• Always wash your hands before and after handling food. Keep your kitchen, dishes and utensils clean also. Always serve food on clean plates, not those previously holding raw meat and poultry.

• Arrange and serve food on several small platters rather than on one large platter. Keep the rest of the food hot in the oven or cold in the refrigerator until serving time. This way foods will be held at safe temperatures for a longer time. Always replace empty platters rather than adding fresh food to a dish that already had food on it. Remember - many people's hands may have taken food from the dish, which was also sitting at room temperature for awhile.

• Food should not sit at room temperature for more than two hours. Keep track of how long the foods have been sitting on the buffet table and discard anything after two hours. If the buffet is held outside and the outside temperature is above 85 degrees F., then the holding time is refuced to one hour.

• Lefovers from the buffet - discard any foods that sat for two hours or more on the buffet table. Other leftovers can be refirgerated or frozen in containers.

What to do if your guests have been
delayed at least one hour

Just remember the basic food safety rules:

• Keep hot foods hot, and cold food cold.

• If you have hot food in the oven, put a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the meat or center of your casserole. Adjust the oven temperature so that the food stays at an internal temperature of 140 degrees F., or above. An oven temperture of 200 to 250 degrees F. should be sufficient to hold the food. Cover the dishes or wrap with aluminum foil to prevent dryness.