A Thanksgiving Schedule to Make Holiday Easier
If you have the great task of hosting a Thanksgiving dinner, you would benefit from creating a schedule to keep you and your tasks on time. This article will help you formulate a schedule that will hopefully make hosting this big holiday much easier. Change up the tasks as it suits your personal goals.
Purchase all of the ingredients that you will need for your dishes at least one week in advance. If you also want to decorate your home for Thanksgiving, you can find a few simple decorative items here and there, or make your own centerpieces.
At least one or two days before your party, make sure that you have completed most of the long preparations for certain food items such as your turkey. If you are going to brine the turkey, you will need at least one day to complete the process. If you want to prepare all of your ingredients (chopping up vegetables and defrosting meats) in advance, you should complete all of the related tasks at least the day before. Refrigerate all of the ingredients and they will be ready for you on the day of your Thanksgiving dinner.
On the day of your party, you will need to wake up early and start doing some preparations in the morning. For instance, you can start baking your turkey at this time. You can also start preparing your desserts and assembling casseroles or other dishes so that you simply need to pop them into the oven a couple of hours before dinner time. Once you finish putting together and preparing these dishes, you can work on decorating or cleaning your place.
A few hours before your first guests arrive, start telephoning your guests reminding them what time the party will 'officially' start. This means that you will have finished most preparations and cleaning by then. After you have called your guests, you can then start cooking whatever dishes still need to be cooked. If you know that a certain casserole takes only 1 1/2 hours to finish cooking, you can bake it now and then just leave it in a barely warm oven as your guests start piling in. If your oven does not have a very low temperature setting (at least 200 degrees F) then you may want to wait a couple of hours before you start baking that casserole. Remember, the food needs to be hot once everyone is ready to be served.
If you follow a very simple and reduced schedule like this one, your Thanksgiving will be less stressful and you'll have more time to enjoy with your friends and family.
