It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving and I’ve Already Bought Christmas Dinner

There’s no turkey shortage this year, but still, reasons.

I hope your Thanksgiving day was warm and cozy and merry however you celebrated, and that might be ‘uh, not at all, Rachael, we live in East Somewhere that doesn’t do the whole Pilgrim-y myth thing, we do what any sane person does in November and that’s stay inside and eat soup‘. This is all good, although I’m going to unequivocally state that turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and whatever sides you prefer is the meal of the year. Which is why we frequently hit the repeat button for Christmas.

This year food prices are absolutely shocking. I mean like the tub of cream cheese that was $3.69 last year at this time is now $7.69. Even though we are doing ok, we have to be thoughtful. I’ve considered making a price book again, just to track the changes.

Last year prices weren’t so bad, but there was shortages of everything. While the supply chain has smoothed out, the increase in prices is reason enough to spread out the costs. So here’s what we did.

1. November is our big food stockpile month anyway, so this year we have most of the goods from that – squashes galore, sweet potatoes and a 25 lb bag of keeping onions my sister brought from the farm by her that we love. So with the exception of potatoes and cheese and crackers, most of the sides are set. We have 5 pie pumpkins alone, so I see a lot of pumpkin recipes in our future. So most of our sides will come from this bounty.
   
2. Stuffing bread and mixes are cheapest around Thanksgiving, and for the most part, they keep. Same with turkey brine mixes if that’s your thing. So those are bought and tucked away in the pantry for a few weeks.
   
3. Our meat share offers turkeys at Thanksgiving, but not at Christmas, so we ordered a lovely bird and popped it in the freezer. Same with salami/cured sausage, so we got that too.
   
4. We ordered 5 lbs of cranberries – I love cranberries – this fall and used some for Thanksgiving #2, but still have plenty for more Cranberry-raspberry sauce, cranberry bread, and so on.
   
5. Flour and sugar for Christmas baking are also the cheapest right around now, so we just buy a lot. We also have a lot of butter from our last (and likely last) Azure Standard order. We make baked goods for gifts, and of course, for ourselves.
   
6. Our Winter CSA runs through December and so we’ll choose our greens and some sides from that. We have a pickup every other week, and the list of what’s available is published the Monday of pickup week. So we’ll eat well, but won’t be able to plan that part out.

So what that means is when I start doing Christmas dinner prep sometime on the 23rd – because much prep can be done in advance – I’ll probably only need a few things. December’s grocery budget is much, much lower than November’s, but we’ll still need to shop for our traditional homemade Chinese feast (the last couple years we have supplemented with ordered food, not sure how we’ll do it this year). We’ll take the kids with us to the Asian market to get our supplies the week before Christmas.

January’s budget is lower still, since that’s the month of our pantry challenge. We’ll buy milk, fruit and veggies and that’s all. It’s pleasant to start cleaning out the freezers and cabinets as we head into a new year. It makes meal planning super important, because we can’t just run out to get something, but it also means being creative, which is a fun way to challenge oneself.

And all that’s great. But by doing it in advance I also saved myself time and mental energy, which is a holiday gift in and of itself.