A dinner party (or any type of party where you serve food) requires proper tableware. You need a lot of items, like dishes, glassware, sauceboats and cutlery, enough for all your guests. For classy parties, the tableware needs to match: you can’t have half of the dishes white, the other half blue, three types of glasses and the cutlery all mismatched. If you love to receive guests and you organize a lot of parties, buying a complete, large set of tableware with all the items is a good investment.
When shopping for tableware items for a party, you need to consider first the menu you plan to serve. If it’s a sophisticated dinner party, with a many courses, then you need a lot of plates, glasses and cutlery. A complete set of tableware has to contain plates for the entrée course, salads, main course and dessert. If you intend to serve soup, you also have to get some soup bowls. The cutlery is the next item on your list. You need forks for the entrée course, salad and the main course. When fish is on the menu, a special type of fork, a fish fork, is needed. Other cutlery items you have to get for a party are the knives for the main course, the spoons for soup and teaspoons for dessert and for serving coffee.
The glasses are the next items to choose for a party. For every guest, you need at least two glasses – one for water, the other one for wine. Those glasses should be on the table, next to de plates. Also, you need different sets of glasses that you’ll use when you prepare other drinks for the guests: cocktails, whiskey, vodka, cognac. A nice set of cups for coffee and tea is also required when organizing a party.
Once you got all the items you need for the guests, you have to concentrate on tableware items for serving the food. You need some large serving platters, sauceboats, bowls for salads and a big knife to portion the meat. Ideally, all the plates, bowls and serving plates should be from the same set. If you can’t find a complete set, with all the tableware items you need for a party, you can combine sets that look good together. With glasses, you also need to make sure they belong to the same set of items.
Napkins and tablecloths are also very important if you want flawless table arrangement. The plates and the platters need to match with the napkins and the tablecloth. Try to get all the stuff you need from the same place: that way, you’ll have the opportunity to check how the plates, napkins and tablecloth look together.
Those are the tableware items you need to get for a party. If you are organizing a buffet, you need about the same type of tableware, but you have to arrange them differently. Set up a large table on a side of the room, but make sure there is enough space around the table for your guests to move comfortably around. Arrange the food on large platters, and leave the plates, glasses and cutlery aside. Get good-quality tableware items – you’ll be using them for years.
Jamie Highland writes about events and parties like weddings and baby showers. To find out more about and to shop for baby shower tableware or to check out some baby shower games, visit My Baby Shower Favors.
Showing posts with label tableware. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tableware. Show all posts
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Ideas for hosting a cooking party
Cooking parties are fun and a great way to spend time with your friends. At the same time, you can learn cooking tips from others. In order to make everything to run smoothly, you need to organize the party very well. The main condition for nice, relaxing cooking parties is to have enough room and cooking tools for everyone.
The first step is to pick the menu. Once you’ve decided what you will cook, you have to buy all the ingredients. Make sure you don’t leave anything out. There is nothing more annoying than realizing, after you already started to cook, that you don’t have everything you need. So, take a good look at the recipes and make a list with all the ingredients. Another thing to think about - tableware, pans, pots, tablecloths, napkins and other cooking utensils. If you don’t have enough cooking tools and tableware for every one, you can either buy some more or you can simply borrow from friends the items you need. For setting the table, you can simply get some plastic or paper tableware.
When planning a cooking party, you should select some quick and fun to do recipes – pizza, different pies, lasagna, grilled vegetables, and salads are great for cooking parties. Make it fun – for example, you can ask each friend invited to the cooking party to select his or her favorite ingredient (a variety of cheese, a vegetable, salami, sausages, even fruits or other unconventional toppings) and make a huge pizza with all those ingredients.
Find a theme for your cooking party. For example, you can cook only things you can eat with your fingers – that’s a really funny theme, and all your friends will appreciate the idea. There are a lot of foods you can eat with the fingers. Just get barbecue sticks and add little pieces of meat, shrimp, and vegetables. Arrange them on a pan and pop them into a preheated oven. In the mean time, you and your friends can start working on soups and salads or other side dishes.
You can organize a very special cooking party, for your closest friends, around a cheese fondue pot. Cheese fondue is delicious, easy to make and fun to eat. There is a special tool for making cheese fondue, a pot placed on top of a heating source, but it’s not mandatory for making fondue cheese. All you need is a good –quality nonreactive pan, your favorite type of cheese, and a bottle of white wine and some spices. Garlic works great for cheese fondue. Basically, all you have to do is to melt the cheese on low heat and to add the wine and the garlic. Prepare a large pot, to have enough for everyone, and ask your friends to put together some salads for the cheese. You can have the cheese with cubed bread, slices of apples or pears and grapes. You can serve it directly from the pot, but you need some sticks for the bread and fruits.
So, next time you organize a cooking party, make sure you follow some of these great tips.
Jamie Highland writes about events and parties, like weddings and baby showers. To find out more about how to organize perfect events or to shop for baby shower tableware and other baby shower supplies, visit My Baby Shower Favors.
The first step is to pick the menu. Once you’ve decided what you will cook, you have to buy all the ingredients. Make sure you don’t leave anything out. There is nothing more annoying than realizing, after you already started to cook, that you don’t have everything you need. So, take a good look at the recipes and make a list with all the ingredients. Another thing to think about - tableware, pans, pots, tablecloths, napkins and other cooking utensils. If you don’t have enough cooking tools and tableware for every one, you can either buy some more or you can simply borrow from friends the items you need. For setting the table, you can simply get some plastic or paper tableware.
When planning a cooking party, you should select some quick and fun to do recipes – pizza, different pies, lasagna, grilled vegetables, and salads are great for cooking parties. Make it fun – for example, you can ask each friend invited to the cooking party to select his or her favorite ingredient (a variety of cheese, a vegetable, salami, sausages, even fruits or other unconventional toppings) and make a huge pizza with all those ingredients.
Find a theme for your cooking party. For example, you can cook only things you can eat with your fingers – that’s a really funny theme, and all your friends will appreciate the idea. There are a lot of foods you can eat with the fingers. Just get barbecue sticks and add little pieces of meat, shrimp, and vegetables. Arrange them on a pan and pop them into a preheated oven. In the mean time, you and your friends can start working on soups and salads or other side dishes.
You can organize a very special cooking party, for your closest friends, around a cheese fondue pot. Cheese fondue is delicious, easy to make and fun to eat. There is a special tool for making cheese fondue, a pot placed on top of a heating source, but it’s not mandatory for making fondue cheese. All you need is a good –quality nonreactive pan, your favorite type of cheese, and a bottle of white wine and some spices. Garlic works great for cheese fondue. Basically, all you have to do is to melt the cheese on low heat and to add the wine and the garlic. Prepare a large pot, to have enough for everyone, and ask your friends to put together some salads for the cheese. You can have the cheese with cubed bread, slices of apples or pears and grapes. You can serve it directly from the pot, but you need some sticks for the bread and fruits.
So, next time you organize a cooking party, make sure you follow some of these great tips.
Jamie Highland writes about events and parties, like weddings and baby showers. To find out more about how to organize perfect events or to shop for baby shower tableware and other baby shower supplies, visit My Baby Shower Favors.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)