Diving for Dinner.

The average nationally spent on Thanksgiving is something like $65 for the basic meal. I took my oldest daughter diving last night. We got:

Flowers for the table.
Three loaves of crusty french bread to cube for stuffing.
Two ready-made pumpkin pies perfect except the pieces of the edge crust that had cracked.
A dozen orange, red and green peppers.
Two large packages of portabella mushrooms.
Four onions.
A zucchini
Three Cucumbers
Four nice ripe on the vine tomatoes.
A bunch of fresh spinach
A head each of Romaine and Iceberg lettuce.
Two bags of carrots, one mini peeled for snacking, one whole length.
A bag of donuts for breakfast while we cooked.
A bag of cinnamon rolls and bear claws to make bread pudding with.
Eight apples for a pie.
Half dozen sweet potatoes.
Ten pounds of Idaho Russet potatoes.

The only thing I couldn't find on "the list" was celery and cranberries.

A couple of days ago I dove for 59 number ten size cans of longterm storage items. I got several cans each of flour, sugar, dried apples, dried carrots, rice, powdered milk.

For dinner I defrosted a turkey that has been in the deep-freeze since the sale on turkeys last Christmas. It was just fine. I only had to buy eggs, butter, milk (could've used powdered, but whole milk is richer), some dried and some fresh cranberries, some sage and vanilla because I was out. I could've made my own pie crust, but I spent 52 cents on jiffy mix.

I also used a pound of ground beef to make some sausage for my sausage stuffing. I added sage, fennel seeds, garlic salt, pepper for seasoning. I then mixed in chopped celery, bell peppers in orange and green, onions, portobellas and the toasted, cubed french bread. Made great stuffing.

For bread pudding, I diced and toasted cinnamon rolls and bear claws, and then poured a mixture or 8 eggs, 4 cups whole milk, t teas cinnamon, 1/2 cup each brown and white sugar and some vanilla. I added dried cranberries at my wife's suggestion instead of raisins that was really good.

So the math turkey $12 plus electricity to keep it cold a year and the rest probably less than $10. I figure I saved 2/3 diving for the rest.

Not really relevant to the dinner, but while we were out we saw some illegally dumped furniture. It is a $500 fine for using a dumpster that doesn't belong to you, It is a little muddled about the legality of taking things OUT of the dumpster. Technically it belongs to the cartage company but they don't want it as they don't salvage/ They pay by the pound to dump. So when I went back and grabbed two serviceable wing-back chairs and a matching footstool, I figure the stores will forgive my trespass, as it made room once again in their dumpster.