Last Friday, I roasted a whole 19-pound turkey for my family of five. No, we didn’t eat the whole thing at once, of course, but I wanted to share all of the meals that were and will be made from the turkey. It really is very cost effective.
The whole turkey cost us about $19. I can add to that another $12 or so for additional meal ingredients, including carrots, potatoes, celery, butter, milk, spices, chicken stock, flour, broccoli, onions, stuffing mix, cranberry sauce and corn (all bought on sale or as cheaply as possible of course). The milk and butter are the most expensive ingredients.
Here is how that turkey and other ingredients are feeding us. Keep in mind that some of the meals are being eaten this week, while others are being frozen for use later in the month.
Our frugal whole turkey meals are:
Six white meat turkey dinners for everyone in the family
Six single-serving turkey sandwich lunches
Two large pot pies that will yield two meals each for everyone in the family (Four complete meals)
One turkey divan-type crockpot meal
One fancy gourmet pot pie meal with an herb crust
I still have a ton of turkey left which I will probably cut up and freeze for easy additions to future meals. I plan to check out the Food Blog and AllRecipes.com for more ideas. For this one turkey plus the extra ingredients, we have 12 full meals plus enough leftovers to build at least four more meals. That isn’t bad for $31! It is less than the price of us all eating out once at a pizza restaurant.
Do you have any frugal meal ideas to share for leftover turkey? What other foods so you find to be very frugal?
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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