The holiday season is a festive time of year with parties to go to and throw for family and friends. If you want to improve how your last party turned out, then here are some party planning tips that can help your efforts to plan the perfect party.
The first thing on your list should be determining what sort of party that you have in mind. Is it a full dinner or just more one where you’ll be serving cocktails and hors d’oeuvres for your guests?
In the past, you may have overbought the amount of food that you needed for the party. However, this need not happen if you calculate the number of guests that you plan to invite to avoid an excess of leftovers.
At the same time, you also need to keep the taste preferences about food and drink for each guest in mind. After all, you may have a relative that hates ham or may be allergic to pumpkin pie. On a different note, you could also have other friends or family members that have other dietary restrictions such as being on a salt or sugar free diet. Knowing this information and coordinating your grocery list accordingly can please your guests and prevent food waste for a better party.
Now that you figured the best foods and drink that will work for the party, you need to estimate about the quantity that your guests will eat. Basically, adults will eat about one pound of food. Children will need about one half of that amount for dinner. But this amount really depends on how many other dishes that may have intentions of serving. This could result in those guests eating less of the main course that you’ll be serving if planning a full dinner.
What else that I recommend is having a lot more appetizers on hand whether for a regular dinner or just socializing informally for that party. If you want to save some money without your guests noticing, it also helps fill them up before sitting down to dinner. My suggestion is having homemade cookies on hand in the freezer or just rolls of frozen cookie dough and appetizers that could be baked as needed.
Dips are fantastic to serve. In fact, I like to make a bean dip or cheese spread for slices of bread to bake under the broiler before cutting into smaller squares and serving. This is delicious, satisfying and nourishing. This is just one example, but stuffed mushrooms or a platter of homemade cocktail meatballs that you can pop into the oven from the freezer to reheat is another wonderful idea.
Your guests may tend to eat more than you estimated. To prepare ahead of time, buy extra nonperishable food items like crackers, nuts, chips, etc. that you could feed them with.
Serving liquor and the amount is harder to determine. Something that I find useful is checking the drink calculator of how many bottles are safe to buy.
These tips for how to plan your party really can assist you and increase your chances for pulling off the perfect event.
