The Purple Line was packed with people carrying foil pans on Saturday afternoon, and I was one of them, holding a 9x13 of stuffing on my lap like it was a newborn. I rode down to Howard, switched to the Red Line and got off in Lakeview with the pan still warm under two kitchen towels.
Priya has hosted Friendsgiving in her one-bedroom every year since we graduated. This year there were eight of us: Priya, me, Dan, two of her teacher friends, her neighbor across the hall and a couple from her old job. The rule is the same every year. Everyone brings one dish, nobody brings anything fancy, and nobody shows up empty-handed. Afterward, out of curiosity, I added up what everybody said they'd spent. The whole dinner came to $60.
Who brought what
- Priya: a roasted turkey breast, plus gravy from the drippings: $14
- Me: sausage and herb stuffing: $9
- Her teacher friend: mashed potatoes, a big pot of them: $6
- The other teacher friend: green beans with crispy onions: $5
- Dan: two bags of dinner rolls and butter: $4
- Her neighbor: cranberry sauce, the canned kind with the ridges, by popular demand: $3
- The couple: an apple pie and a pumpkin pie, plus a bag salad: $19
That's $60 for eight people, or $7.50 each. We had leftovers, including most of a pie, which the couple left behind on purpose.
Priya's oven is small and her apartment kitchen is roughly the size of a closet, so a whole bird was never happening. A turkey breast cooks in about two hours, fits in a normal pan and feeds eight if you have enough sides. Nobody missed the drumsticks. Nobody even mentioned them.
This is the main reason the dinner was so cheap. When you take the expensive centerpiece down a size and let the sides do the work, a holiday meal is mostly potatoes, bread and butter. Those are some of the cheapest foods in any store.
My stuffing, for the record
I make my mom's recipe, more or less. One loaf of plain sandwich bread, cubed and left out overnight to dry. A pound of breakfast sausage, browned. One onion and three ribs of celery cooked in the sausage fat. Dried sage and thyme from my mom's spice drawer, chicken broth, one egg, salt and pepper. Bake until the top is crunchy.
I bought the bread, sausage, onion, celery and broth at Aldi for $9. The spices and egg came from my parents' kitchen, since I live at home and pay $300 a month toward groceries and utilities. My mom watched me make it on Saturday morning and only corrected me twice, which is a personal best.
How we kept it cheap without making it sad
A few things worked, and I'd recommend them to anyone hosting on a tight budget.
Assign dishes, don't just say "bring something." Priya made a shared list two weeks ahead, so we didn't end up with four pies and no vegetables. The year we skipped the list in 2023, we had three bags of chips and two kinds of hummus.
Bring your own container. Everyone brought a reusable container for leftovers, so Priya wasn't left with eight people's food in her tiny fridge.
Drinks were BYO, and most people brought sparkling water or one bottle of something to share. I don't count drinks in the $60 because they weren't part of the meal plan, but nobody went overboard.
Games instead of going out. After dinner, instead of heading to a bar, we played a card game Priya's teacher friend brought and talked for three hours. Nobody spent another dollar.
Around nine, Priya made everyone go around and say one thing they were thankful for this year. When it was my turn, I said I was thankful my student loans would drop under half of what I originally borrowed next month, which got a polite round of applause and one groan from her neighbor, who has law school loans.
I also turned 26 this month, which meant switching to my own health plan. It's been a lot of grown-up paperwork in a short time. Sitting on Priya's floor with a paper plate of stuffing, surrounded by people I love, I didn't think about any of it for a whole evening.
Dan and I took the Red Line back north and I got off at Howard to switch to the Purple. I had an empty pan, a container of mashed potatoes and a slice of apple pie for my dad. Total cost to me for a whole holiday with friends: $9 and a train ride.
