My young friend Sarah Ziegler, who has been a food professional for years, told me that caterers use the Silver Palate cookbooks a lot. Sarah is not easily impressed, with cooks or their guests. At a Washington party she catered, she teased one of the guests about his pants, "hysterical bell bottoms with ducks on them, what a bozo," only to discover within minutes that the bozo was Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration. "I don't care," she said. "He was still a goofus."

— Feast Here Awhile by Jo Brans (Page 177)