Happy Tuesday TKW Family! On today’s Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer I’m sharing with you my trusty Thanksgiving Serving Guide that I’ve developed over the past couple of decades to show you how feed one person to 25 people.
Decades??? Whoa that’s kinda scary that I now can reference years in decades rather than simple years. Damn I’m old, huh? I think I need a moment…
*wink* Eh it’s all good, we all age – some more gracefully than others. There are mornings when I wake up I feel 95 (or what I assume 95 feels like) and then there are mornings where I feel like a 16 year old full of energy or as my Dad would say “wind, piss and excitement”. Now full disclosure this guide would never EVER work if you have a family like mine growing up. Granted there were just the 8 of us, the boys were HUGE eaters – no seriously, it’s unreal how much they could inhale in one setting. Holiday dinners were an event. Mom would cook for days and it got so bad that she’d had to make a 2nd full meal just so they’d have leftovers because the main meal was destroyed. So like how you see the amounts for 25 people – yeah, Mom would make more than that for the 8 of us. God no wonder I was so fat growing up! Just the pies alone was obscene. When she would cut a 12″ deep dish pumpkin pie it was cut in quarters… each person got a quarter. But wait, there’s more… she’d also make apple, cherry and chocolate. Again a quarter pie of those to you. So yes, essentially each person got a full pie to eat for dessert – and that’s after eating dinner for oh 2 hours easily. But if your family is normal then you can easily use the breakdown below.
What honestly helped me to develop this serving guide is my many years in the restaurant and catering industry. Honestly it was so easy to cook for crowds of thousands versus a dinner for 8. OMG my dear Mr. Fantabulous – I’m surprised that man doesn’t weigh 900 pounds by how much I used to cook at one setting for us. Thank GOD his is super bionic metabolism <still secretly hate him for that by the way>. Our first Thanksgiving it was just he and I at our house. I cooked an 18 pound turkey, 5 pounds of mashed potatoes, corn, broccoli & cauliflower, homemade buns, gravy, candied yams, green bean casserole. That was just dinner …
We also had shrimp cocktail for appetizers and a small salad. For dessert I then made a 12″ deep dish pumpkin pie, a 12″ deep dish apple pie, a coconut cream pie and a pumpkin roll. Yeah.. for 2 people to eat for a single meal. LOL We had leftovers for weeks. What’s funny is what, 4 weeks later when it was Christmas I asked him if he wanted turkey again and before I could even finish my sentence he said “OMG NO! I don’t want to see turkey in this house for at least a year!” LOL
So needless to say I’ve been able to scale it back considerably to normal sized meals that can easily feed one person to a crowd plus enough for some leftovers. I typically when I want to send people home with leftovers will add another 3-4 servings on top of my original amount. So if I’m having 8 people for dinner, I’ll make enough for 11-12 people. But that’s just me.
One note for the turkey, the size is measured BEFORE YOU cook it. You, obviously, want to cook it before serving people *wink*. I’ll be sharing another one for Christmas for ham and additional sides. So with that, Happy Thanksgiving!
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