Guide to Serving Thanksgiving Dinner

Ever wonder how all those families on television manage to serve such a perfect meal every time? Mom dishes out each item into a beautifully matched bowl or server and places it in the perfect position on the table, which never seems to be over filled and the condiments appear like magic. In real life, it never works like that, does it? Mom is usually up all night cooking and then something almost always goes wrong, and how can they possibly fit all that food onto a single table with the whole family there too!

You can't fit everything you baked into your matching servers. I have to fill the mashed potatoes at least twice during dinner, and the rolls are always running out. If I owned enough servers I would fill all of them. The key is to be ready to refill anything at any time that might run out. If you want this to appear "magical" simply ask someone to "please pass the [whatever]" then sneak away and refill it. Your guests will be impressed that you are able to keep it magically full. Of course this means you are chained to the kitchen, but your priorities are your choices.

That matching server set you have owned for 20 years is probably broken, cracked and missing several key parts. It's likely you have broken or lost several of the pieces and there is no way to replace those pieces to match perfectly. Don't worry too much about this, once your guests are full of food no one will even notice you are using servers from different sets. Use the pieces that are not matching and fill them with the foods you know stick to the bowl, like mashed potatoes, gravy, and green bean casserole.

Don't expect the table to be big enough for everything you are serving, especially with the condiments; salt, pepper, butter, Tabasco sauce, etc all need a place on the table along with your cooking. It becomes even worse if you decorated, you have even less room than without decorations. My best suggestion is do not carve the turkey at the table. It tastes just as good carved in the kitchen and served on a platter. Use TV trays or side tables set in strategic spots near the dining room table and move your dishes to these tables when they are not being actively passed around the table. This way they can be removed from the table itself but kept within easy reach, and within view. If your guests can see the food then they eat it and you don't get stuck with any leftovers. Keep unnecessary utensils off the table, this isn't the Ritz; you don't need 5 forks at each place setting. One of each utensil does just fine and works for the whole meal. Before dessert clear the table and make sure to provide a spoon or fork with the new plates for dessert. One glass, one plate is all you should need for the meal. Clear the table of everything, including condiments and dirty dishes, before serving dessert, your guests want to see all they get to eat and they can only choose what they can see.