I am posting this just in case someone needs a large group meal plan for a few days (holidays, group vacations etc)
We have 19 in our family and I was the one responsible for putting together a plan for lunch and dinner for the week (everyone is on their own for breakfast)
we have 4 kids, 4 tweens, 2 teens and 9 adults in the group. no allergies and no one is picky (not even the adults)
we shopped at Sam’s and Walmart and spent about $650 on food and paper goods (no dish washing!) and another $150 on meat. so that’s about $800 which comes out to about $5 per person per meal. (not including all the extra people on Christmas).
I can’t even imagine us all walking into a restaurant for a single meal much less for a week! it’s so much easier just to make food and eat at home. everyone is thankful for the planning I did and Is helping in the kitchen when needed.
Frugal-ish Christmas Week meal plan for 19 (40Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner)
byu/Ill-Customer-3781 inFrugal
Posted by Ill-Customer-3781
4 Comments
Get people to bring something to share. Just because you are hosting, doesn’t mean you need to make all the food !
Yeah. It gets expensive when the household temporarily grows. For me, it just my two adult kids (23 and 25) coming home, plus my mom (80), variously starting today and through Saturday, Jan 3.
I made a meal plan for dinners, have food on hand for breakfast and lunches. Cost me about $350 so far and I’ll do a grocery run again this weekend. I do like to splurge a bit and make my kids favorites…I have been buying the meat when it’s been on sale over the last few months and into the deep freeze so that helped. (Eg a 8 lb pork shoulder that was $0.99/lb at Memorial Day will become a pulled pork – great for leftover sandwiches for lunch too)
Did no one volunteer to bring food? When we had a huge party for my moms 80th, we rented a huge house, everyone was there for 4 days, and each family group (3) had a dinner meal to prepare-then one night was leftovers. Anyway, kudos to you for volunteering to do this!!!
Large buffet dinners so there’s leftovers for a few days and sandwich makings for everything else. Done.
Your math is not good