedelic discovery through the canonical pleasures, each adult passed me one more person ‘round the table, til I finally landed in my mother’s lap. She nuzzled her nose into my right ear and hushed so softly no one else could hear. Now, she promised to give me the best bite of all. After such virginal discovery, what could possibly follow? But panting in breathless trust, I watched her hand slowly reach into a scuffed Pyrex Early American mixing bowl lined with a prettily printed tea towel. Her hand emerged bearing one warm, golden yeast roll. She carefully split the roll, top from bottom, showing me how it’s done, and ceremonially slathered one half with softened butter, then the other. She raised the radiant, sweetly scented roll to my mouth, in deliberate, enticing anticipation, and instructed me to imbibe the aroma. As I trembled with salivating expectance, she suddenly plunged half the buttered roll into my primed and glossy gob with the delicacy of a long-suffering groom on his mid-life wedding night! With equal fervor, I relished, savored, and swallowed. Then…another bite. And another. And from first taste on, now more than 40 years later, I’ve never recovered from my conversion by divine ecstasy.

Have I brought you all this way to merely taunt you with my rhapsodic epiphany? Since I cannot give you the prepared rolls directly, here and now, I’ll kindly share something even better: the recipe!

In my next post, publishing on Tuesday, April 1st, return here for the full details. From the same day, you can also watch me prepare these rolls on YouTube. I hope you’ll join me in both places.

Thank you for reading. I’ll see you Tuesday! xx

Leave a comment

I never walked through my grandmother’s kitchen door when she didn’t instantly smile from her raised eyebrows and sparkling eyes and greet me with, “Well hey, Shug! Come in here and give me some sugar! How ‘bout some…?” Even as my cheeks stubbled with age, she unfailingly licked her thumb and smudged her lipstick away, completing her question by instinctively hasting into my mouth—somehow always faster than I could brace to fully contain—a lively, dripping, piping-hot bite of the chicken she was frying, Icebox Pie filling she’d just poured into the crust, or whatever she was joyfully cooking then.

A few miles down the road, one of my dear old friends owns and operates a fabulous antiques shop. When you open his door, a resonant chime gongs with all the grandeur of entering a stately country manor. From behind a sublimely veneered escritoire or atop a rickety ladder, above a resplendent crystal chandelier twelve feet tall, he invariably calls to every customer the same warm greeting, in his genteelest drawl, “Welcome! Please come in and enjoy yourself.” And just like my grandmother, he means it with all his heart.

That’s the thing about my native Kentucky’s world-famous hospitality. It’s sincere, generous, extravagant, even in humble homes of modest means; and it expects nothing in return.

If you visit us at home, we ask you what you want to drink and how you’d like that drink prepared. Our pride and satisfaction depend on making and serving your drink exactly as you specified. That quietly demonstrates that we listen when you speak.

When we invite you to dinner, we expect you to stay all evening. For we have polished the silver and beat the rugs and pressed the linens, and probably cooked that one meal over three or four long days. We’ve done it all not to impress you but to say, in a thousand silent comforts, “Relax. You’re safe. Here, there is only pleasure, us, and now. You have my undivided attention.”

I pen my premiere post here on Substack in that proud Kentucky spirit. To paraphrase a traditional local toast, I stand on a tall-columned veranda and open wide the broad doors of hospitality! In so doing, I’m keen to share my Kentucky with you—the ways we enjoy ourselves here, that I hope you’ll savor too, wherever you are in the world.

I’m also eager to share how that famous hospitality took me from Kentucky’s Historic Horse and Bourbon Country to designing, catering, and flowering hundreds of high-profile special events for some of the world’s most celebrated clients and venues.

More vital and timely, I’m happy to share my memories of how leaving that meteoric career has freed and fulfilled me with a life abundant in real, simple pleasures, that I have made easy for one person to fold in to daily rhythms. That’s because I no longer have the army of staff I once employed to help me, and I imagine you homemake and entertain, more or less, on your own as well.

Above all, I hope you may recognize aspects of yourself and your life in me and mine and meet me honestly, as your full self, in this present moment. For in one way or another, everyone I know longs for quieter moments and lighter days, more candor and less spin, more connection and no. more. chaos.

If my vast experience has taught me anything, it’s that we never find peace and rest by panting harder, isolating ourselves, or discarding kindness. Conversely, real strength is a steady hand within the dainty white glove of grace and humility. By learning and sharing the gentle arts of gracious living, starting within ourselves, at home, we live more richly in ways that have little to do with money. We empower ourselves to actively control our own joy and free ourselves to live authentic lives in the power of community.

That creaky old toast I dusted off earlier concludes something like this: In a world darkened by hate and misunderstanding, I welcome you to a gentle, heartfelt place, where slower clocks strike happier hours. And through the slow, soft-spoken word and the familiar step of friendship, I will teach you the tools of hospitality as a shining symbol of the good we may distill from life.

This is not a denial of Twenty-first Century realities. To the contrary, in similar upheaval over a century ago, as our agrarian society grappled with existential cultural changes from The Industrial Revolution, William Morris was right when he said that the true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details—and I add learning the practical skills—of daily life. So, that’s what we shall do together here.

Thank you for beginning this Substack adventure with me. If you see yourself in anything I’ve said, think you may find some of my suggestions useful, or are simply curious to read more later, please subscribe and consider watching my companion content on YouTube. There, you can find me and subscribe as well, also at no cost to you, at mathertonbaber.

As we embark on this continuing conversation, I stand on the shoulders of everyone who’s ever been kind to me—particularly you, my incredibly loyal, supportive audience, and my Kentucky friends and neighbors. You make me strong, and I say to you heartily what my dear old friend has said to everyone who’s entered his shop for longer than I’ve yet lived: Welcome! Please come in and enjoy yourself!

Leave a comment