Holiday meals are such a wonderful time to spend time with friends and loved ones, and to enjoy the beautiful world of food in thanksgiving. But sometimes holiday meals can be a stressor on our budget.
And if you can fit in a 20 pound pastured turkey into your budget without strain, I might just envy you a teeny-tiny bit.
Thankfully, holiday meals are often a shared project between family members and friends, with everyone pitching in their favorite dish and the load of work and the financial burden not resting on anyone’s shoulders solely.
But what if you are making a simple holiday meal just for your family, or are hosting it and doing much of the food yourself? How do you make it work with your everyday budget? ( Related: Get 25 nourishing Thanksgiving recipes here)
Here are some thoughts.
Share the burden
Like I said above, the more you can share the burden with others, the better! Ask someone else to provide a green salad or wine/beverage, or to bring their favorite holiday dish.
Consider the leftovers
Make good use of the leftovers. Sure, it can be really expensive to buy that turkey, but you can generally make a huge pot of turkey stock out of the carcass, leading to many frugal and nourishing meals ahead. When you factor in how many meals you get out of mostly leftovers, the financial cost evens out a lot.
Save before the meal.
Eating really simple meals using basics is a great way to save some extra for a special meal. Perhaps forgo that fresh seafood, or the fancy coffees bought out, or switch out a few typical meat-based meals of the week (if your body does okay with bean based meals, that is). If you use more expensive cuts of meat on a weekly basic, just use inexpensive chicken drumsticks and ground beef for the week or two before the holiday.
Consider the cost
The average cost last year for a ten serving Thanksgiving meal was $50 dollars. A year or two ago a local high-end market showed a shopping list for the basics for Thanksgiving using their nicer (and often organic) ingredients, and it priced about the same for a feast for six (Note: our area isn’t the cheapest place to buy food and food costs vary by area in the US). I looked through their shopping list suggested and noticed a couple of things that are helpful when considering your budget.
Many items not expensive: First, I noticed that many “holiday food” items are pretty low priced normally. For example potatoes and sweet potatoes are not expensive (I buy mine in bulk bags for a better deal for organic).
It is just one meal. If you need to buy cheaper butter for pie crusts, mashed potatoes and your caramelized sweet potato dish, your health will survive it (though, yes, it’s always better tasting with the best butter!). If your budget doesn’t allow, not being a purist for a day is okay. You can still feed your family and friends a lovely meal using whole foods. For me, I buy a local, though not organic butter as my “compromise” butter. It’s fairly yellow as the cows are pastured part of the time, but they are given non-organic feed too. It’s a good compromise for me when I can’t buy the best of the best for a large crowd.
Buy a turkey breast: You could consider just buying a turkey breast or two instead of a whole turkey. This works well when making a meal for a smaller family or gathering. If you don’t want to miss out on the stock, use the bones from the turkey breast with a couple pounds of turkey pieces (wings, legs, necks, etc) bought separately. If you are concerned that you won’t be able to make good use of the leftover, this is a great option. (Epicurious.com has a lot of great methods for cooking turkey breast).
Keep the meal simple but delicious
Pick your favorite dishes. Often we can get really carried away on Thanksgiving trying to get every single favorite dish in. But that is sometimes not really feasible for the workload required and for your budgeting. For example, our family favorite pie is apple, so I just make sure there I make that one. Pumpkin is my personal favorite, but I can make that some other day to enjoy.
Your meal could look something like this:
- Roasted Turkey Breast with Gravy,
- Mashed potatoes
- Candied Yams
- Green Beans
- Cranberry Salad
- Apple Pie with Whipped Cream.
That’s quite the feast even without rolls, stuffing, three kinds of pies, and a green salad!
Sometimes it serves everyone, not just the cook, to keep the menu simple, so that you can concentrate on making everything well.
What else have I missed? Share your thoughts below!
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Yeah, we have to go with the “it’s just one day”, too. We have to make a lot of compromises to make Thanksgiving happen, the biggest one being the turkey. Even non-pastured is a challenge, but thankfully our grocery store has a short sale two or three weeks before T-day for 50% off frozen turkeys! Makes the meal truly doable for us. Maybe it’s a normal store mentality across the country…
Wow! That’s an amazing deal!
For our small family, who is not incredibly keen on turkey, and does not want the added stress of being responsible with all of leftovers (we hate to waste), we have begun doing a roasted chicken. We all prefer chicken over turkey, and we have found we have more time in our day to enjoy being together rather than being in the kitchen. This works for us. ~Sharon
My grandpa didn’t like turkey either and for every Thanksgiving that I can remember, we had roast chicken. That’s influenced my feelings now as an adult and I’d much rather have roasted chicken than turkey. I haven’t made too many holiday meals yet but I didn’t even think about the cost savings of chicken too, that’s a great point!
Years ago my brother and I asked my mom to skip the turkey we all dislike and just make our favorite foods. Our menu is homemade beef and noodles, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes for my kids and husband (my mom’s fried potatoes are mind blowing), a salad, scalloped corn, homemade cherry pie and a gluten free, dairy free dessert for all the kids. It is simple, it is cheap and it is warm and cozy to feast on the foods of our childhood. Yummy!
That sounds like a feast worth being thankful for. Comfort food from your childhood.
🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Sharon,
I truthfully didn’t even consider that, as we are real turkey fans. But you know what? Turkey’s are hard to cook right, and roasting a chicken could make Thanksgiving so much more peaceful (and delicious and frugal), so that’s a wonderful idea! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
We are getting our first local turkey this year from a friends farm, and it is truly free range. I am so excited, but it is a big chunk of change for us, even if it is priced well (2.50/lb). I only cook for our family plus my Mom and brother (and usually one or two last minute guests that had no where to go), so I am excited for the leftovers! I also told everyone to expect a simpler dinner this year so that I could my money towards the beautiful bird!
You’re right, a holiday meal doesn’t need to be expensive at all, your example menu proves it! I think what makes it a holiday meal though, is the time that it takes to put together, hence the memories and deliciousness. Slow(er) food seems to taste better…