Real Simple: Celebrations is a collection from the publishers of Real Simple magazine that covers all the details of major events and occasions that come up during the year, presenting ideas to make them as simple and easy as possible. It's probably a bit late now to take them up on their Thanksgiving ideas, but they also cover birthdays, graduations and just about all major holidays - at least, all the ones that are usually associated with food and large gatherings. All of the events are arranged in chapters by holiday, so while you can mix-n-match ideas from all over the book or use one of the several multipurpose plans, you can also easily just stick to their outline for a particular party.

As far as the planning goes, some people find Real Simple to be like "Martha Stewart-lite", since every detail from invitations to decor and cooking to cleanup is covered. The "lite" part comes in because the recipes and instructions always seem very do-able, rather than daunting. Since it never hurts to have a little peek inside a new book before you give in and make the purchase, you can download a few pages (pdf) from the Real Simple website and take a look for yourself.

 This recipe from Real Simple turned out cookies that had only a minimal resemblance to the ones in their photograph. I wanted to make them because "Raspberry Puffs" sounded as though the cookies would be soft and fluffy, rather like angel food cake. They turned out to be quite crisp and much more similar to a wafer type of cookie than to any sort of cake. I was pleased to find, however, that the cookies still tasted delicious, especially once I had replaced the sour cream filling called for in the original recipe with ice cream. The result of this substitution was a finger food that tasted like a little ice cream sundae with raspberry topping.

Frankly, it would be easier to simply buy a package of vanilla wafers to make these, which is what I'll do next time. If you pick up jam, ice cream and a package of cookies, you can easily put together these last-minute munchies for your Valentine today.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

In the newest issue of Real Simple, the magazine's taste-testers turned their taste buds to hot chocolate mixes. They compared over 40 varieties of hot cocoas and hot chocolates. Hot chocolates typically have real pieces of chocolate in addition to cocoa powder in them, while hot cocoas are sweetened cocoa. They broke the competitors down into categories by price and picked their winners.

In the under $5 category, the milk chocolaty Land o'Lakes Classics Supreme was the top choice, followed by Swiss Miss Chocolate Sensation, both of which you should be able to find at your local supermarket. In the $10-15 dollar range, Godiva's Dark Chocolate Truffle ranked supreme, followed by the dark and intense Schokinag Extreme Dark. For the bigger spenders, Jacques Torres Wicked, a spicy mixture with chocolate, ancho and chipotle peppers, ranked highest in the over $15 category, followed by Mariebelle Aztec.

Now, if only they'd have a marshmallow testing.