Rather than spending a lot of money inviting your friends out to eat, invite them to have a meal at your home. You have to eat anyway, so it won’t cost that much more to feed a few extra people. Besides, having people over is great motivator to clean up your home! After the meal you can enjoy each other’s company by playing cards, board games, or watching a rented movie. Entertaining doesn’t have to be expensive to be fun. In fact, our best experiences with others have been when we have chatted with them in our living room. It’s easier to make a connection and you don’t have to worry about being interrupted every few minutes by a restaurant employee. Try it out sometime to see how it works for you. It will make it a lot easier to entertain more often without having to worry about how much the bill will come to at the end of the evening!
Travel & Entertainment
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For extra cost and effort savings, use your slow cooker. Doing things way ahead always feels like less work and cuts down on the number of things you have to do right before the guests arrive. Plus the slow cooker uses about half as much energy as cooking the same thing in the oven. The other benefit, when just cooking for yourself, is that slow cooker recipes are often large. Freeze leftovers in individual size packages and have instant lunches to take to work or school.
I agree…I love hosting friends over for meals…a big money saver, but not a time saver. Planning a nutritious and colourful meal is not difficult. First pick the meat or main entree…cheapest options would be a chicken or beef roast, or fish fillets. Then choose the starch and 1-2 vegetables +/or salad. If you have enough energy and time, make a simple desert, or ask your friends to bring a salad or dessert to share.
Another way to make it cheap, fun and “community” focused is to “theme it” and go beyond just pot-luck, where you don’t know what people will bring to actually setting a menu that guests contribute to and bring different parts or courses. This is a great way to save time, money and everyone is a part of the meal process-they can contribute what they can afford and according to their speciality. I just went on a picnic a week ago and my husband and I brought the wraps and meat and our friends brought the Veggies and some fruit-overall we spent about $5 each- which is un-heard if you go out to a restaurant, which we woul have not been able to afford and miss seeing our friends! Make sure you let everyone know if there are any allergies- or if the group agrees on buying only “Green” organic ingredients (A great theme with Earth day soon approaching!) Also use a online evite to spread the word saving even more money- and showing some creativity! You can find e-vites that can keep track of who is bringing what and R.S.V.P’s, saving you time and making planning stress-free! I think with the state of the economy everyone is feeling the pinch but by being creative we can focus on more important things such as fostering relationships!