Answers to Go

Dear Readers, Every year during the holiday season, the library gets questions about entertaining and etiquette. What follows is a sampling of those questions:

Q.When attempting to impress my guests with my gracious manners, what do I do with an olive pit?

According to the website allfoodbusiness.com, The general rule for removing food from your mouth is that it should go out the same way it went in. Therefore, olive pits can be delicately dropped onto an open palm before putting them onto your plate, and a piece of bone discovered in a bite of chicken should be returned to the plate by way of the fork. Fish is an exception to the rule. It is fine to remove the tiny bones with your fingers, since they would be difficult to drop from your mouth onto the fork. If you need to spit out a fatty piece of meat, spit it into your napkin, so that you can keep it out of sight.

Q.I’m having a cocktail party — where can I find popular drink and party ideas?

A. The library has quite a few new cocktail books — something for everyone’s taste. For example, the two-volume set titled “Booze and Vinyl” by Andre Darlington, is organized by music and drink pairings. Within each of the four chapters, “Rock, Dance, Chill, and Seduce,” are “albums” with cocktail recipes to create for each side of the “album.” Each entry also has liner notes (like a real vinyl record) about the artist and album, along with party ideas. If you are feeling a little “mythical” you may want to try “Nectar of the Gods” by Liv Albert. This book features drink recipes inspired by the stories of Greek history and mythology. If you prefer non-alcoholic drinks, you may want to check out “Drink Lightly” by Natasha David which features “A lighter take on serious cocktails, with 100+ recipes for lowand no-alcohol drinks.” My final suggestion is the book “Potions” by Nikki Van De Car. This small book has a wide selection of non-alcoholic offerings such as kombuchas, tisanes, tinctures, infusions, boissons (mocktails) and recipes for cocktails.

We get a variety of questions about the etiquette of thank-you notes during the holidays. Questions asked are:

Q• I took care of my friend’s house and animals while they were on vacation. They brought me a plant as a thank-you gift. Should I give them a thank you card for the thank you gift?

• How long after an event or receipt of a gift do I have to send a thank you letter?

• Can I send a thankyou email? How about a text message? What is the current etiquette for sending thank you notes?

A. According to Emily Post, it is always correct to send hand-written thank-you notes. Email thank-you notes are good for casual events (like having coffee or a simple meal) but for dinner parties, big favors, actual gifts or being a house guest, handwritten thank-you notes are your best bet. As for a “thankyou for a thank-you,” a written note is absolutely not necessary. You can, in this instance, send a text message thank you. In today’s fast-paced world, text message thank-you notes are becoming more acceptable with family members and close friends. However, think of it this way: What trouble or thought went INTO the effort for which you are sending thanks? If your friend went to considerable effort to do/give something to you, then it is best to take the time to write out a handwritten note. In any case, it is always best to send thank-you notes, whether paper or digital, as soon as possible after the event. The longer you wait, the worse you will feel and the more you will put it off. We are human, after all.

For more tips on etiquette, check out these books:

• “Essentials of Etiquette: a Guide to Table Manners in an Imperfect World” by Craig Claiborne • “Manners: Always Gracious, Sometimes Irreverent” by Kate Spade

• “Social Q’s: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries, and Quagmires of Today” by Philip Galanes

• “Table Manners: how to behave in the modern world and why bother” by Jeremiah Tower

• “That’s so Annoying: An Etiquette Expert on the World’s Most Irritating Habits and What you can do About Them” by Cynthia W Lett

• “The Tricky Art of Co-existing: How to Behave Decently no Matter What Life Throws Your Way” by Sandi Toksvig

Suzanne Sanders is the columnist for the library. She is the Community Services Manager for the San Marcos Public Library and came from the Austin Public Library in 2015 after having served there as a librarian for over 20 years. She gratefully accepts your questions for this column.