Thanksgiving on a Budget

As promised yesterday, I am going to give you a peak at our Thanksgiving meal budget. This year, I decided to dial back our Thanksgiving budget, as I tend to go a little overboard during the Holidays. Trust me, it is not necessary to serve a plethora of side dishes along with your Thanksgiving meal. It’s actually kind of fun to rotate sides every year to keep things interesting. Plus, no one actually needs squash AND sweet potatoes AND mashed potatoes AND stuffing – that’s a heck of a lot of starchy carbs in one meal!

This year’s meal is going to be a bit more balanced than year’s past. Thank goodness!

That being said, I set our meal budget at $150, which based on 12 servings is $12.50 per person. Not bad for an all you can eat organic feast!

After finishing up my shopping trips at Super Target, Whole Foods and Valley Natural Foods I compiled our purchases into a spreadsheet to see how I did.

Updated to add: I picked up the turkey today and it was significantly cheaper than I remembered, so I actually ended up being under budget by a lot! I inserted a new budget image below:

Please note that I did not have to purchase all of the ingredients for the recipes that I am making on Thanksgiving, as some items, like Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil and Organic Dried Cranberries are pantry staples that I always have on hand. In addition, the Super Target prices listed are the regular store prices, prior to using our employee discount and our Target Red Card (5%) discount. Also, these are the prices per unit at the store, I will definitely have leftovers of several of the bagged ingredients (i.e. carrots, onion, apples, herbs, spices, etc.) to use in Crock Pot Turkey Stock and other meals/snacks next week.

As you can see, I came in significantly under budget, including an unplanned splurge purchase of two organic pomegranates!

And now it’s time for me to hit the hay! Luke was up from 3 AM to 5:15 AM last night with an upset tummy that resulted in him vomiting all over me and our bed, so I am exhausted!

Good night!

What is your favorite Thanksgiving side dish? I LOVE sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows. Funny enough, that is one of the side dishes that I am not serving on Thursday. However, I did roast up a few sweet potatoes to go along with dinner tonight. Tomorrow for lunch I should throw a couple stale marshmallows on top of the leftovers…