Friday, November 29, 2013

Day 28 No Spend November

Yesterday was Thanksgiving so we stayed home and spent $0.  Hubby and I cooked up a storm and invited the cousins over for dinner where we all proceeded to eat until we couldn't eat any more (and then a while later we ate some more!).  We ended up with tons of leftovers, most of which we sent home with the cousins, with enough for us to eat a few more meals as well.

We had no desire at all to shop on Black Friday (which is now pretty much Black Thanksgiving since many stores opened on Thursday).  So we enjoyed the "100% off Black Friday sale" and didn't end up like these people.

While I was waiting for the turkey to roast and the potatoes to boil, I decided to calculate what our Thanksgiving meal cost.  Here's the breakdown:

  • Turkey (13 lbs)  $5 (bought on sale after last year's holidays)
  • Stuffing (2 boxes)  $2 
  • Cranberry sauce  $1
  • Dinner rolls  $1
  • Gravy (4 packets)  $2
  • Corn (2 cans)  $2
  • Yams (2 cans)  $2
  • Mashed potatoes $1
  • Cucumber and ranch dressing  $1
  • Rice  $1
  • Filipino stew  $3
  • Pork roast  $4
  • Butter  $2 (used on rolls, in potatoes, etc)
  • Apple pie  $2
  • Pumpkin pies (2 pies)  $3
  • Chocolate cake  $1
  • Soda/bottled water  $2
For a grand total of $35 we cooked a huge meals with days worth of leftovers.  The way we saved money on all of this food was by cooking from scratch, buying items on sale, and shopping at the 99 cent store.  We could have halved the cost of the meal by only cooking half of what we did (and we probably still would have had leftovers) but we are used to cooking for a crowd and everyone knows that when they come to our house for dinner they always end up taking food home as well (the cousins even show up with empty food containers we have them trained so well!).  We also could have saved money if I would have made the rolls from scratch, used frozen corn instead of canned, made fresh yams instead of canned, and made my own stuffing (takes a lot of time) and gravy (it never comes out right when I make it from scratch).

Overall we had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I'm off now to eat leftovers for breakfast!

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