How to Make a Thanksgiving on a Shoestring

If you are down on your funds and wondering how you will create an incredible Thanksgiving for your family, stop worrying. Thanksgiving can be enchanting with very little money. Creativity is the key, and you can do most of the work and selective shopping to provide your family with a Thanksgiving as memorable as any other.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. So you can’t afford a Turkey. Why not bake Cornish hens, or roast a chicken and stuff it? You have a close effect and still have all the trappings of Thanksgiving this way. When we were living in Mexico, I served a traditional American Thanksgiving meal with chicken and people loved it. Some even admitted they didn’t care for turkey and enjoyed the switch. I made all the other items expected with this, so no one left feeling as if they didn’t have a great meal.

2. Make your own cranberries. These taste better anyway. There are recipes all over the internet for homemade cranberry sauce and you may never choose to go back to the canned version once you taste them.

3. Have a Thanksgiving football party. If you have a small turkey and a huge crowd, this sometimes extends the turkey. Slice the pre-baked turkey before they arrive. Cut in two inch cubes and make hours devours out of them with toothpicks. Or place them out sliced on a tray. Place the dressing on the side scooped into balls with an ice cream scoop, so that it enables each person a serving. Bake your pumpkin pie in a square pan and cut into squares for easy hand food. Make the focus on the game, and the food as a secondary interest and you’ll have fun. This extends the meal and still offers the tastes of Thanksgiving for each person, rather than having one person pile their plate with food they may end up tossing in the trash if they don’t finish.

4. A nice decorative accessory, may be pine cones placed on the table, dipped in cinnamon oils. They add the scent of the holidays and can be placed in assorted vases with a candle you purchase at thrift stores on top. Create table decorations with them by sprinkling gold glitter over them. If you have access to pine branches, you can arrange these too and add a holiday look to your home.

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   Fill in where you don’t have enough turkey with other inexpensive food items. Create a veggie tray by slicing carrots into sticks, adding celery sticks, cut cheese into cubes, add olives, chili peppers, scallions, and even broccoli and cauliflower. If you can purchase a pack of lunch meat inexpensively, cut into squares and arrange this too.

Tips & Warnings

• Enjoy creating the meals with your family. Assign each member a dish and show them how to prepare it. Let them become the specialist of this dish for each year’s Thanksgiving.
• Pull Thanksgiving stories off the internet and let each member of the family learn that story and share it with the family at dinner.
• If you are too broke to purchase the items above, then don’t be too proud to ask for help from a shelter. Most shelters offer holiday meals. You may even offer your family as volunteers to serve others and teach them other ways to be thankful. This way, you enjoy the meal and help.
• Food pantries often give out vouchers for turkeys. Don’t be shy. This is a holiday for your family, so do the best you can. Most of all, Happy Thanksgiving!

Resources

• Thanksgiving Recipe

[airesflora]

on 11/13/2007 Great suggestion!

[dawnzlight]

on 11/13/2007 Try a Potluck: Why not ask your guests to prepare a side dish or bring some beverages or a dessert?