FOREWORD

Getting married is exciting. Getting married is exhilarating. Yet getting married presents every couple with challenges both large and small, and it is generally agreed that every couple can use all the support and reinforcement that the rest of us can offer. Our newest cookbook is designed with the recently married in mind. It provides delightful and delicious solutions for one of a couple’s most frequently discussed topics: what to have for dinner.

Prior to the wedding day, everything may seem so much simpler: Dinner can be on the run; it can be at a favorite hangout, a new restaurant, out with friends. After marriage, however, a new reality sets in: Dinner for two becomes the accepted—and expected—norm, and inviting others to your dinner table occurs more frequently. How to please, what to serve, how to entertain, who to invite, what to make for dessert—these thoughts and questions abound. After a few decades of creating thousands of recipes for home cooks at every level, we, the food editors of Martha Stewart Living, know what works and what doesn’t work. We understand the way people like to cook and to eat on ordinary weeknights, weekends, holidays, and special occasions. We know the recipes that appeal, the preparations that please, and we have compiled in this beautifully photographed book more than one hundred recipes that will get you through any meal, confidently, with ease and aplomb.

And lest you think that this book is meant to be consulted and relied upon only in the first few years of marriage, rest assured, it is not. In the course of compiling, testing, tasting, and photographing the many wonderful dishes within, we found it to be a book for all of us, regardless of stage of life or marital status. We rediscovered a few old favorites, fell hard for some new ones, and grew excited at the many possibilities for memorable breakfasts, brunches, lunches, dinners, and desserts. Like any good marriage, this collection is built to last.