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How does this sound for dinner: grilled fresh vegetables, steak and seafood all served on a block of pink Himalayan salt, finished off with a salted caramel apple.

Cyd Koehn will be happy to prepare such a meal — if you hire her and Cyd’s Catering to handle your next dinner party.

Holiday parties are right around the corner. With all the entertaining that comes with the season, you can choose top-notch catering firms such as Cyd’s, or the Cherry Madore/Susan Madorsky team at Tangerine, to focus on food while you tend to setting the theme and venue for your party of four or 44 (or 444, if you’re into really big shows).

Some of these caterers — Cyd’s, for instance, or Taste! to Go — are stand-alone operators. Others are linked to restaurants or grocers, such as Tangerine, which handles food at the Des Moines Art Center and Mainframe Studios; Trellis Cafe, which serves meals at the Des Moines Botanical Center, among others; and Gateway, which is part of Gateway Market.

These people, who also include Catering DSM, are seasoned pros capable of delivering haute cuisine on time, on budget.

"We were cooks first. Everyone here knows how to cook," Madorsky says.

Caterers sit down with a personal or corporate host and discuss the venue, the budget, number of guests, type of affair and season for the event. Then they dial in any special focus they might have in mind.

At Tangerine, for instance — especially with corporate clients who are entertaining out-of-state visitors — Madorsky says, "we like to feature what’s unique about Iowa. This is a big ag state," and Tangerine has contacts with farmers who can supply it with local seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Cyd Koehn says her specialty is globally inspired small plates that she likes to serve from food stations that are scattered throughout a venue. She enjoys giving people a surprise in finding new food in new rooms.

"I find that people like to serve themselves and they don’t like to be trapped at a table all night," she says. Or they could be swimming.

"I am able to cater anywhere. That’s my job ... with or without a kitchen, ... from the middle of a cornfield to a dock at Saylorville for a pontoon boat party."

The time to call for a caterer is as soon as the idea for a party springs into your mind. As Madore and Madorsky correctly note, there are only 52 Saturday nights a year. "We have events booked into 2021," they say.

Advance booking is especially important when an event requires music, flowers, decorations, liquor (Tangerine has a liquor license, as do some but not all other caterers). There are people and firms in the city who can handle all of this — it just requires coordination. Maybe even an event planner.

One last thing to consider: These people all clean up after themselves.

Event Planners Make Your Party Easier — and More Fun

BY STEVE DINNEN
Sometimes a gathering of friends just seems to merit a little extra attention, and so that dinner party mushrooms into an event. There’s food to be bought and prepared, for sure, but what kind? And then there’s music; again, what kind? And when alcohol is involved, who’s going to shake or stir those martinis?

You might want to get an event planner involved. Perhaps someone like Gina Cramer of Johnston, who operates Make It Happen Events. Like other event planners in Greater Des Moines, she focuses on weddings. But she often does parties — Dad’s retirement, perhaps, or a special birthday — that are just as celebratory, only without a bride and groom and your favorite rendition of the Chicken Dance.

Cramer says it’s typical that a host or hostess will approach her with one or two ideas to theme a party. They then will work through the logistics — of what type of food to serve, how to serve it (plated or buffet), and even the venue for the party. Repeat customers, especially corporate clients, will work on altering the theme.

Event planners have connections to decorators, caterers, musicians and bartenders who can deliver a complete entertainment package to a client. Cramer is currently marshaling all those forces for a Christmas in Hawaii party, and may have to call upon a haberdasher to choose Santa’s luau shirt.

Charles Schwab to Allow Buying of Fractions of Stocks

BY MAGGIE FITZGERALD, for CNBC

Charles Schwab yet again lowering the barrier to enter the world of trading stocks. The online broker will soon let its clients trade fractions of stocks, the founder and chairman told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

In the coming months, Schwab clients that want to own Apple'sstock, won’t need the entire $234.49 it takes to own an entire share of the highly valued technology giant. It’s a push to attract a younger demographic, Schwab told the WSJ.

"Schwab has been quite focused on younger customers for some time, but we’re sure it’s also been watching the success some of the other free trading platforms have experienced and moving in line on fractional share trading makes sense," Devin Ryan, managing director at JMP Securities, told CNBC in an email. Read more

Retail Dips — Is Consumer Economy Cracking?

BY BETH PINSKER, for Reuters

U.S. retail sales fell for the first time in seven months in September, raising fears that a slowdown in the American manufacturing sector could be starting to bleed into the consumer side of the economy.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that retail sales dropped 0.3% last month as households slashed spending on building materials, online purchases and especially automobiles. The decline was the first since February.

Data for August was revised up to show retail sales gaining 0.6% instead of 0.4% as previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales would climb 0.3% in September. Compared with September of last year, retail sales increased 4.1%.

"While this is by no means conclusive evidence that the consumer is wavering (after all, the upward revisions reduce the impact of September’s declines), it nonetheless reinforces our ongoing concern that a spending retrenchment will ultimately trigger a more durable slowdown," wrote Ian Lyngen, head of rates research at BMO Capital Markets. Read more

Charitable Grants Soar as Tax Changes Transform Giving

Despite tax reforms that changed an important incentive for giving to charities last year, Americans are still giving away record amounts — just from funds they had put aside for donations in previous years.

Fidelity Charitable said on Wednesday it has already surpassed its granting record from 2018, with $5.25 billion given to 125,000 different nonprofits so far in 2019. And that’s with the traditional "giving season," which starts around Thanksgiving and runs to the new year, still six weeks away.

If the rest of this year matches last year, which included a slow December because of stock market volatility, Fidelity Charitable could tally up another $1 billion in giving before the end of 2019, said Pam Norley, president of Fidelity Charitable.  >> Read more  

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