• Fifty Shades of Food

    Some foods are tricky to eat in public. When at lunch or dinner with friends or colleagues, stick with the foods you feel most comfortable eating. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, practice makes perfect with all foods! These are accepted techniques for eating bothersome foods: • Bacon should be eaten with a knife and…

  • Entertaining at Home

      If you need dinner party ideas, you’ve come to the right place. Entertaining at home is one of my favorite things, and planning ahead is what makes it work. Here’s a list of my most important to-do’s: • Guest list: Eight to ten is the maximum number of people at the dinner table, or…

  • The History and Etiquette of Afternoon Tea

    A tea without scones is like a meal without a fork! Sugar and spice and everything nice are what little girls are supposedly made of, and they’re also essential ingredients of a traditional afternoon tea. This English custom is a sweet and civilized way to entertain, and it breaks up the day in the nicest…

  • How to Order Foreign Foods

    Why is it that the best restaurants are always French or Italian and you have to be able to speak those languages to order? Some restaurants, usually in tourist areas of foreign cities, will supply an English menu, or you may find and English translation in smaller type next to the native appellation. But it’s…

  • Food Truck Etiquette

    Food trucks are the newest urban dining trend. They are everywhere these days, in business districts and neighborhoods, in front of art show openings and concerts, at farmers markets, and in parks and parking lots for regularly scheduled food-truck nights. Food-truck grazing is a great, casual, and often inexpensive way to dine, but it’s not…

  • Refresher Dining Quiz: Test Your Knowledge

    1. Are elbows ever allowed on the table? Yes. In between courses or when no food is on the table. This holds true for everyone at the table. 2. When eating soup, should you spoon the soup away from you? Yes. Soup is always spooned away from, not toward you. This prevents spills and eliminates…