She knows that cooking is a balancing act—“the key to a regular, sustainable open-door dinner party habit,” she says, “lies in balancing money with time, and extravagance with thrift.” Some parties involve everyone working together to roll out pasta. Some make a lot out of a little. And always, she writes, it involves remembering, cook to cook, that “no one else will ever care about the food as much as you and I do.” We want things to be delicious, and they will be.
Thielen shares her menus for holidays and barbecues, birthdays and summer lunches, fish frys and the annual deer camp feast. The occasions you mark might not be the same as hers, but reading each of Thielen’s warm descriptions feels like opening the door of her cabin and going inside, finding the buffet table and piling your plate high.
In summer: Corn on the cob, cooked in milk, and paper-thin slices of white vinegar-marinated cucumbers. A luscious In fall: Sticky Date Olive Oil Cake, scented with lemon zest and Madeira, white sweet potatoes glazed with ketchup, cayenne, maple syrup, and coconut milk, and lardo-crisped roasted turkey served with a creamy gratin of turnips, onions, and Medjool dates.