a funny article, about a single NY woman holding a dinner party:

"Consider the obstacles to staging a sit-down dinner party in a New York studio apartment when you're young and unattached: Tons of friends but no place to seat them. Not enough chairs, even. Certainly not enough silverware. Even more certainly, not enough time to prepare, given burgeoning careers and hectic social schedules. And a fairy godmother hovering nearby to conjure up the caterers? Forget it.

It's paradoxical that many of my recipes come from "The Joy of Cooking." Tell me, where is the joy? It is a baldfaced lie of a title. The name suggests Snow White in an apron waving a spatula, the woodland animals chattering nearby, stirring batter. I, by contrast, had knife cuts on my fingers and dried egg whites on my jeans. Had the book been more appropriately titled "The Exhaustion of Cooking: Why Kill Yourself? Just Make Reservations," the classic wouldn't be in its sixth edition.

The kitchen itself is diminutive but functional, like a Volkswagen. The 6-by-2-foot-wide strip of floor permits one person to cook. Two people can stand akimbo. Three people in my kitchen for 10 minutes will soon be good friends."

You can read the rest of the article, here