do YOU do ALL the cooking and preparing?
My gosh....
in our family, every body brings something for the dinner. One family is not responsible for the whole thing.
'

good luck, I hope you can relax soon! lol

That sounds like a nice group of people. This year we are having our meal at our daughter and son in laws home. There will only be seven of us and the baby this year. I will be fixing a lot of the food and so will our other daughter, so Amber will not have to fix anything. Tomorrow will be my day to get most of my food ready. Our meal will be around noon I think.

Sue

Count your blessings. :) The opposite isn't so much fun either. I hope you have a wonderful dinner.

I have 5 brothers and only two sisters in law. My mom is up ther in age and can't expect her to do much. One sister in law just had surgery to remove cancerous thyroid so I'm only asking them and thier 6 to pick up stuff like butter, pop, ice etc. The other sister in law, hmm, not so good at cooking, her husband, my brother will probably cook a side dish and she will do salad. I'm starting to get the nieces and nephews to come with something, just can't always rely on them. I'm doing turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans with roasted fingerling potatoes, fruited wild rice dressing with pork sausage, cranberry salsa and creamed corn from scratch. The cooking is probably the easy part, the hard part is getting the house in order, enough tables and chairs and then trying to figure out where everyone is going to sit. Summer is easier as we have a very large deck and pool.
I'll relax after taking my mom home saturday morning. Then I will do nothing.

two.25 acres...I'm with you. I am expecting 33 for dinner Thursday. I do get help with food, but we spent most of the morning moving furniture and setting up tables and chairs with tablecloths, napkins, silverware. I decided to stay with real dishes this year even though I get very little help with cleanup. I have to say, hubby is with me all the way with set up, cooking and cleanup.

I feel your pain. Every year, we host two big Christmas dinners with 25 or so at each. Frankly, I don't enjoy them at all, but my parents think it's important, so I'll continue the practice until their opinion no longer can be heard (or they change their mind). :-D

Shouldn't the folks who like to come to eat have also been trained that there's clean-up ... and that it's scarcely fair to load all of that on to one or two people ... especially if they're the ones who hosted ... and did all of the cooking??

Fair's fair!

Cleaning up can be rather fun ... when it's shared.

ole joyfuelled ... with a little occasional help from turkey

Someone asked me today what I was doing for Thanksgiving and I said nothing. He said, by yourself? I told him being by myself is my choice, the bad part of it is the people who feel sorry for me. If I was 30 and alone that would be different, but as the saying goes, been there, done that. I do have an invitation to a family dinner, but 25 or 30 people, I don't think so. Maybe your family is different, I hope so. LOL

Right now I think cooking for 6-8 is too many! Bless you for cooking for so many. We will have my parents, and our two kids, maybe 1 SO and 1 DGS.

Turkey, stuffing with sausage, green beans, green bean cassarole sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, rolls, ham (DH's addition tonight), stuffed mushrooms. Chocolate pie, banana cream pie, pumpkin pie. I will cheat on the crust, just bought pilsbury crusts, and bought the pumpkin.

I will be doing it all, but either DH or my dad will prep the turkey and get it in the oven for m.

Tami

I only know how to cook for groups that size. Since is just DH and me living here, we either have WAY EXTRA or not the holidays we are accustomed to having.

But, I do not envy you- used to help my parents get ready for the family/friends Christmas part at their house. I think the largest was 60 people invited- and about 45-50 showing up. But that was in Georgia (aka warm) so you could run all the kids outside!

This year we are on the road for Thanksgiving. We will be in Midland,Texas with Daisy7 who used to post at the KT. My husband will do baked potatoes with onions and lots of butter, salt and pepper wrapped in foil. He wil also grill the Rib Eye steaks to perfection. I will make a salad and will buy a frozen pie to bake in my convection oven. There will just be the three of us and we are going to have the best time ever.

We're having 13 people over for Thanksgiving.

Thinking of inviting one more just because of the number 13. lol

I am fortunate - my DH and I work together and have fun putting together a big spread. We are having 30 people and looking forward to it!

DH had to work today but will he here on Thursday and that's when he'll help me out. He's very good about that. We are using all disposables. I like washing dishes, haven't used my dishwasher in a couple of years and wouldn't trust the gaskets so we'll just dispose of everything. It's allot of work, I do enjoy everyone being here but probably not going to do it again anytime soon. If I win the lottery and can custom build a home it will have a dining area that's atleast 20x40 and we'll custom build a table and benches. Way too many chairs to keep on hand. It will have two stove tops and two wall ovens with the doors that open out left and right. Better throw in two dishwashers as well. That would really make life easy.

I had TG for many years but now have only one immediate family member remaining and he lives out of state. DH has a decent sized family but they have somewhat fallen apart since their parents died. We now have a new tradition. For the last several years we've gotten together with some friends at their lake cabin. Their kids live far away so it's just the four of us. We have a great time - no stress - very enjoyable.

Enjoy the day with your family!

gibby - your Thanksgiving sounds AWESOME! Enjoy!

With any crowd over ten, traditional goes out the door and a buffet comes in. Main prep foods like the turkey and hams are carved either before it is brought to the table or someone is elected to do it at the end of the table according to each preference. Everyone brings a dish of some kind and the table can be set up, decorated and dishes/plates/bowls ready to fill if needed. If brought ready to serve it is put in the fridge or warming oven. A smaller table with styrofoam or royal chinet and usually real silverware and napkins is set up along side the food table. After a quick clean up (have a large garbage bag handy, not classy but it gets the job done quickly) desserts are usually brought out. Put out the coffee urn. Tea in the kitchen unless there are more tea drinkers than coffee and it will be reversed. Sit back and relax with your guests. I also cannot believe there are no offers for help. Most places I have been we fight to see who gets to wash or dry!!! and that is without waiting for the hostess to start.