How to save money when preparing New Year's treats so as not to go broke on food

Cook Less

Advice from Captain Obvious that few people follow. Because he is opposed by General Tradition. The New Year's table should be filled with plates and cups so that none of the guests guess what color the tablecloth is. Ideally, the dishes should be complex, fantastic, like the last time.

Naturally, this approach inflates the budget for the feast catastrophically. But you don't need that much food. To eat and even overeat, one hot dish with a side dish and a few salads and snacks. Because the stomach on New Year's Eve is exactly the same volume as on other days, no New Year's miracle makes it bottomless. And if a certain amount of food saturates you on a normal Wednesday, December 31st will also be optimal.

Sometimes people who are wondering about saving money are advised to replace products with cheaper ones: take herring spread instead of caviar, and buy cheaper instead of expensive cheese. And this is not how you should do it. Because it's better to have the right amount of delicious food that you wanted for the meal than a full table of compromise dishes.

Buy as many products as you need

The menu should be thought out in advance not only to know what to cook. In the process, you also need to understand how many servings of a particular dish you want and how many products you need. Doing everything by eye, you can make a mistake: buy not two herrings, but three, not 300 grams of cheese, but half a kilo. And it seems that for each product the difference will be insignificant. But in sum, the overspending will be significant.

Choose recipes easier

At first glance, this advice contradicts the previous paragraph. But it's about something else. Often, the New Year's menu contains very complex dishes that require a lot of money and time. Because when else, if not today? The answer is simple: any other day.

If there are a lot of unusual dishes on the table, it will not be easy to enjoy the taste of each of them properly. So isn't it better to set aside something special, like a day off, and get the most out of your food?

In the New Year, it is better to choose something that is still tasty, but does not require a culinary feat. Or at least let one dish get the role of a masterpiece.

Buy less alcohol

It looks like an attack on the sacred, but this is actually the easiest way to save money. Because drinking alcohol in general is not necessary, but drinking a lot of it is harmful and dangerous. So if you spend less on alcohol, the New Year's table will be more budgetary with minimal losses.

Divide dishes between guests

Agree that everyone carries one or two dishes. But distribute the menu honestly so that everyone spends money and time approximately equally, and not in such a way that someone prepares a complex puff salad, and someone sandwiches with sausage.

Separately control what load will fall on the receiving side. Usually, no matter how hard people try to share everything, the party costs more for the owners of the house. Because they gut the family bar when the general alcohol is over, often not limited to one dish, but also spent on home decoration.

Buy long-term storage in advance

Do you know the saying "Dear testicle for Christ's day"? It means that the value of something increases if it happens or appears on time. But it would be correct to understand it literally: you saw what happens to the prices of eggs before Easter.

Happy New Year, same story. Russians have a list of favorite foods, so it's easy for stores to predict what demand will rise before the holidays. And, accordingly, price. Therefore, if you are planning to buy something expensive and stored for a long time, do it in advance. Of course, this deprives the New Year's menu of spontaneity. But saving in general is largely related to planning, so you have to go for it.