I'm sure everyone has a favorite part when preparing a casual dinner whether it'd be for close friends or family. Certainly, having them over, spending quality time with them and an evening filled with plenty of laughter is what it's all about. But besides? What triggers your happy buttons before enjoying their company? How about setting the table, or the cooking part itself? All very valid thoughts, but for me personally it's clearly the decision process about what I want to serve to my guests that night. Involving a lot of skimming through cookbooks, recipe journals and pondering over my choices.

Having a checklist does come in handy: Personal likes and dislikes? Any food-allergies? What did I serve them the last time? What's in season? These questions usually boil down the options quickly to a reasonable number. And that's exactly how I did it when we invited our friends Uli and Roger over. No seafood, no innards, no anise were, luckily, the only constraints for the evening. Considering these criteria, I would generally now consult my bookmarks, a food magazine or cookbook for ideas. But Oliver suggested something so obvious, that I'd never would have thought about it: Why don't you cook from your own book (= an unbound early copy)?

When they told me last week, that what I was about to experience would be similar to delivering a baby, I laughed out loud, wholeheartedly. Fact is, I had no idea of any of that, and who knew, that they would be right? Not short of anticipation I drove up North for a couple of hours to find a small village named Wemding (near Nördlingen). Blue skies, countless road works and equally many slow-moving tractors later I passed the gates of the printing company Appl.

Having expected something much smaller - just like the tranquil village I had arrived at - I was surprised to learn that they actually are one of Germany's largest printing companies. A friendly receptionist handed over my name tag and guided me through the corridors where we passed one red door after another. "Here you go!" she said and opened one to the so-called "tuning room", where Mr. Mayer, Mr. Hoffmann and Mr. Plötz, bent over some prints from my book, already were debating about color adaptations. And we're talking BIG PRINTS, one print showed 32 book pages and so did the flip side.

Do you bake bread? No? Why not? Perhaps intimidated by the whole yeast thing? Too complicated? Takes too much time? Then I have the perfect recipe for you: A lovely sweet muesli bread, another definite keeper from fellow food blogger Petra.

From now on I am much, much, much more understanding, when it comes to typos.

Yes I'm still alive, thank you for asking. The reason for the sudden quietness around here were my fantastic skills to juggle coordinate the last deadlines for my book with a rather spontaneously arranged trip to Paris. Paris was excellent, my aforementioned skills quite the opposite. In fact I am happy to state, that Christina (the angel from the editorial office) did not despair and throw her computer with my book on harddisk out of the window... Luckily, the hotel had free Wi-Fi, so at least a little got done, before exploring the city with Paris insiders, friends and foodbloggers Katia and David, who didn't get tired of spending time with us and sharing their favorite places. Now I definitely know that I could live pretty happily for the rest of my life just eating Saya or Soleil by Sadaharu Aoki - with the occasional Falafel inbetween.

But I was even more happy, when I left my editor's office yesterday. The final layout check is done, now I (and three more pairs of eyes) will spend the weekend re-re-re-reading the German book before we'll do the same with the English version probably over the next weekend. The publishing date (September) is approaching faster as ever ...