A Frugal Thanksgiving

In a somewhat unusual twist of events, it ended up that I am hosting only the five of us for Thanksgiving this year. With both of our families in town, that is definitely not the norm! Regardless, we are excited to have some old-fashioned family fun and figure out how to cook a turkey for ourselves. Someday I know our Thanksgivings will be "just the 5 of us" plus spouses and grandchildren, so I guess we better figure the turkey thing out now!

The groceries above cost me right around $75 AFTER tax. It doesn't look like a lot, but it does include a ham AND a turkey. They turkey was free with a purchase of a ham this week at Hy-Vee, so that was a nice bonus for us. I've never bought EITHER. The gallon of apple cider was a total budget breaker too. Regardless, we'll take the $25 overage from our regular spending money. I don't have anything planned for our spending money this pay period, so it's nice when it is available! A lot of times I have it spent on things that need to be paid for over the next two weeks before I even get it!

In the meantime, our menu plan looks a little like this,

Sunday - biscuits / ham and baked potatoes / fish sticks and pears

Monday - cereal / brown bag lunches / spinach and artichoke macaroni and cheese (stay tuned for recipe)

Tuesday - cereal / brown bag lunches / egg in the hole

Wednesday - cheesy eggs / Campbell's chicken noodle soup and apples / black bean and cheese quesadillas

Thursday - TURKEY DAY (See my separate Thanksgiving menu post. I will be sharing various favorite recipes and a few new ones.)

Friday - I will be Black Friday shopping. We'll try to eat as frugally as possible, but it will probably be a lot of leftovers and possibly some eating on the go.

I definitely spent the bulk of our budget on Thanksgiving food! Sun-Wed might be a little interesting in the eating department, but we'll be fine. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!