Today, we’re going to create menus for the holidays.
Our family does Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s – you can choose which holidays you plan the menu for. If you have a large get together on Christmas Eve, create a menu for Christmas Eve. If Halloween is your jam, create a menu for Halloween.
How you choose to do this is completely up to you, but we want you to be very specific. Don’t just write “pie” on your Thanksgiving menu – how many pies? What kind of pies?
If you’re sharing the holiday with others, work on your menu together. Who can bring what? Who is in charge of making sure that each specific item makes it to the table in time?
When you’re done, your menu should be as specific as possible so there is no confusion.
If you have limited oven space, do you need to plan what time everything needs to go in the oven to be done on time?
Would it be more helpful for you to create a menu, and then create a list of everything that can be made the day before?
What do you put on your menu? We include everything – breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.
Do you need specific drinks? Include those too.
Ask yourself these questions to help you decide how in-depth you want to make your menus. No matter how you choose to do this, your goal is to make things as easy as possible for yourself later on.
Here’s an example of our Thanksgiving Menu, to show you roughly what we do. Feel free to do something completely different, though.
Breakfast – roughly 9 am
- Bacon (1 pkg per 2 people)
- Pancakes (chocolate chip, blueberry, and plain)
- Orange Juice
- Fresh fruit (whatever is on sale)
Thanksgiving Dinner – roughly 2 pm
- Turkey – Mason
- Cranberry jelly – canned, kids open them
- Crescent rolls – store bought, kids make them
- Mashed potatoes – Emery
- Gravy – PJ
- Sweet potatoes – Brett
- Stuffing – Colter
- Broccoli – Hewitt
Dessert
- 2 Apple pies
- 2 Strawberry Rhubarb Pies
- 2 Cherry Pies
- 1 Blueberry Pie
- 1 Pecan Pie
- 10 Pumpkin Pies
- Whipped Cream (18)
Drinks
- Sparkling Grape Juice
- Water
That’s not a complete list, but it gives you an idea of how we build our menus. If another way will work better for you, then definitely customize it for yourself! If you’re having trouble with this, let me know in the Facebook group, and we’ll see if we can help.