2 boxes of Stovetop stuffing
4 lbs. of sweet potatoes
4 cans of Green Giant canned vegetables (select varieties)
2 cans of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce
12 lb. fresh hen or tom turkey
1 can of Campbell's turkey gravy
1 pack of Sara Lee dinner rolls
1 10" pumpkin pie
2 bottles of Oak Leaf wine (or a 24-pack Coke product)

What a marketing ploy! Incredible savings?? I didn't see incredible savings. That list looks like lots of brand name bogus food.... at a hugely expensive price. Let's see what the home-made version would cost.

Turkey

According to at least one source, a 12-pound bird would comfortably feed 6, not 8. The smaller the bird, you see, the less actual meat per pound of bird. I'd go with a 14 pound bird. Prices vary widely. In New England, we can find turkey at 47¢ a pound or about $7 for a 14 pound turkey. Even figuring turkey at 69¢ / lb, the overall cost would be no more than $10, and could come in cheaper than that. (In Calif, Krogers chain let you have turkey for 37c lb if you bought  25$ worth of food, so I got a few bags of cat kibble all at once. Turkey was 6$

Cranberry Sauce

This is an instance where home-made is not necessarily cheaper. Whole cranberries cost $1.99 for a 12 ounce package. Making the sauce is a cinch -- boil cranberries with lemon, orange peel,sugar until the berries pop and the sauce thickens. Two bags of fresh cranberries yield a quart (32 ounces) of cooked sauce for about $4. It's possible to find 16 oz cans of cranberry sauce for $ .99 a can, so I'll figure on the 2 cans of the store-bought version for 2$. CALIFORNIA COOK's NOTE: I pick up dented cans of cranberry sauce all year long for 39c. On the BENT RACK. Not nearly as good as the handmade but good enuf.

Potatoes

Thanksgiving isn't Thanksgiving around our house without heaping bowls of mashed potatoes. White potatoes go for $2.99 / 5 pound bag which makes enough mashed for a whole lot more than eight people. (IN CALIF, we get l0lbs of potatoes for $1.99, regular IDAHO taters. which I LOVE.) Half is enough for the feast. So A BUCK FOR TATERS. But add 50c for butter, 50c for cream.

Stuffing - My market has day old bread for 99c a loaf.  Dry it out in oven. It has to be dry and stale both. NEVER use fresh bread for stuffing.

Homemade bread is definitely cheaper and probably healthier, if you consider the Stove Top ingredient list:  Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate [Vitamin B1], Riboflavin [Vitamin B2], Folic Acid), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Onions (Dried), Salt, Contains Less than 2% of Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Cooked Turkey and Turkey Broth, Yeast, Celery (Dried), Parsley (Dried), Maltodextrin, Spice, Caramel Color, Sugar, Turmeric, Disodium Guanylate, Disodium Inosinate, with BHA, BHT, Citric Acid, and Propyl Gallate as Preservatives.

People have been making bread stuffing since the Middle Ages, so it is not one of your more difficult dishes. If you plan ahead and save stale pieces of bread in the freezer, the cost for stuffing is minimal. Just remember to take them out the night before and let them thaw at room temperature. Stuffing ingredients are relatively straightforward and readily available:

8 cups partially dried bread cubes
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 stalks celery, finely chopped
3 cups chicken broth (homemade broth, frozen and thawed works well here)
2 1/2 teaspoons rubbed sage , celery seeds powdered, or celery salt
1 teaspoons garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
nuts, raisins water chestnuts add zip also cost money. So STUFFING a few bucks.

Rip bread into cubes, add chopped vegetables and toss together. Add chicken broth to moisten and herbs to season it. Bake in a covered dish for about 45 minutes, uncovered for the last 10 minutes if desired. Cost for stuffing for 8: about $2 (and no one has to ask to have the bowl of disodium guanylate passed to them).

Vegetables

Instead of canned vegetables -- go fresh! This is, after all, a celebration and a feast. For starters, a bunch of celery (99¢ -- some of it went into the stuffing) and a pound of carrots.  (33c, cut into sticks. Instant veggie plate, sour cream and onion dip for dressing.

For cooked vegetables: SQUASH: Two medium size butternut squash ($3). Fry in olive oil wi garlic onions, sausage, add water, steam. Cooked, pureed and buttered, they beat anything out of a can. STRINGBEANS.

GREEN SALAD, OLIVE OIL DRESSING - 89c romaine

Total cost for vegetables: $4

Gravy

One can of gravy for a Thanksgiving dinner for eight?? Are they kidding? A serving size is, by Campbell's own defnition, 1/4 cup -- or 5 servings per can. And the ingredient list is dreadful:   turkey stock, wheat flour, water, contains less than 2% of: modified food starch, chicken fat, salt, autolyzed yeast extract, yeast extract, turkey fat, onion powder, chicken stock, spice extract, flavoring, caramel color, chicken powder, flavoring (contains turkey).

I've fixed Thanksgiving dinners for decades and cannot remember one where the drippings from the pan didn't give us quarts of gravy -- both for the feast itself and for hot turkey sandwiches later on. Here's how it's done:

Remove turkey from pan. Throw the broth from under the bird into a peanut butter jar, let fat rise to top, and then pour fat off. I fridge mine for soap maker pals. You don't use fat in gravy. But you do use the broth from neck/gizzard/ liver, kidneys and the broth that came out of the turkey while cooking to slush around in the pan with its burnt crispies.  Add about two cups of that broth to the juices in the pan, stirring to loosen any bits of meat. Bring to a simmering point.  You made broth out of neck when you put turkey in oven. It's cool now throw it in a jar,  add about 4-5 tablespoons of flour, cap the jar and shake vigorously. (This virtually ensures that the resulting gravy will not have lumps). Stirring the drippings in the pans, slowly add the broth/water mixture a little at a time. If you add too little, the gravy will be thin; add too much and it will be too thick. When the gravy gets to the right consistency, add a few shakes of sage, celery salt or celery seed powder, some salt and pepper and move off the heat. Cost for more gravy than eight people are bound to eat at one meal: $0 (okay, so there's a few cents for the flour. I am assuming the household in question has flour on hand).

Pumpkin pie

A $2 pumpkin, cooked, scraped from the shell and pureed, yields enough for one, maybe two pies. Or grow your own PUMPKIN harvest it on HALLOWEEN, take melted candles out, rather than letting it rot on front porch, cook the meat, subtract peels, freeze flesh in bags & a day or two before Thanksgiving remove from freezer. Add sugar, spices and real cream/ milk for the filling. A simple pie crust takes pennies to make. Recipes and instructions are all over the internet. Total cost for pie(s): a cube of butter, 50c few cups cream, $1.50 3  eggs. Spices we all have on hand, right? 2$ if you grew your own squash. BTW MARTHA STEWART sez this pie is tastier if you use butternut squash.

Beverages

We drink red wine, my barrio market has California cabs and pinot s $2.50 each on sale earlier in the year, that's when you stock up.. Kids get home made Tropical punch. Hawaiian PUNCH MIX or a few cans of carbonated TROPICAL PUNCH, always with the juice of 5 lemons & some sugar. Lots of DECAF COLOMBIAN coffee after dinner with your pie. Apple cider.  Americans do not need three sodas apiece (as in the Walmart special) to celebrate Thanksgiving. Please!

There you have it .... a home-made Thanksgiving dinner at a fraction of Walmart's branded, agribiz-supporting alternative. Our home-made version was based on what's available to an East Coast urban household with no garden. The cost of the home-made version could be reduced to about a third of the Walmart version -- and/or the range of veggies expanded -- with produce from a small garden. Savings come from a few simple cooking skills and refusal to support branded foods. And the savings are substantial -- approaching 25%.