When you’re responsible for feeding a crowd, how you go about it will depend a lot on your budget, your health, your space and the food choices you and your family make.
These tips and tricks can work for any type of party, including your holiday dinner party.
· Set Your Budget
This is important to do before you start inviting people. More than likely, you’re going to spend on average 10 dollars a person for your holiday menu.
This is helpful to know so that you can set a budget and limit on how many people show up. Alternatively, you may choose to provide the main course and let your guests bring dishes as they will, or that you assign if you have a theme that you want to stick to.
· Decide Who Is Invited
Once you have your budget, you can create your invitation list. Even if you aren’t formally inviting people and just your family is showing up because this is the tradition, write it down anyway.
While you’re at it, write down any food allergies or limitations of the guests that you know will be there.
· Plan Your Menu
Now that you’re in the menu-planning stage, it’s important to know whether you’re cooking it all or whatever you can count on individuals to bring what you assign them to bring.
You can easily include the recipe you want them to use too if you do it this way. Alternatively, you can tell them to bring a green bean casserole and let them use their own recipe.
To ensure your guests will stick to the menu as assigned, explain in your invitation how it’ll work.
· Choose Simple Recipes
While it might seem like a great time to try that complicated recipe you found, it’s not. It’s best to try those recipes out on your immediate family rather than at a holiday dinner with many people there. Instead, choose recipes that have fewer ingredients that are easy to prepare and take little prep time.
· Consider Feeding Your Freezer
Some people who have a nice-sized freezer like to serve a lot of different recipes at their holiday gatherings.
They will start feeding their freezer a few weeks prior to the event and then simply heat the food up when it’s time to serve it. This works great for casseroles, dressing, and many desserts.
The important thing to remember is that people are there to be with you and the other guests. They’re not just there to eat. You can make a great easy holiday dinner by letting everyone make their own personal pizzas or by having a potato bar. You don’t have to do everything completely traditional to make it a wonderful event.
