Thanksgiving is a great time of the year. Families reunite for food, fun, and quality family time. The only problem is when you visit others and bring one or two dishes of food and you go home and your house has no turkey and stuffing for the remainder of the weekend.
I always make a turkey Friday morning. If we're home on Thanksgiving, I'll just sleep in on Friday!
I always buy Thanksgiving feast staples throughout the late summer and early fall months. If I run out of something, I can make another serving with no problems because it's on hand in the pantry.
The typical Thanksgiving meal for us is
turkey
stuffing
mashed potatoes
sweet potatoes
green beans
corn
macaroni and cheese
cranberry sauce
pumpkin pie
Some years we have sauerkraut, soups, lasagna, stuffed shells, stuffed peppers.. really depends on what I have on hand. Here it is, middle of October, and I'm starting to go through my pantry. I'm starting to check the dates and ingredients I have on hand and making a note in my phone on what I need to keep an eye out for.
The past few years, I was able to get a free turkey with my grocery store points. Yes, that helped me save $15.00 plus dollars and I was able to get fancy apple cider and extra dinner rolls for weekend turkey sandwiches.
I know, I have minimum 8 recipes to rock out on Friday morning. Things like the corn, green beans, and cranberry sauce are "last minute wonders" and they'll take hardly no time at all to prepare and cook.
Pinterest is a great way to cure your 'cooking is so boring' boredom issues. I never make the same thing twice. Its physically impossible for me to fight the urge of adding more flavor boosting ingredients. I know a few tried and true recipes for these dishes and I know what my family enjoys by now.
If you start planning on your meal now, mid October, you'll be able to pick up a little of this and a box of that, and by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, you'll have the items you need on hand.
Using canned vegetables is a time saver but not always a money saver. If you plan on using canned or frozen vegetables start checking out grocery flyers and start to compare prices. The dollar store seems like heaven until you realize you could have purchased the same item for 65¢-88¢ at any other store in your area.
I don't have much freezer room, but if I did I would have a bread only freezer. Those day old bread and pastries you see usually by the dairy section in the grocery store are upwards of 70% off sometimes. If you have the space, start freezing these rolls and biscuits. If not, like me, look around closer to Thanksgiving for bread sales.
Pasta dishes are easy to make. You can buy a pound pasta noodles for 88¢ to $1.00 at all times of the year. Closer to the holiday you might find it even cheaper. Two boxes of elbow macaroni is enough to make a 9x13 pan size for my family. All of the additional ingredients I'll need, I'll shop around for, if I don't have them on hand.
Seems like a lot of planning for one meal, but this one meal needs to last us all day Friday and Saturday. Honestly, we're usually down to the turkey soup by Sunday. yummy!
No comments:
Post a Comment