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Is a Fancy Dinner on the menu?
By admin | March 22, 2009
Fancy dinner may or may not mean formal dinner. It is up to you to make the dinner as fancy as you want.
One way to make the dinner fancy, is to pull out your formal dinnerware, or dinnerware that is rarely used. Use special glassware to complement the dinnerware. Serve all the drinks in stemware, even the milk for the kids can be poured into a stemware glass.
Another way to compose a fancy dinner, is to serve each course separately, rather than placing all the food on the table at the same time. Start your meal with a soup, possibly a cold soup, like cucumber soup. Then, serve the salad, and put the salad dressing in a small gravy boat or creamer. Then serve the main course. You can separate the meat course from the vegetable course, but that could seem a little forced.
Another fun thing to do is to serve a small amount of a mild tasting sherbert in between each course - to cleanse the pallet.
For table decoration, let your dinnerware speak for itself. Create a low centerpiece, so everyone can easily enjoy conversation over the centerpiece. Fill one of your large serving bowls with flowers and or christmas tree balls or garland or . . . wherever your creativity takes you.
You do not have to load your table with lots of dinnerware, glassware, and flatware, but you certainly can. A general guideline for using flatware is to start using the outside flatware and work in toward the center plate. To set your table, the order from left to right is:
very small seafood fork (if serving a seafood appetizer)
small salad fork
dinner fork
charger plate
dinner knife
small or teaspoon spoon
soup spoon (if serving soup)
the bread and butter plate goes above the forks
the water glass (on right) and wine glass (on left) go above the knife and spoon
a dessert fork and spoon can be put above the charger
When you serve the soup in the soup bowl, place the soup bowl on the charger. The charger can collect any drips from the soup bowl and spoon. When the soup course is over, remove both the soup bowl and the charger.
That is some of the formal dining basics. When planning your dinner, incorporate those elements that will add enjoyment for your dinner, and don’t stress about using the other ones.
Topics: Dinnerware information, Flatware knives, forks and spoons, Register for dinnerware, dinner and dining tips, dinnerware uses |