ALT-1 How to Organize a Thanksgiving Dinner Buffet Table
The essence of the Thanksgiving holiday is the meal. The Thanksgiving dinner, depending on the size of one's family, may be an enormous spread, and when there are many people coming to dinner, the best way to organize the food is by setting up a buffet. The buffet set up will allow people to serve themselves, take what they want and take as much as they want.WHERE TO SET IT UP -If your space is limited, you may only have a side board or some sort of small additional table in your dining room, you may want to set the table with plates, silverware, glasses and napkins. If possible, use some sort of warming tray to keep the turkey, gravy, dressing and other "hot" foods warm.HOW TO SET IT UP -*Turkey first -The most efficient way to set it up is in a sort of assembly line. Create a starting point and put the turkey at the beginning of the line. The gravy belongs next to the turkey.*Stuffing (or dressing)The stuffing or dressing should come immediately after the turkey and gravy. Having this close to the turkey and gravy is important because people may want to put gravy on their dressing.*Potatoes -The potatoes should come next. If you are serving mashed potatoes, people will very likely want to put gravy on their potatoes. If you are serving sweet potatoes, gravy doesn't sound as appealing.*Vegetables -Whatever vegetable or vegetables you are serving should be the next item on the buffet. Roasted root vegetables is a wonderful way to serve vegetables at a harvest meal. Roasting them requires very little effort other than peeling and slicing the vegetables and drizzling olive oil on them.*Serving the salad -Avoid putting the salad, dessert and/or bread on the buffet. Too much food on a buffet is likely to overwhelm people. You can always serve the salad after people have eaten the main part of the meal. Bread or rolls can be put in baskets and left on the table to be passed. The same goes for cranberries if there isn't room to keep them on the buffet.*Clearing the main meal dishes -As people finish eating the main part of the meal, start clearing their dishes. You can also start to take the food off of the buffet to make room for the salad. You can serve salad and pass it rather than having people serve themselves. Another way to make a salad easier to serve is to put the salad dressing on it before serving it. This will eliminate the need to have multiple bottles of salad dressing on the table.*Avoid beverage bottles at the table -Rather than having bottles of beverages all over the table, pour wine in the glasses of adults who wish to drink wine and whatever one beverage you are going to serve to children in their glasses. This looks nicer than having bottles everywhere, and it takes up considerably less space.*The final touch -When everyone has finished eating their salad, those plates can be cleared and the dessert can be brought in and served either directly, or the dessert can be placed on the buffet so that people can help themselves. If you are going to serve coffee or tea with the desert, it's probably a good idea to pour the coffee into the cups and have some one serve the people who will be drinking coffee. With kids around, there is always the danger that someone will knock something over and get burned by hot liquid.This is how my family set up the Thanksgiving buffet for a good 45 years, first at my grandmother's tiny house where 25 people or more would gather together. Back then, it was a bit of a potluck. In later years, the celebration was moved to my parents home, and the responsibility fell on my mother's shoulders. She was able to make a fabulous meal for 25 or more people in a small, inefficient kitchen. Serving parts of the meal in shifts like this was a space saving consideration, but it was also done to avoid the chaos that would have resulted no doubt, when kids decided that dessert was the most important part of the meal.
