On the logistics of serving family meals in courses.

A side note on logistics.

I've been dabbling in serving "first course" before "mains" at family meals ever since our first European trip three years ago, and it's a habit that has persisted remarkably well.  I wrote about it for the first time here:

[O]ne thing I noticed that I liked is the serving of meals in courses.  Yes, I know that is a totally normal thing to do "over here," but it's nothing we ever do; we tend to put all the serving dishes in the middle of the table and help ourselves to everything at once.  

There's nothing wrong with that per se, but I wonder if I could slow us down just a wee bit, and have a first course.  

Not make anything extra.  I typically have two or more vegetable side dishes at each meal anyway.  Just take that salad, or that soup, and put it out ahead of time so we can warm up to the table and to each other before we start snarfing down our meat and carbs.

In the next post after that, I listed some examples of potential first courses.  But I don't think I have written much about it since then, until yesterday when I wrote about searching for meal-planning guidance in French bookstores.

There appeared in the comments a question from ChristyP:

I was thinking yesterday about the logistics of separate courses and quickly became overwhelmed by the number of dishes and potentially serving pieces to wash.

You certainly have more helpers, but are you actually running the dishwasher after the first course so that it can be emptied and refilled with the rest of the dishes from dinner?

Or do people keep the same plates and have other items served upon them (possibly with wiping up any extra salad dressing with a paper towel between courses)?

I can answer this one! 

There are several reasons why I have been able to execute this without getting overwhelmed. 

+ + +

Simplifying factor #1.  I make a maximum of 3 "family-style" meals per week.

How is this so?

• Mondays we take turns preparing meals with another family whose kids and grownups are going to the same Monday night meetings.
• Wednesdays are self-serve Leftover Buffet Nights.  
• Saturdays, one of the kids makes dinner.  They take turns.  I don't micromanage the planning, cooking, or serving.
• Sunday dinner is a cheese-and-meat board with bread, crackers, and crudités.

Not doing it every day is surely one of the reasons it is not overwhelming.

+ + +

Simplifying factor #2.  Though I might have three "courses," it's only two sets of dishes, not three.

Except for parties, I basically never make a sweet baked dessert or anything else that couldn't go on the same plate with the mains.  The sugariest thing I might cook to go with a regular dinner is a baked apple.

For the most part, until this year, I only ever tried to manage two courses:  a first course (usually a salad or other vegetable), and a main. 

Lately, inspired by careful attention to French magazine articles and serving suggestions on French prepared-food packages, I have been putting out a "dessert course" which amounts to a platter of either cut fruit or wedges of cheese, at the same time as the main and sides.   

I have been enjoying taking my portion of the fruit or cheese after I have finished the main course, but of course anyone can serve it to themselves as a side.   It goes on the same plate as the other food, or on the bread-and-butter plate if the main happens to be soup or something else that requires a bowl.

So if you're imagining three sets of plates, banish that.  Think two, max.

+ + +

Simplifying factor #3:   Smaller plates.

This really helps with the dishwasher.

Shown below, stacked from bottom to top:  (1) a "standard" 10-3/4-inch dinner plate, (2) our dinner plates, (3) the plates we typically use for first course (or for a bread plate if we're having soup):

 

Shown below, stacked from bottom to top:  (1) a bowl for first-course soups for Mark and teenagers, (2) a bowl for first-course soups for me and middle-size children, (3) a ramekin for first-course soups for smaller children:

 

I generally get away with two dishes per person.  And unless I have to break into our "standard" plates for some reason, every plate and bowl can fit on either the bottom or the top rack of the dishwasher.  So it's not terribly difficult to get them all in.   

That is, it wouldn't be difficult if we started with an empty dishwasher.   In truth, with six people here all day long, the dishwasher is almost never empty, and there's usually a backlog waiting in the sink; so maybe the real reason it seems easy is that seven extra dishes from first course don't make a noticeable contribution to the pile.  

+ + +

Simplification #4:  It's routine.

In practice, when I am in charge of a multicourse dinner, I plan it this way:

• I plate the first course and put it on the table while the table is being set. 
• We wait for everyone to come to the table and say grace before we let anyone dig in (or complain).
• As we start eating, the main course items (including the stealth fruit-or-cheese-course) are in resting on the counter, chilling in the fridge, or staying hot in the oven, depending.   
• When most of us are done with the first course (except for the 3yo, who can't be reasoned with yet), I get up, take away those plates and drop them into the sink or stack them by the dishwasher. 
• I then bring the dinner dishes in a stack and hand them to a teenager to distribute. 
• While he is doing that, I fetch the serving dishes to the table. 
• I'm not above just putting the soup pot or the crockpot insert on the table, by the way.  I draw the line at serving from the rice cooker because I am not tall enough to see over it when seated.
• We pass the rest of the dishes family style.

If I really needed to conserve plates, I think I would not be above using our divided plates and serving the first course in one of the sections of the divided plates, and letting people keep those plates between first and main courses.  Alternatively, I could allow people to opt-in to the multi-plate dinner, keeping their first plate unless it really bothered them that there were traces of salad dressing or whatever on it; in that case they could get their own clean plate if necessary.

I personally find the rhythm of changing the plates to be pleasanter. 

+ + +

Simplification #5:  I have three offspring who can load and unload the dishwasher and hand-wash dishes without help, plus one apprentice.

I almost never wash dishes in my own house.

As ChristyP noted, this surely is part of what makes it all seem feasible.

 

Comments

[Christy P.]

I have been thinking about this more. In our, smaller than yours, household we tend to run the dishwasher once a day, and it includes all of the dishes from breakfast for 4, lunch for 1 adult, containers from 2 kid lunchboxes, container from 1 adult lunchbox, dinner dishes, and assorted drinking and food prep items. If we use both dinner plates and side plates at dinner then generally something has to wait or be handwashed. Our dishwasher is on its last legs, and I will continue to consider how this one device informs many other choices (dinner plates don't fit on top). Also, Erin has been in my kitchen and can confirm another design element that complicates things -- the cabinets are high! Only 1 of my children is big enough to reach a cup or plate on the first level without a stool. Erin can't reach the adult glasses in my kitchen! So having kids do things like put away dishes is only going to become easier in time. As a former engineer, I still like to think about systematic solutions to everyday challenges.

[bearing]

I can definitely see how, if you could very nearly get by entirely with running the dishwasher once per day, the knowledge that a few more dishes would not fit would exert a subtle mental pressure that might nudge you towards certain meal choices and away from others.

We're really far from running the dishwasher once per day. I should count. I think it's about 3x/day.

The dishwasher is a very troubling appliance. Not only is it annoying when it is done and you have to put clean dishes away, but there's a constant niggling feeling that it is not being used as efficiently as it ought be used. Should I run it after lunch so it is empty to receive the dinner dishes? Should I wait to run it till it is absolutely full, even if it fills up after 10% of the dinner dishes are put in it and that means that dinner dishes have to wait in the sink? If the dishwasher uses less water than handwashing (mine does) should I never handwash any dishes that could go in the dishwasher? Do the answers change if the food on the dishes will dry and become too sticky to come off in the dishwasher?

Dishwashers are made to be overthunk.

[Christy P.]

I frequently use ramekins to serve things like baked beans that don't stay in their own zone otherwise.

[bearing]

I love ramekins. If I had more drawer space I would have twice as many, I think.

[mandamum]

We need to make the transition from 1x/day to 2x/day, but my dishwashers aren't picking up on the habit.... They are all suspicious that dishwashing after lunch is just Mom trying to make them do extra chores, and they disapprove of running it less than full, even when I try to provide incentive by insisting all extra get handwashed..... It's a habit for the new season, I think - it has been exacerbated by our new house's new (poorer) dishwasher, but it was coming anyway, and people are only going to get bigger and use more dishes.

I would like to try the change-of-dish thing. My dinners are ridiculous - we're still moving in, almost, after 2.5mo, and trying to settle into my cupboards and freezers (the chest one died - twice! - before I got a chance to fill it, so it never got into the round of available space. Once a socket died, and then after we moved it outside, something chewed the cord off). And I have to cook something separate most days for my husband who is mostly starch-free while also dairy and wheat free. So often dinners are sort of thrown at the (starving) diners, and by the time one set sits down to eat, the lucky set whose food was ready first has already eaten to stave off low blood sugar issues. But to fix it seems to require I make it my #1 (ie only) priority for the whole day.... and I'm supposedly homeschooling a whole crew including my first freshman in high school (which means I want to pay attention to her getting what she needs, and she has a lot more work this year, but it's nothing like routine yet).

I wonder how much of our approach is formed by our (vocational) education - I considered engineering, but am trained as a pure mathematician, and lots of time I get stuck in the theoretical (and the collect-more-info) part of a problem. "Assume the soup can is open", in the old joke.

[Christy P.]

Having a couple of 'emergency dinners' which in our house means 'camping food' stashed in the freezer is super helpful. The other day it was Gorgonzola Gnocchi (frozen in a bag from Trader Joe's) mixed with a bag of frozen broccoli florets (also from TJ) because life got in the way. So grateful to have the ability and the freezer space to keep a stash of food. It's humbling to think of the many families without that luxury.

[bearing]

Oh my goodness yes.

On the subject of cooking separately for a starch-free person: I think the *simplest* way to do this day in and day out is to follow the formula of

Low-Carb Meat And Vegetable Meal + Unlimited Whole-Grain Bread For Everyone Who Eats Bread

It may get boring over the long haul, but then it's less like "cooking separately for the starch free person." Find a reliable paleo or low-carb cookbook and feed everyone else bread on the side. Who doesn't like bread and butter? You can mix it up with baked potatoes or rice or something when life settles down enough to de-simplify, but until then it reduces the number of decisions you have to make considerably.

[Jenny]

Our dinner plates are so gigantic we use them as serving platters. I wish we didn't have 8 of them. I just measured one and sure enough, they are 10.75 inches. That's standard? Wow.

We usually eat off the salad plates, which are 8.75 inches across. Still, they seem rather big for some things. Pile that plate with rice or pasta and you are probably eating too much.

What we really need more of are the 7 inch plates. We have 10 or 12 of them, but we use them for everything.

We don't have any ramekins, though. That seems a useful item to acquire. We run out of bowls and little plates every day.

[mandamum]

Ok, yeah that makes sense. I had been trying to do potatoes for the starch-eaters, on the theory they were closer to original state, but I can give myself permission to simplify for now. I will have to check for paleo cookbooks at the library.

Our plates are mostly/all Corelle, and we usually eat off the medium (salad?) plates. They used to fit on the top rack of the dishwasher when needed. When I forget and give the adults big plates, my husband trades back to ensure his food looks reasonable instead of stranded. We do use the big plates for things like big salads, where a large volume of bulk is a reasonable portion. And otherwise, we use them for serving, prep, etc.