Cheers to hosting better parties this holiday season
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
The holidays are just around the corner. And for many, it might mean being a guest at, or hosting, a friendsgiving get-together or other holiday party. Regardless of which side of the gathering you’re on, it can be stressful. But fret not! Casey Elsass, author of the book “What Can I Bring? Recipes to Help You Live Your Guest Life,” joins Kimberly from New York City to share tips on how to host and attend a great holiday party without breaking your bank account. Plus, we’ll play a round of This or That!
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “What Can I Bring? Recipes to Help You Live Your Guest Life” from Hachette Book Group
- “Potluck problems solved: Recipes that travel well and always impress” from MPR News
- “Americans Need to Party More” from The Atlantic
- “2024 Is the Year of the Dinner Party” from Eater
- “Song of the Shirt” from Thomas Hood
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. Thanks everybody for joining us for our weekly happy hour, whether you're on the YouTube live stream or listening to the podcast later. This is Economics on Tap. |
| 0:22.6 | And today we're talking about one of my favorite topics, parties. |
| 0:26.7 | And how to host better parties this holiday season, especially if you're trying to do it without breaking the bank. |
| 0:32.9 | And our entertaining expert for today is Casey Alsace, who's a food writer and author of the book, |
| 0:39.1 | What Can I Bring, Recipes to Help You Live Your Guest Life? That's a mouthful to get out. |
| 0:45.4 | Hey, Casey. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Now, of course, since it is happy hour, |
| 0:50.8 | we have to talk drinks. Casey, what did you bring? I brought an extra large |
| 0:55.4 | apparel sprits. You know, for a second when I saw the multi-layered colors of your glass, |
| 1:02.9 | I was like, is this one of those fancy layered drinks? Oh my gosh. No. I know it's not what |
| 1:10.0 | everyone, everyone thinks of it as a summer drink. |
| 1:12.9 | My boyfriend drinks Aparol 365 days. |
| 1:16.2 | So he's really inspired me to broaden my understanding of a spritz as an all the time. |
| 1:22.1 | Apparal. |
| 1:22.7 | Okay. |
| 1:23.6 | I'm a petri-tevo drink. |
| 1:24.9 | You know, one of my good friends, that's his go-to any time of year. |
| 1:29.3 | Always an apparel spritz or a, what is it? |
| 1:33.3 | A mescal nigroney is the other thing he likes to drink. |
| 1:37.3 | Oh, wow. |
| 1:38.3 | All right. |
| 1:39.3 | One of those is more heavy duty than the other. |
| 1:41.3 | Well, I'm in the office, so I have a limited bar here, but I went ahead and did an old-fashioned, |
... |
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