You said yes to hosting Sistersgiving. Then you looked at your kitchen.
It’s a microwave, a mini fridge, and one counter the width of a laptop. Twenty women have already said they’re coming. The Friendsgiving on your Pinterest board has a twelve-foot farm table and a woman who owns a gravy boat. You have a futon and a budget that runs out around the fifteenth.
Between us, that’s plenty.
How to host a Sistersgiving the easy way: first, find out whether it’s a friends’ night or a chapter event. Plan around the kitchen you have. Make it a potluck with a sign-up, and buy the main hot. Say the safety part once. Keep the gratitude round optional, and name a cleanup crew before anyone arrives. (If the word is new to you, a Sistersgiving is a sorority Friendsgiving.)
The food is the easy half, which I know sounds like a lie right now. The hard half is the table. Specifically, a new member is coming because her Big invited her. She’ll read every ingredient card on the table twice if she has no one to talk to. Make a plan for her before you buy a single chicken. Assign the Welcome, in my free Games, Icebreakers and Little Rituals Kit, is that plan, and it takes about ten minutes.
Friends’ night or chapter event? Find out first
A small one at someone’s apartment is usually low-key. Paper plates, a chicken, a playlist people fight over, lights out whenever. Keep it dry anyway. The why is further down.
If you’re inviting most of the chapter, ask your sisterhood chair or advisor which kind of night yours counts as. It isn’t always the host’s call. A chapter event may go through your chapter’s own event-planning steps, and those depend on your chapter and your campus. Ask early what they need from you and by when, and write the answer down.
The other thing that changes: a chapter night is open to every member the same way, new members included. Nobody has to cook, pay, speak, or stay. If a new member shows up for twenty minutes, eats a roll, and leaves, that was a good night for her.
One note on the date. November is crowded. If your chapter has an initiation coming up, stay off that week. And if your campus empties out for break, hold it the week before people leave.
No oven? How to host a Sistersgiving anyway
The four kitchens
Your dorm room, meaning a microwave and a mini fridge. Workable. The rest of this post assumes it’s you.
An apartment with a real stove. The dream. Half the room ends up on the floor, and that’s fine.
A campus room. Some campuses let student groups reserve a lounge or a shared kitchen. Ask early, and ask about their food rules before you plan the menu.
The chapter house kitchen. Tempting, and not yours to volunteer. The house director runs it, so ask her before the sign-up goes out, and if she says no, that’s the answer.
Buy the main (yes, buy it)
The turkey is the trap. It wants an oven you don’t have and a day you don’t have either.
A rotisserie chicken is a turkey with better odds. Get two if the sign-up runs long. Plenty of grocery stores will also take an order a few days ahead for a cooked turkey breast or a whole holiday dinner. Ask whether it comes hot or cold before you pay. A lot of them come cold with oven instructions, which puts you right back at the oven problem.
Pie from the bakery case counts as pie. The cranberry sauce that comes out shaped like the can? No notes.
One pot of something warm beats three ambitious sides. Borrow a slow cooker (someone on your floor owns one). Heat the mac and cheese or mashed potatoes in the microwave until they’re hot all the way through. Then move them into the slow cooker, already turned on, and they’ll stay hot until people eat.
And a Sistersgiving doesn’t have to look like Thanksgiving at all. If turkey means nothing to half your table, do tacos, or the dish someone at the table grew up on. Nobody is grading the menu.
Menus and traditions live in my Sistersgiving ideas post.
Send the sign-up, then put your phone down
Potluck. That part isn’t up for debate. With no budget, a Sistersgiving potluck is the only way this dinner happens at all.
The message, ready to paste. Change the brackets and send it. Then walk away.
Sistersgiving is [day] at [place], [time]. I’m doing the main. It’s rotisserie chicken and I’ve made peace with it. Everyone else brings one thing, so sign up below before we end up with nine pies and no forks.
Sides · desserts · drinks (no alcohol, it’s a dry night) · plates, cups, napkins, forks · serving spoons · ice · a cooler or two
If you can’t bring anything, come anyway. I mean it.
Allergies, or anything you can’t eat? Text me directly. There will be cards and a pen by the door. Write what’s in your dish before it goes on the table so people can eat without interviewing you.
Cleanup crew, three volunteers, you leave with the best leftovers. Add your name if you’re in.
Bring a container if you want to take food home.
That message splits the cost without anyone saying the word money, and it gets the allergy question answered in private. It also fills the cleanup crew while people are still excited to come, which is the only time anyone volunteers for cleanup.
One serious minute, then back to the fun
During law school I worked on staff at a national sorority headquarters, and part of that job was the risk-management side of chapter life. So this is where I get boring. Read it anyway.
To be clear, four things.
Keep it dry. That goes for the small apartment version too. No alcohol at this, including in the food, and including an “after” at someone’s apartment. A lot of the women at your table are under twenty-one. If it’s a chapter event, your chapter’s own rules apply, and your advisor knows them.
Label everything. Every dish gets a card with what’s in it, written by the person who brought it. The woman with the allergy serves herself first, before the spoons start crossing. If you learned about an allergy by text, it stays between the two of you unless she says otherwise.
Watch the clock. Anything that would normally live in the fridge gets thrown away once it’s sat out more than two hours. Leftovers you’re keeping go into the fridge inside that same two hours. Chicken or turkey you cook, and anything you reheat, have to hit 165°F in the middle, measured with a food thermometer. That’s also why the sides get heated before they go into the slow cooker. USDA doesn’t recommend reheating in one. All of this comes from two USDA pages, Leftovers and Food Safety and Slow Cookers and Food Safety.
Photos are the last one. Anyone who might end up on the chapter’s account or in a story gets asked first. Make “no” easy to say. A quiet word to you before dinner should be enough. Take extra care with new members’ photos, since some of them may be under eighteen.
What to never do at a Sistersgiving
- Never serve alcohol at it. Not in a cup, and not baked into anything.
- Never set out a dish without its ingredient card when someone at the table has an allergy.
- Never build the plan around the house kitchen until the house director has said yes to the date.
Okay. Boring part over.
The gratitude round, if you want one
Optional. The whole round is optional, and so is every seat in it.
If you do it, do it after people have eaten. Skip going around the table, because going around the table is a countdown and everyone can see whose turn is next. Let people jump in when they feel like it. Before it starts, tell everyone that “pass” is a complete sentence. Then you go first and keep it to one line, so everyone after you knows one line is enough.
If you want words for it, my 15 reasons to be thankful for your sorority sisters post is where I put them.
Cleanup crew, and the countdown
By ten at night the only volunteers left are the ones too polite to leave, and they’ve done enough. So the crew signs up with the food: three volunteers with fresh legs, none of whom cooked. Don’t make it the new members’ job by default. The crew takes the best leftovers home first. That’s the pay.
A countdown, with slack built in.
As soon as you’ve said yes: find out which kind of night it is and lock the place, along with any yes you need for it. Then send the sign-up.
The week of: order the main, confirm the allergy notes, borrow the slow cooker and the big cooler, print anything you want from the kit.
The day of: ice, cards and a pen by the door, remind the cleanup crew they’re the cleanup crew, and eat sitting down.
The food is handled. What happens at the table?
The free Games, Icebreakers and Little Rituals Kit has sixteen games in three groups: big-room icebreakers, small-group mixers, and low-key ones for the weeks when everyone is tired. It also has Assign the Welcome, the ten-minute plan for the new member who doesn’t know anyone yet. You get a safety check that rules out any game that embarrasses someone, plus six printable pages and a guide to printing and cutting them.
Sistersgiving questions, answered short
Do I have to make a turkey?
No. A rotisserie chicken covers the main. If someone’s heart is set on turkey, get sliced turkey breast from the deli counter and serve it cold. You won’t need an oven for that.
How do we handle food allergies at a potluck?
Ask once, privately, when the sign-up goes out. Then make ingredient cards the rule for every dish, so they never point at one person. And whoever has the allergy fills her plate before the line starts.
Who pays for a Sistersgiving?
The host buys the main and everyone else brings one thing. Showing up empty-handed is fine. If it’s an official chapter event, ask your sisterhood chair or treasurer whether a sisterhood or programming budget line can cover the main, before you spend your own money.
Grab the free games kit before the week of, so the printing is done before you’re standing in the rotisserie line.
Which kitchen are you working with this year? If it’s the microwave one, I want to hear how it goes.
Hope