Christmas Countdown C -9

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Holiday Buffet

During the holidays, most women have too much to do and too little time in which to do it. Our hectic schedules make it next to impossible for us to get together with friends. One way to solve this is to host an open house that features a buffet. You might hold your open house on a Saturday, allowing your friends to stop in for a bite to eat between their errands. Or you might choose to invite couples and families to your open house.

Schedule the open house just before the fifteenth of December. People get busier as it gets closer to Christmas. By scheduling your open house earlier in the month, your guests will not have to choose between invitations.

Decorate your home for your open house. This helps set the tone for the party and gets everyone into the holiday mood.

Create a menu that saves you time and keeps your stress to a minimum. A suggested menu with recipes follows. The suggested dishes can be prepared ahead and cooked just before your guests arrive. The menu also contains pre-made items that save you from spending all your time in the kitchen. Remember, a successful party is not determined by the number of hours you spend in the kitchen.

To set up your buffet, you will need a long table for the food, a smaller side table for beverages and a third area for dessert. If you do not have room for three separate tables, then place the desserts on the buffet table with the rest of the food. It is more important to have a separate area for the beverages in order to ease congestion around the buffet table.

You may prepare your tables the morning of your open house. This will save you time later in the day. Cover your tables with tablecloths. Choose a simple centerpiece for each table. An arrangement of candles and small poinsettias works well. The centerpiece should not be large since you need every inch of table space for food.

Put out your serving dishes and determine what you plan to serve on each dish. Place a note on each serving piece to remind you, or to inform someone else, just what goes on that dish. This will save you time and worry when you begin setting out food. In addition, you should prepare folded mini-cards to labels each dish on the table. This will let guest know what everything is on the table and save you from having to answer the same question over and over.

Lay out your table to the appetizers are on one end or one side of the table and the food for the main course is on the other. Guests have a tendency to hover around the appetizers. Set up a traffic pattern around your buffet table that makes it easy for people to serve themselves.

An open house allows you to invite more guests than you could for a formal dinner. Unfortunately, most of us do not have enough dinnerware or flatware to serve everyone at once. Rather than make guests wait while you run a load of dishes through the dishwasher, simply use disposable items for your buffet. Yes, I am sure there are some people who will roll their eyes at your paper plates. That is their problem. Your goal is to hold a wonderful event and enjoy yourself at the same time. Ease your stress. Use disposable.

The suggested buffet menu has only 2 dishes that require cooking. Each dish may be baked just before your guests arrive allowing you to serve them hot out of the oven. Cheeses may be set out earlier, allowing them to soften slightly for easier cutting. Prepare your beverage table, set out other food items, and lay out desserts. As the pasta cooks, go take a bath and get ready for the party.

Just before people begin to arrive, turn on Christmas music, light the candles and set out the entrees. Check your list and your table one last time. Take a deep breath, pour yourself something to drink and prepare to attend your party.