That’s not what the cite says. It says that it costs about $5/person to buy a pre-selected list of “Thanksgiving Staples”. That doesn’t say anything about what real people really spend.
I think the difference is as much in the reporting and the mental calculations as it is in different patterns of consumption. Thanksgiving is a great example of the sort of thing where nothing is THAT expensive, but the sum total of little things can be remarkable. Take stuffing. You estimate it at $5. But I think it’s at least $3 for bread crumbs, $1/butter, $1 celery, $1 onion, $2+ for pecans, $1 spices/herbs . . .it’s going to be closer to $10 before you’re done. Ever been at the grocery store the Saturday before Thanksgiving? Almost everyone is spending over $100. And it won’t all be used for Thanksgiving dinner, but the upsurge in spending at the grocery store that week is probably the best way to really see what Thanksgiving costs.
People who spend more like $10-$15/head have given you a ton of detail about where we spend the money and you haven’t responded to any of that.
I looked closer at the butcher’s web site and that may be the price per pound for a cooked breast since I noticed the also had smoked ones for $8.99. I’ve gotten them from him for years (uncooked) and really don’t know what the price per pound is but it is more likely $3-4 per pound. I’m still willing to pay the premium for the taste difference.
My wife and I both work full time and will be doing so until 5pm on Wednesday so we don’t have time to make pies etc. so we will buy them from a shop that makes them better than we could anyway. Again, we’ll pay about $10 or so per pie versus your estimate of $4. It’s worth it to me.
I’m pretty sure the people who are spending $50 and up per person are spending a good portion of it on liquor and wine. I don’t know the prices of everything off the top of my head but I usually spend about $250-300 expecting 20 people to be present. However, my husband and I both come from cultures where not having enough food for seconds and/or expected guests is a fate worse than death, so there’s enough food to feed at least 5 more people than I expect.
But here’s the menu -
Crudite with dip
Some sort of cheese and sausage plate
Supermarket turkey (Possibly a ham also)
Potatoes ( maybe mashed, maybe roasted)
Stuffing
sweet potatoes with marshmallows
Salad and dressings
green bean casserole
corn
glazed carrots
bread or rolls
Beer , wine and soda to drink - I buy some and my siblings bring some. If I bought it all, the bill would be higher
Dessert, served with coffee - at least 3 kinds of cookies and either a NY cheesecake or an Italian cheesecake. Sometimes also cream puffs or cannoli.
But some of the expensive choices may not be as expensive as they seem. Sure, $8 /lb for turkey breast seems expensive compared to .70/lb for a supermarket turkey. But the person who buys that says they don’t like dark meat - how much does a pound of white meat cost after you’ve discarded the dark meat from the supermarket turkey? And the bones if the $8lb turkey breast is boneless.
I just checked and I’ll be paying $4/pound for my turkey so that’s going to be $70 for the turkey and then I’ll spend another $30 on sausage for the stuffing. After that we’ll do a pecan and a pumpkin pie and sometimes my wife wants a pecan/cheesecake pie to use the numbers from the thread that’s $15. We’ll have mashed potatoes, stuffing, cheesy corn, roasted asparagus, rolls, gravy and some times we’ll add in candied yams for side dishes so that’s at least $30 though I’d guess closer to $40. For appetizers we’ll typically go with chips and three or four dips and some times and a sausage and cheese platter so that’s $20-30. I’ll get three six packs of beer and we’ll raid our wine cellar for a bottle or two for $100 worth of booze. In the end it’ll be $160-180 for food with a total cost closer to three hundred. I guess I underestimated before.
Of course that will feed 4 of us for 4 meals and two of us for 4 more.
Sadly, for the first time in two decades, $0.
It started with a military mechanic neighbor from TX who taught me how to smoke. The first year it was a smoked, second turkey as an experiment. It was liked so much it quickly became the main & only turkey, which had the added benefit of freeing up the over for everything else.
Then it became a second turkey where I started having Thanksgiving dinner; one for them, & one for me (leftovers); however, a move made that impossible to take there anymore, too long in the car.
In recent years, it’s been made on Friday morning, after brining in the fridge for a couple of days for dinner with my immediate family. Lunch is fresh-out-of-the-smoker salmon. Appetizer includes wonderful smoked cheese, of course the smoked turkey for dinner, & some smoked almonds alongside the pumpkin pie for dessert. However, everything is really cooked for the leftovers because on Sat, all the turkey is cut up, along with the smoked turkey andouille & turkey chorizo sausage & 5-6 hrs later is the most wonderful smoked turkey jambalaya. Basically the $130ish Thanksgiving dinner for few people is a guise to make & eat my awesome jambalaya.
Well, I’m traveling to St. Louis for Thanksgiving dinner, so it’s not the “dinner” I’ll be spending money on, it will be the travel and hotel. So, I figure a couple of hundred or so.
So I took this question home to my wife and she said our church prepares Thanksgiving ‘meal kits’ for families who want to prepare their own meal, but find the cost out of reach. The average cost is 80-100 according to my wife who shops for the one that our family gives away, but she does also usually add a 20 dollar gift card to a grocery store. They are a complete and total Thanksgiving meal for a family of 5 (No alcohol though) I don’t really know what’s in it since she buys it, but it fills a laundry basket. I know that it’s heavy and has a turkey. According to the church website, it has the following things:
Turkey or gift card to purchase one at grocery store
Potatoes (or large box of instant potatoes)
Onions
Celery
Sweet Potatoes
Stuffing/Dressing (or Mix)
Vegetables (fresh or canned)
Cranberry Sauce
Jello ®
Gravy Mix or ingredients for making gravy
Noodles
Dinner Rolls
Desert Items (pumpkin pie mix and pie crust, cake mix, frosting, baking supplies)
Butter/Margarine
Milk
Dishwashing Liquid + sponge
Turkey pan (disposable)
Coffee is a treat that many families really appreciate
Paper towels
Dinner napkins, festive paper plates, disposable table clothe
but I know that she adds more stuff to it, but I don’t know what exactly.
Well we do a combo of traditional and quirky. 4 people this year - a friend from Boston and mrAru and I are heading to the house in western NY where we have another friend installed as caretaker.
Turkey [goes without saying] plus a small duck as our roomie isn’t really into turkey but loves duck
Dressing - outside the birds so they cook better - one bread based, one cornbread based. I also have a specially ordered vacupack of traditional chestnuts for in the dressings.
Cranberry - both traditional relish and jelly, both homemade instead of store bought. Some berries will also find their way into the dressings.
Potatoes - most likely mashed though they might be escalloped or twice baked.
Sweet Potatoes - we like them mashed, never candied they are sweet enough as is.
Green Beans - probably stirfried with garlic, though we do occasionally make the casserole with homemade bechamel sauce and frittered shoestring onions instead of cream of creature soup and canned fried onion bits.
Bread - easy enough to bake, I grew up baking bread 2-3 days a week with my mom and can [and probably have] bake bread in my sleep =)
Desserts - depends what Ginnie brings along, she makes a wicked good brown sugar pound cake, traditional would be apple and pumpkin pies, maybe bread pudding.
Coffee, tea, wine, sangria, whatever shows up at the house.
So given we tend to cook from scratch, maybe a couple hundred $US overall. We prefer to get the best quality ingredients we can and go from there. The foods will be cooked and eaten over the 4 days of the holiday weekend, and we always tend to divvy up the leftovers, mrAru and I get half, and Phlip and Ginnie each get about a quarter, with horse trading of stuff to get favorite leftovers =) There will be at least 3 or 4 good full meals of leftovers, though this year I may be armwrasslin Ginie for the turkey stock we make from the parted out duck and turkey carcass. The stock tends to be somewhere around a gallon to a gallon and a half. Thank God for large freezers =)
[mrAru and I are thinking of getting back into canning, and stock cans beautifully water bath style. I am tired of the cold sensitivity oxoliplatin has caused and it may not go away for 6 months to several years [yay chemo neuropathy] and I hate having to put gloves on to rummage around in the freezer so I am thinking of canning my own favorite soups and stews. Going to bring back Mom’s water bath canner and the cases of canning jars from the basement, luckily Ball is eternal and I can always get new seals =) ]
Several times in the past I’ve volunteered to help a local organization that provides free Thanksgiving meals to ‘anyone’. Typically, this means a large number of those in attendance are either homeless or at risk. There’s also a number of other folks, frequently elderly, that aren’t necessarily low income but simply enjoy having some company on Thanksgiving. Because enough food is purchased to feed several hundred people, there’s an economy of scale going on there that allows meals to be provided for about $3/person (plus some food items are frequently donated as well). When it comes to home T-day feasts I estimate we end up paying more on the order of $9-12/person. Alcohol purchases (which are not a cost associated with community dinners) also tend to account for much of the higher costs.
I understand the urge to upscale the menu and do free-range fresh turkey and cranberry sauce made from organic berries and so on. I’m sure it’s very good.
But my family fiercely resists any change from “the way we always do it”. It’s like fresh-squeezed orange juice vs. canned - it might be better but it’s not what they expect.
We always - ALWAYS - have the same things.
a 20-24 lb. turkey, which I butterfly and take out all the bones except the legs and wings
Roast it on the sausage and onion and giblet stuffing that I always - ALWAYS - make
Gravy made with drippings and the stock from the turkey bones
Canned cranberry sauce. Not cranberry compote, not fresh cranberry sauce with orange peel - the canned stuff.
Pierogie - my mother in law used to make these, now I buy them from the store.
Hard rolls
Green bean casserole, because.
Pumpkin pie. My wife makes this the same way as always, with bourbon and canned pumpkin and spices. My mother-in-law used to bring an apple pie, which we smiled and offered for seconds. (My mother-in-law was a dear woman, but possibly the worst cook in the upper Midwest, and a leading contender for national honors.)
Wine, beer, Canadian whiskey for my brother-in-law.
I don’t think it would be fair to count the cost only for the one meal - we have leftovers for several meals afterwards.
We are going skiing this year and we have a reservation for 10 at a nice restaurant near the ski resort, that will do the full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings and dessert. No cooking, no fuss over decorating, get to ski all day on Thanksgiving day…so limited conversations with difficult relatives. Looking forward to it.
I don’t know that we’ve decided exactly what we’re cooking this year- my wife likes to have the “traditional” meal of turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, etc… for one of Thanskgiving and Christmas, and this year, we’re probably going to her parents’ for Xmas, so we may make something different.
We cook a lot at home already, so a lot of stuff is generally on hand- I’d guess the total outlay will be under $50, with the vast majority of that being the meat/fish we end up having. Otherwise there are 3 categories of things we’ll need - fresh produce (stuff we don’t normally have on hand), recipe gaps (stuff we may be temporarily out of), and Thanksgiving dish specific items (like the fried onions and cream of mushroom soup for the green bean casserole ). The rest we likely have on hand (flour, sugar, salt, yeast, butter, spices, herbs, garlic, onions, etc…)
So for example, on Senoy’s list, we’d only need the turkey, sweet potatoes and fresh vegetables. The other stuff we typically have on hand anyway, or make from scratch ourselves (like gravy- all you need is drippings, flour, water/stock and salt/pepper). I think I’d probably buy a $1 bag of cranberries too; Alton Brown’s cranberry sauce recipe is trivially easy to make, and drastically better than the canned stuff, and every bit as gelatinous and solid.
Reading through this, i realize that i grew up with a very different type of thanksgiving. For one thing, no alcohol* was involved. The beans, squash, corn and tomatoes were all ok hand and canned from my grandmother’s garden. If you suggested processing s fresh turkey, my grandmother would have thought you were crazy. Why go to that trouble when Piggly Wiggly had them right there? Besides, You usually get a free ham or turkey from the gin or the delinter’s**. Mainly, things needed to be fairly fast and easy because if it was a good year, they were still in the field stripping**. It wasn’t eat and relax and enjoy. It was eat, pack up meals for the farm workers, and back to work.
Not really like that anymore, but that’s what’s shaped my idea of thanksgiving.
*well, no open alcohol
**cotton farming
This year i am doing nothing and quite happy about it. I don’t have to drive anywhere and eat those sides which are generally far too rich for my taste.
Here is my shopping list for Thanksgiving. It does *not *include the turkey or the wine. I also add a fresh green vegetable depending on what looks good that week, usually green beans. I get a fresh turkey at the supermarket (or sometimes Whole Foods) and it’s usually a couple of bucks per pound and I usually get one around 16 pounds. That puts me up around $200-250 for 8 people, although I’ve never paused to add it all up.
lBaking products
¨1/8 jar (16 oz) Honey, strained or extracted (Sweet Potato Salad)
¨1 3/4 cups Sugar (Cranberry Mold)
lBread
¨3 7/8 loaves (16 oz) Whole-wheat bread (Turkey Stuffing)
lCondiments
¨1/16 jar (8 oz) Dijon mustard (Sweet Potato Salad)
¨1/8 bottle (5 fl oz) Hot sauce (Corn Relish)
lCooking oils and shortening
¨1/4 bottle (32 oz) Canola oil (Corn Relish, Sweet Potato Salad)
lDairy
¨1/8 gallon 2% milk (Turkey Stuffing)
¨5/16 pint Sour cream (Smashed Yukon Gold Potatoes)
¨1/8 lb Unsalted butter (Turkey Stuffing)
lDried fruit
¨1 cup Dried cranberries (Sweet Potato Salad)
lFrozen vegetables
¨3 bags (16 oz) Frozen yellow corn (Corn Relish)
lNuts and seeds
¨2 x 1 cup, chopped Pecans (Turkey Stuffing, Sweet Potato Salad)
¨1 x 1 cup, chopped Walnuts (Cranberry Mold)
lPackaged desserts
¨3 1/2 x 1 package (3 oz) Desserts, gelatins, dry mix (Cranberry Mold)
lProduce
¨1/2 bunch Celery (Turkey Stuffing)
¨1 3/4 x 1 quart Cranberries (Cranberry Mold)
¨3/16 oz Fresh sage (Turkey Stuffing)
¨6 cloves Garlic (Turkey Stuffing)
¨13/16 lb Onions (Turkey Stuffing, Sweet Potato Salad)
¨1 3/4 x 1 pint Orange juice (Cranberry Mold)
¨1 1/2 bunches Parsley (Turkey Stuffing, Sweet Potato Salad)
¨2 ea Red bell peppers (Corn Relish)
¨3 ea Scallions (Corn Relish)
¨13 15/16 ea Sweetpotato (Sweet Potato Salad)
lSpices and seasonings
¨1/16 bottle (4 oz) Black pepper (Turkey Stuffing, Sweet Potato Salad)
¨1/16 jar (2.1 oz) Ground nutmeg (Smashed Yukon Gold Potatoes)
¨7/8 jar (0.7 oz) Ground thyme (Turkey Stuffing)
¨5/16 jar (0.95 oz) Ground turmeric (Corn Relish)
¨1/16 box (26 oz) Salt (Turkey Stuffing, Corn Relish, Sweet Potato Salad)
lSyrups and sauces
¨5/16 cup Maple syrup (Corn Relish)
lUnknown grocery aisle
¨2 cups canned low-salt chicken broth (Smashed Yukon Gold Potatoes)
¨2 cups Canned tangerines (Cranberry Mold)
¨1/2 cup Dried zante currants (Sweet Potato Salad)
¨1 x 1 cup (not packed) Golden seedless raisins (Jeff’s Turkey Stuffing)
¨11/16 cup Water (Cranberry Mold)
¨4 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled (Smashed Yukon Gold Potatoes)
lVinegars
¨3/16 bottle (32 oz) Cider vinegar (Corn Relish, Sweet Potato Salad)
This is what we order from our local supermarket, for $60; it says “serves 4-6” but in the past we’ve found that it serves at least 8 people, with leftovers. We spend around $30 more for additional appetizers and side dishes, nuts, wine and fresh apple cider, so it comes to around $11 per person.
Holiday Turkey Dinner
Our turkey dinner features a fully-cooked turkey complete with all the traditional side dishes and dessert. Simply heat and serve. Serves 4-6.
Probably dining with friends, as per usual. I bring a couple bottles of wine, the cranberry sauce*, and flowers for the hostess. Probably cost me about $100. I try to do some really good wine.
*I’m the only one with patience to make the real thing. Not that it’s difficult, but gotta have the real thing!!
Anytime I hear people mention cranberry sauce, I feel negligent if I do not mention NPR’s Susan Stamberg’s Mother-in-law’s cranberry relish recipe. Often the best side on the table, and it’s deceptively easy to make.
You guys are cooking some small turkeys, man. This year’s bird for our Canadian Thanksgiving was an eighteen pounder, and it was the smallest one we’d done in a few years. We’'re usually over twenty pounds. Turkey is cheap and in my experience, larger birds are better cooked. Leftovers? Soups and sandwiches, mmm.
Our Thanksgiving meals are always the same:
Turkey
Mashed potatoes
Stuffing with sausage in it
Carrots
Corn
Dinner rolls
Just a stupid amount of gravy
