Preparing for Holiday Dinner

With Thanksgiving around the corner, I knew this was one of the first topics I wanted to write about. It is a time for holiday recipe searches and a bit of remembering the good old days. My best days have always been with my family, I grew up in a big Latino family meaning we had big Latino size meals. Now was an adult, I can’t even imagine both the cost and time it would take my mom and my tías to prepare everything. We would have everything from the traditional turkey to the mandatory early tamales and champurrado. These are amazing memories I will never cherish but not so sure I will recreate at the same level. Along with the great memories of our big Thanksgiving meals I also remember how much food we had left over. Worse yet, how much food was thrown away a week later because it went bad or some other reason. 

For my mom and my tías having these large family Thanksgiving dinners were important because it meant we were all together and simply having fun. I love family time but now as I have gotten older, I don’t think we need to big meals for one night. 

It has been reported that Thanksgiving meal this year will be a lot more expensive, about 13.5% more expensive than last year¹. So if you theoretically spent $100 last year you will now spent $113.50, but who spends $100 on Thanksgiving meal? More realistically, if you spend $200 you will now spend $227 and if you spent $300 you will now spend $340.50. But this is no surprise to any of us and we have all been seeing the increasing prices of groceries over the last couple of months. In fact, that same IRI report says that 38% of shoppers already expect to pay more for that same amount of food they bought last year. 

I am not sure if the other 62% of shoppers haven’t thought about how their Thanksgiving meal will be more expensive this year but I didn’t want the sticker shock to sneak up on any of you, so I decided to write this specific post! Though I cannot tell you what to do, I have two easy options to hopefully have a more conscious meal planning. 

Option 1: I would recommend that you create a list of what you normally need and then head to your normal grocery store to get an estimate of how much that would roughly come out to be (Bonus tip: If something is on sale and you know you’re going to use that item I would buy it there and then because stores often have weekly sales, and that same item may be more expensive next time). If it is more than you expected or can afford, then maybe you don’t need that extra side dish like the side of tamales –they will have their time to shine at Christmas. I would repeat this down your list until you reach a number you feel comfortable with the expected total. Once you finalized your list and essentially finalized your budget make sure to stick to it! You already did all the hard work up to actually buying only what you said you would. Take that list to the grocery store and only buy what is on that list. Note: Option 1 does require more time and a bit more planning so I would recommend starting as soon as you’re done reading this post.

Option 2: If you have less time, I recommend setting a budget for yourself and track everything that you are buying for your Thanksgiving meal. With this approach you count every item as it’s purchased or put in your cart if you’re only shopping at one place (rough estimating as you go along is completely okay). Personally, I found that even making a note in my phone of how much I have spent already helps me stay on track to not go over that magic number I want to stay under. Below I quickly provide examples on both approaches, hope these options help!

Sources:

“Thanksgiving Meals Will Cost 13.5% More This Year, According to IRI's Latest Trends Report.” Thanksgiving Meals Will Cost 13.5% More This Year, According to IRI's Latest Trends Report | IRI Press Releases, https://www.iriworldwide.com/en-us/news/press-releases/thanksgiving-meals-will-cost-more.