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This series of articles is designed to help families put a frugal Thanksgiving meal on the table.

Frugal $50 Thanksgiving Meal

This series of articles is designed to help families put a frugal Thanksgiving meal on the table. Make informed decisions about what ingredients to buy and what to make from scratch. Teach yourself techniques to stretch your budget for any holiday meal.

Scary Mommy’s Thanksgiving Project offers help for families in need at Thanksgiving. You don’t have to jump through hoops or qualify to get help. You fill out a form and get a $50 gift card for a grocery store near you. Scary Mommy matches applications received with donations coming in, so this is moms helping moms fight hunger. Most of the donations are individuals and families giving. The project has raised over $100,000 this year. I am so grateful to all those families trying to help someone out. And the 2,000 families that need help to put a Thanksgiving dinner on the table make me thankful for my blessings.

This project got me thinking. I went through a bad time and I remember at one point all I had in the house was potatoes and flour. I was so sick of potatoes. I tried to make “cookies” with just grated potatoes, flour, and water. It was not pretty. How would I spend $50 if my cupboards were bare? If $1 is 2% of your budget, you’d better make those dollars count. If you have $50 to feed your kids for one meal, or can make it last for 5 days (my usual budget), which do you choose? On most days the answer is obvious, but for this special day with a hard times Christmas looming, how do you decide where to splurge? There is some complicated food math and time involved in making informed grocery shopping decisions. Maybe you are a working parent, a single mom, someone who is disabled, or otherwise don’t have time for a lot of research.

Normally I would buy all staple ingredients and cook from scratch, paying the least amount per ounce or unit. The average Thanksgiving meal costs $50, but that is for people who already have flour and butter and such in the house. However, if you don’t have any food in the pantry this can get very expensive very fast. If you buy all processed food you won’t have any food left after the big day. Where is the best compromise? How many ingredients can we buy and how can we best stretch that food? I will break down costs for you and compare homemade to purchased items. This way you can make the best decisions for your Thanksgiving shopping trip.

As always, I was a teensy bit thorough writing this post. Like 21 pages in my word processing program thorough. I might be a little too detail-oriented. The good news is, that means you get a whole series of articles. You’re welcome.

Shared with Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Linky Party, Merry Monday, Mostly Homemade Mondays, Motivation Monday, Real Food Recipe Roundup, Sincerely Paula’s No Rules Weekend Blog Party, Think and Make Thursday, Thrifty Thursday, Turn It Up Tuesday, Wake Up Wesdnesday and Oh My Heartsie Girl’s Wordless Wesdnesday

We hope you enjoyed our Thrifty Thanksgiving for Tough Times – Frugal $50 Thanksgiving Meal post

Vintage postcard image from Graphics Fairy

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