Article and Photo Courtesy of Organized Christmas
Visited the supermarket recently? It's beginning to look a lot like
Christmas!
With Thanksgiving Day coming soon in the USA, there's no better time to
organize holiday meals, menus and baking. Welcome to Get Cooking week!
Assignments center on all things food at the Christmas Countdown this
week. We'll clean and prepare food storage areas for the days ahead, plan
holiday menus, stock the freezer and get organized for holiday baking.
Along the way, we'll learn ways to save on holiday meals and develop a
baking specialty to save time in the holiday kitchen.
Tighten your corsets! We're going to Get Cooking ... for the most
delicious holiday season ever!
To Do This Week
This week in the Christmas Countdown, we'll explore frugal strategies
for holiday meals, plan holiday dinners, clean out our freezers and get the
goods on those sneaky Grocery Guys. Ready to Get Cooking?
Get Cooking Week Assignments (additional print outs available)
To Do Today
Write and address one-fifth of Christmas Card List this week.
Make one-fourth of Gifts To Make this week.
Frugal Feast: Save Money on
Holiday Meals
Holiday meals can punch you right in the pocketbook. Save money on
Thanksgiving dinner with these tips for frugal feasts:
"Frugal" holiday meals? Something of a conundrum, isn't it?
The very nature of holiday meals is to express the value of abundance.
Finances, on the other hand, have definite limits--and never so much as
during the holiday season.
Take heart! It's possible to serve bountiful--yet frugal--holiday meals
with a bit of care and forethought.
Consider these tips to plan holiday menus without breaking the bank:
Know your portions
There's nothing like a giant, gleaming turkey at the head of that
Thanksgiving table to warm holiday hearts. The economic downside to that big
bird? Waste! Most of us know the shame of tossing several pounds of dried-out
drumsticks and crumbled white meat a week after the feast is over.
This year, limit waste by buying only as much turkey as your family
truly needs. Do you serve a whole turkey at just one meal? Think one pound per
person. Want a few leftovers for sandwiches? Calculate your needs at one and
one-half pounds per person. Generous leftovers (enough for another meal or two
plus sandwiches) require a figure of two pounds per person. Pass up that 22
pound bird and save money and energy costs.
Plan your leftovers
If you're like me, the holiday cook-fest brings on a real distaste for
cooking for the next several days. It's tempting to think, "Oh, we'll just
eat out of the refrigerator!" until the next day, when the stuffing runs
out and the gravy goes dry. Result: husband with hamburger sack in hand. There
goes the budget!
As you clean up from the holiday meal, package leftovers in meal-sized
portions. Decide when you'll serve them, and store accordingly. While you
shouldn't re-freeze turkey that's already been frozen, a fresh bird's leftovers
can safely be consigned to the freezer.
Ham, while not appropriate for long-term freezer storage, can be frozen
for up to two weeks. The family will give you much less guff if holiday
leftovers don't make an repeat appearance for a week or ten days.
Stock the pantry
During the next few days, grocery stores will be offering the year's
lowest prices on holiday pantry staples--and those discounted cans of cranberry
sauce, black olives and pureed pumpkin will be just as welcome at Christmas and
New Year's.
To save this month--and next!--shop these sales for all holiday meals
to be prepared in your home, right up to the New Year. Be on the lookout for
low prices on pantry basics like canned broth, prepared gravy, and side dish
ingredients like yams and green beans. In the freezer aisle, double up on
frozen pie shells, pies and bread dough. Soda, mixers and sparkling juices at
discounted prices make it easy to create festive holiday beverages ... and
save!
Grocery shop the day after Thanksgiving
Frugal fanatic that I am, I didn't learn this tip until November, 1996.
That year, we returned from a trip to Europe at 2 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning.
The cupboards were bare, bare, bare, so a grocery run was required the morning
of Thanksgiving Friday.
Tired, jet-lagged and grumpy, my mood changed when I saw what was in
store for the Thanksgiving Friday shopper.
What did I find? Bargains on top of bargains! Fresh turkeys that didn't
sell before Thanksgiving? Marked down to an incredible 29 cents a pound. I
bought three for the freezer: fresh, no added ingredients birds that usually
retailed at around 99 cents a pound.
Other Thanksgiving Friday specials included pans of pre-baked rolls,
fresh yams, and a variety of beef and chicken markdowns. Anything that has a
sell-by date and hasn't sold by Thanksgiving may show up, discounted, the day
after the big feast.
Smart shoppers take note! Shop for the Christmas holiday meal the day
after Thanksgiving.
Know when to pay for convenience
Some components of a holiday meal are worth paying for in a convenience
format. Some convenience foods are true money-savers, while others save
sufficient time to justify the higher price.
Unless you live in sweet potato country, canned yams or sweet potatoes
are a good buy compared to fresh yams at 69 cents a pound . Pre-baked brown and
serve rolls are frequently offered as loss leaders for under $1 a package, so
stock the freezer now.
Similarly, pumpkin pie filling mix, when offered on sale, is usually
less expensive than buying canned pumpkin and adding evaporated milk and eggs.
In the middle ground, you'll find prepared pie crusts. Whether they're
flat and pre-rolled in the deli section or pre-shaped and frozen, prepared pie
crusts may be worth the extra money because of the time and effort they save.
Start your stuffing now
Frugal shoppers know that some convenience items never make the list,
no matter how wowser the sale. Primary among these are canned gravy, dry gravy
packets, and packaged stuffing mix.
Why not? Because these items can be assembled free from most family kitchens,
not to mention that it's downright immoral to sell stale bread crumbs for four
times the price of fresh bread!
Start on your stuffing mix now. It's so simple, it's criminal. Finished
a loaf of bread? Toss the heels and/or the last few stale pieces on a cookie
sheet and put it in the oven. Turn the oven on for five minutes. Turn it off.
Leave the bread there to dry out.
Next day, have some bottom left from the loaf from the automatic bread
maker Take out yesterday's bread, toss it in a zipper storage bag, and put
today's bread onto the cookie sheet? Do the oven on/oven off routine one more
time.
If you forget about it, don't worry--the dried-out bread won't grow
stale or mold, and in the oven, it won't get dusty. (Automatic bread machine
users should slice or cube leftovers; that way they'll dry easily and will be
easy to crush when you're ready to make dressing.)
To make dressing, beat that bread-filled zipper bag with a rolling pin
until it looks like the store-bought stuff. Dump it in a big bowl. Add sauteed
onions and celery, and season with sage, parsley, salt, pepper--you know your
family's preferences. Moisten with chicken broth, milk or water, and stuff that
bird.
Simple. And it sure won't cost you any $3.59 per six ounces of bread
crumbs, either. The variety of bread leads to an interesting, flavorful
stuffing.
For those of the cornbread dressing persuasion, follow the same
rules--if, and in my family, that's a big if, you've got any cornbread
leftovers from Chili-and-Cornbread night!
Ready, frugal shoppers? Take control of holiday meals ... and save!
Today's Recipe
Blessing Mixes with Poems
Thanksgiving is coming! It's time to count your blessings ... and share
them, with Thanksgiving Blessings Mix, an easy-to-make snack mix!
A batch of Thanksgiving Blessings Mix packaged in small food storage
bags makes a pretty Thanksgiving table favor, workplace gift or classroom
treat. It's easy to make in multiples with free printable Blessings Mix gift
tags and Blessings Mix bag toppers.
