How To Calculate For 12 Servings For Thanksgiving Dinner

Figuring out to calculate for 12 servings for Thanksgiving dinner has no hard fast rules. Follow a few general guidelines to ensure success with your meal planning. Along with this, any personal considerations need to be thought of, such as dietary restrictions or special needs of your guests for Thanksgiving dinner.

1. Ask about special dietary needs on the invitations. Have the guest fill out if they are allergic to anything or will not eat a certain type of food for other reasons. For example, this allows you to take out one of the calculated twelve servings for thanksgiving dinner for the turkey if someone is a vegetarian. It also gives you a a heads up that you may need to increase the servings of the vegetable dishes for that person to have enough to eat.
2. Break all of the other main dishes down into twelve servings for Thanksgiving dinner following a standard method. For meat, calculate five to six ounces per serving, at least a handful of vegetables and side dishes per serving and two to three servings of bread for each guest.
3. Handle extras, such as appetizers and desserts, by planning at least ten appetizers per guest and two servings of dessert when calculating the twelve  servings for Thanksgiving dinner. If you have a family or friend favorite that seems to disappear at every other gathering, double that number to be safe. A serving is a subjective number when it comes to heirloom recipes.
4. Make  beverage list out assuming that everyone in attendance is going to be really thirsty. A standard measurement is that a gallon of coffee will contain about twenty cups but that may not take into consideration your best friend's caffeine addiction. Alcohol can be even trickier to calculate twelve servings of for a Thanksgiving dinner and you may be better off just figuring a bottle per person. The worst that can happen is you invite a few friends over the next day to help you finish off the leftovers.