hello this is Barbara from Barbara's Elian touch and today we're going to talk about setting up a buffet table it's an elegant way to set your food and color and height are always important part of the buffet presentation you can even set your platters up the night before and then place your food out just before guests arrive levels are very interesting a part of the buffet so I would suggest that you make if you do levels that everything is secure and it doesn't tip the day of your event and you have an accident you can use a one sided buffet or you can use two sided service for over 20 gifts this would allow for better flow it's best to remove any food that's been sitting out for four hours or longer to prevent any foodborne illnesses okay so the first thing I did was I put my tablecloth on the table the next thing you want to do to create interest is to put an overlay on and you can use fabric from a fabric store what I'm using here is just a curtain like a sheer curtain and then what I do is I kind of scrunch it like this to create more interest in the cloth and I think that it looks really pretty this way so again you can use a themed fabric if you're having a themed party or anything you can think of to put on your table but I'm using a sheer curtain I think I paid $5.00 for it at a resale place and I'm going to create a beautiful buffet out of it the next thing that we're going to talk about today is and the most important thing is our Schaefer because this is what's going to keep our food warm during the evening so that our guests can enjoy it but before we start with this I wanted to show you the different types of sternum that you can use underneath your Schaefer here the first one is a wick sternum and the wood comes off and you have to just light it right there now this this one will last about six hours and then there's another type called a gel the gel one will only last you about two hours so depending on how long you're planning on having your food out you have to decide which one would work better for you so the next thing I'm going to do is get my Shafer ready up for for heating so what I'm going to do is pour about an inch of water into my shaker and if you do more than an inch what's going to happen is once it starts heating up and you have your food in there let's get a bubble over and it's going to hit your tablecloth so be careful not to use more than a 1 inch of water in here so then I'm going to put my cover back on and I'm going to light my Stern up so I'm going to leave this on with the cover on for about 30 minutes and let the water get heated up then I can put my food in here and we'll be all set to go another way to keep your buffet organized is to take a paper napkin put your silverware in the center fold it in half and bring up your two sides start rolling like so take your ribbon or anything else that you think you want to put on there you can use your imagination I'm going to tie it in a bowl here and there you have your little silver package easy for your guests to pick up along the faint line the next thing that you can do to enhance your buffet is to make different levels so I'm going to use a book today but you can use a box you could use a Tupperware container whatever you have in your house you can use to make different levels so I'm going to start and I'm going to put one underneath here and this will be a lower lower level that I'm creating on the buffet and the next one I'm going to create I'm putting two hooks here to create more of a higher level so we're going to be creating kind of an up-and-down effect and I'll show you that you would put your platters on top of there and it kind of gives you an idea of the difference in height and this is a great idea to do it this way with the boxes or books because when you're running kind of close and there isn't enough room on the low face if you use varying kites you can put more on the table that way okay so here we go the buffet is all set up so I'll start to go through a few things this is where we put a couple sticks of books here and it kind of raises up the shrimp platter here to give it more you know elegant effect and what I did too is to add a cilantro or you can add parsley to your shrimp platter some lemons to give it a little bit more interest the next thing that I did was to companion the napkins in the same colors as my plates so I had red and yellow in the fight so I created red and yellow in the napkins and at my trip to the grocery store I happen to find a whole bunch of little peppers so again companion colors red with the yellow to match the plates I have my salad hair and then my asparagus and I put a little lemon zest on the top of there to kind of create some more color and interest there too okay so then I get my beef tenderloin here and I add a little bit of mushroom gravy today and I again I use some lettuce leaves to create interest on the fight instead of just having like a plain platter and I took one of the peppers and I kind of cut it out and I put my horseradish sauce in there so that's looking real good then I created more of a yellow color here with the eggs and bread always goes at the end of your buffet with your butter and then I have mashed potatoes little paprika on the top of that so here's your buffet completed I think it turned out real well the colors look good so I hope these tips help you create your next elegant buffet until next time Barbara from Barbara's elegant touch you