Planning Family Reunion Meals - 1

            There are a number of ways to precede with family reunion meals. We’ve tried a variety of methods, and I have my favorite. Planning meals for a one-day family reunion tends to be different from meal planning for a family reunion vacation. I’ll list some of the methods we’ve used at past family reunion vacations, as well as reunions with my mother’s side of the family.
            As I write this, we’ve had ten Talbot Family reunion vacations to date. My husband and I arranged two of the ten. Over the years, the family has arranged the meals in different ways, with one method being the most common choice.

Which meals?

           If it is a family reunion vacation, which takes place over a series of days (ours runs from Monday through Friday) the first question - what meals do you intend to plan? When planning our Talbot Family Reunion, we’re only concerned with dinners. Yet, we might have morning coffee, with members taking turns bringing donuts. This has always been a very informal morning gathering. The dinner meal is the only one all members attend. With family members of varying ages and dietary needs, and different activities during each day, scheduling breakfasts and lunches for the entire group isn’t practical.

Family Reunion Potluck

            For a one-day family reunion event, a potluck is one way to approach the meal, if most family members live in the area. Without access to kitchens and cooking utensils, a potluck may not be the practical solution. If you decide to go the potluck route, have out-of-town family members bring sodas, ice, chips, or something that doesn’t require actual food preparation. Of course, they can always pick up pre-made salads at the grocery deli, or desserts at the bakery.

Rotating Meals

            My favorite meal system for a family reunion vacation is one I call rotating meals, something our family has been doing for sometime. It’s an idea my husband and I came across during a campout, a few years before the first Talbot Family Reunion.
            It works something like this…during the course of the reunion, each person is only responsible for helping to plan, prepare, pay for and clean up for one dinner. If the reunion has three dinners, this means each person only has to be responsible for one dinner, and can simply enjoy and kick back on the other two nights, with two “free meals”.
            Of course, each person isn’t solely responsible for his one dinner, he is working with other family members.  In our family, this typically means the descendants of my mother-in-law work together to prepare one dinner, while each of her siblings (and the siblings’ descendants) are responsible for the other nights.
            One advantage of having the individual families work together, and not mixing up the group (like having me work on Monday’s dinner and my husband on Tuesdays), is it makes it easier when planning daytime activities. At our reunion, not every family member attends every activity. Some family members like to take shopping trips, go horseback riding, fishing or white river rafting. If my husband and I want to participate in an outing which will keep us away until late afternoon, we will schedule that event for a day when we don’t need to return early to help get dinner together.
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