---
title: "About Dinner Drape | Dinner Drape"
description: "What Dinner Drape is: free holiday dinner planners that work in your browser, with times from USDA FSIS and the UK Food Standards Agency. No sign-up."
url: https://dinnerdrape.me/about/
---

# About Dinner Drape

Dinner Drape is a small set of free planners for hosting a big holiday dinner: US Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, Christmas dinner or any other feast built around a roast. It works out a running order for the day, when to thaw and roast the turkey, how long a ham, rib roast, pork or lamb takes, how to set each place, and who sits where.

## Where the numbers come from

Thawing and cooking times, safe temperatures and the 2-hour rule come from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The UK turkey times come from the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland. Table settings follow The Emily Post Institute, with a university extension leaflet for buffets. Every page lists its sources and the date each was published or last updated. Where an official chart doesn’t cover a weight, the tools say so instead of guessing.

This is general information, not food-safety, medical or legal advice. Times are approximate, ovens differ, and a food thermometer is the only sure check that a roast is done. For food-safety questions in the US, the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline is on 1-888-674-6854.

## How it works

Everything is worked out in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server: there are no accounts and no sign-up, and the seating planner saves your guest list only in your own browser’s storage. Calendar files and printouts are made on your device. The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts page views without cookies or cross-site tracking and never receives what you type into the tools. There are no ads.

Dinner Drape is an independent site. It isn’t connected with USDA, the FSA or The Emily Post Institute.