Good Friends Great Tastes, A Celebration of Life, Food and Friendship is a unique cookbook and comprehensive entertainment guide that includes everything from planning the event and setting the table to an organized shopping list and after dinner games to stimulate conversation. There are 275 hand selected and tested recipes that denote whether they may be made ahead of time and what kitchen tools are needed. Thirty flavorful menus are included that balance color, taste and texture and each menu is paired with a wine varietal (i.e. Merlot,Cabernet, Pinot Grigio etc.) Lifestyle sections help you gain the knowledge to pair food and wine, set a more beautiful table and create a mood to reflect your style. Photographic page dividers provide presentation ideas! There are 352 pages and tips about easy preparation, unique ingredients,garnishing and where to locate particular products. There is a bonus of several variations to recipes as well. The knowledge I share with c! ustomers puts the ease and enjoyment back into casual and elegant entertaining. The binding is concealed wire and is 6X9 in dimension so the pages stay open while cooking. As a self publisher-the project took 2 years to write and over 28 years of experience to compile. I put my heart and soul in this book and gave away secrets from being an every-day gourmet. This comprehensive entertainment guide includes recipes from over 50 contributors from over 30 U.S. cities and intertwines stories about the contributors as well as photographs. Having grown up in a home with a European mother and father from the Kansas farmland the variety of cuisine is widespread. I studied abroad in college and acquired a knowledge of wine and cuisines from around the world. I have worked in a gourmet store as a food buyer and have made an art of elegant and casual entertaining. My attention to detail makes guests feel pampered. I would like to share my passion of over 28 years with your customers! same as above- self-published Debbie (Scherer) Meyer grew up in Kansas City during the '60s and '70s with three brothers, a European mother and a father from the Kansas farmland. An aspiration to cook and entertain like her mother and the other neighbors started her on the path of cooking and entertaining at the age of 10. Throughout junior high school, high school and college, Debbie hosted small gatherings that emulated how her parents entertained. She experiemented with recipes and entertaining ideas. She developed a reputation as and impressive hostess among her circle of friends. Debbie's palette developed tremendously, when she studied a year abroad in college on a scholarship and traveled to ten countries in the course of her one-year stay. Debbie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Languages from Kansas State University and has lived in the Dallas area since graduating from college in 1984. Debbie was a retail buyer with companies that include Dillard's Department Stores Inc., A Pea in the Pod and Viacom Retail Group. She was also the food buyer for a gourmet store in an affluent area in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It was here that She learned from customers buying habits how their busy lives are affecting the way they cook and entertain. Realizing entertaining at home could become a lost art, Debbie decided to pursue her lifelong dream of writing an entertainment guide/cookbook to put the ease and enjoyment back into casual and elegant entertaining. In Good Friends Great Tastes, Debbie intertwined the lives and recipes from the many friendships she has developed and maintained throughout her life. There are quotes about friendship and stories about recipe contributors, as well as photographs.