Tips for entertaining your guests and making them feel welcome

Entertaining guests coming to your home will always be somewhat of an art form. To make it easier to impress your guests, here are some tips to keep in mind the next time you're hosting a function at your house.

• Greet the first guests with a pre-dinner drink and a few hors d'oeuvres. Then, take the time to chat until everyone has arrived. This should break the ice for guests who may not know one another. If you have enough time, introduce guests to each other. This will help them start their own conversations and give you the opportunity to prepare more hors d'oeuvres, as well as the much-needed time to put the finishing touches on meal preparation.
• Before serving dinner, warm your plates in the oven for five minutes to keep the food from cooling off too quickly during the meal. Be careful that the plates are not too hot when serving.
• Cover warmed-up bread with a clean dish towel to keep the heat in.
• Leave the glass on the table and hold the bottle above the rim of the glass without touching it when pouring drinks.
• Fill wine glasses only one-third full so that the aroma of a good wine will open up properly.

Young red wines will be smoother if you pour them into a carafe beforehand to allow their aroma to unfold through oxidation. Use a wide-bottomed decanter for young wines. Old wine benefits from decanting as a way to remove deposits or dregs that form in the bottom of the bottle. Pour wine into a carafe, slowly and carefully.

Delight your guests and stimulate their appetites with creative garnishes made from a variety of fruits and vegetables, eggs and cheese.

• Make tomato baskets. Cut two long slices across the top of a tomato so that a small "handle" remains across the centre of your basket, remove the core and cut the base flat to make a solid stand. Stuff tomato with meat, vegetable, rice and/or cheese mixtures.
• Peel fine strips from raw, peeled carrots and put them in a bowl of ice water. Put the bowl in the refrigerator and let sit for a couple of hours. Remove the bowl from the refrigerator just before presentation, drain the carrots and pat dry with a paper towel or clean cloth.
• Cut funny shapes out of hard-boiled eggs or pieces of cheese with a small, pointed knife.
• Make four evenly-spaced vertical cuts into the top of a cleaned and trimmed radish, then put it into cold water; it will open up like a rose.