How to Host Thanksgiving Like A PRO

How to Host Thanksgiving Like A PRO

You don’t have to be a top chef or professional entertainer to host Thanksgiving like a seasoned expert. All it takes is a little help from your friends, day-before preparation, a few vegan Thanksgiving recipes, and knowing how to cut a few corners. Without a written list of your activities, hour by hour, the holiday meal might turn into a fiasco. Use a simple spreadsheet to log your prep and serving chores for the day of the meal. 

How to Host Thanksgiving Like A Pro

Here’s the shortlist of strategies for making this year’s extravaganza the best ever:

Plan to Enlist Help

The smartest meal planners know the value of assistants, and the value is quite high. You can recruit help from among family, friends, neighbors or any warm body that volunteers. Even kids can pitch in as long as they know their way around thekitchen. When you do ask for help, remember to get a firm time commitment from volunteers.

So, if you can be here from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. tomorrow to make the salad with me, that’ll be great. I’ll put your name on the spreadsheet. Try not to double-book folks for busy kitchen times. When too many hands are at work, less gets done. Aim for small crews of two or three assistants at a time, and your work will zip by.

Do as Much Day-Before Prep as Possible

An old trick for holiday meal prep is making as many items as you can the day before. The beauty of this little maneuver involves freezing various things, like dinner rolls, mashed potatoes and some pies. They’ll stay fresh and tasty, but don’t forget to allow for plenty of thaw time on the day of the big event.

Choose Some Vegan Thanksgiving Recipes  

When you have guests over, try to serve at least a few vegan Thanksgiving recipes so the non-meat eaters will have something they can enjoy. In addition to a main course, consider adding a vegan-friendly dessert to your Turkey Day lineup. Vegan chocolate pudding seems to be a universal favorite. Here’s the recipe:

• One can full fat coconut milk

• One and one-quarter cups unsweetened almond milk

• Three tablespoons unsweetened cocoa or cacao powder

• Four tablespoons arrowroot starch/arrowroot flour

• One-third cup coconut or maple sugar

• Two-thirds of a cup dairy-free chocolate chips

• One teaspoon vanilla extract

• One-quarter teaspoon almond extract (optional)

•  One pinch of salt 

Whisk the sugar, arrowroot, cocoa together in a saucepan. Add in the almond milk and coconut and bring it all to a bubble on medium heat. As it thickens, whisk it some more. Stir the chocolate chips, almond, salt and vanilla in after removing from heat. Whisk until it’s completely smooth. Place it into serving cups and let chill in the frig.

Forget the Appetizers

Want to save a ton of time this year and focus on the part of the meal that everyone is interested in? Then ditch the appetizers. They’re more trouble than they’re worth anyway and are a huge time-waster if you are entertaining more than a few people. No one will notice.