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A better comparison would be Mark Bittman's minimalist Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Sandra Lee uses expensive packages of chemicals and prepared foods for every dish. It's not less expensive and it's not even easier! For instance, she uses cranberry Jell-o, canberry juice and a can of cranberry sauce to make......ta da!!!.......cranberry sauce.

The $126.75 cost of a "regular" meal is a lot more realistic than the $44.61 to feed 10 a turkey meal in that other linked article

I guess I'll try to make the effort the best supports my wallet and that does not jeopardize my health.But that is a tough challenge now a days As much of a fan I am of organic food, it makes me sad its sometimes so out of reach. Good food should be available to all. If you live under the poverty lines you would never even consider organic as a choice, ever, and that is simply not fair. I hope that we see a change in this trend. Everyone deserves good food, not only the financially privileged.
I am still thankful that I can afford a good turkey this year, I hope that others less fortunate are blessed as well , organic or not.

My husband and I joined a CSA for the first time this year - and we're never going back! The veggies are so yummy as to be criminal. And as CSA members we get to enjoy a truly free-range, farm-raised organic turkey for the first time. I seriously cannot wait. Feel like Barbara Kingsolver on Christmas Day, lol!

The price for the turkey was a tad high - about $70 for a 15 pounder, but worth every penny in my book. We'll save money on sides by just throwing all those extra root veggies from the CSA under the bird (sweet potatoes, turnips, etc).

And oddly enough I'm using a Sandra Lee recipe (herb butter turkey). Best of both worlds ;) Hey, Sandra's a cook, but she makes a damn fine bird, lolol!

And I actually meant to call Sandra a "kook" as in a FREAK, kooky, crazy, strange, weird ;)

For me it was less about the label "organic" than it was about buying responsibly raised meat and animal products (the turkey, eggs, dairy, and the pork in the sausage for stuffing). So I went the middle road and bought range-grown, humanely raised, sustainably farmed turkey at Whole Foods. I can't quit eating meat, but even on a student budget, I can't justify the gruesome and irresponsible practices of industrial animal husbandry to pay $.50/lb for meat.

Anyhoo, I did buy organic potatoes. That's a veg where I resent paying the markup for organic, but feel that I should. And my dried herbs and spices are mostly organic now, since that's all that available in the bulk aisle (still cheap as hell).

This year we are doing an organic heritage turkey bought directly from the farmer. It's pricier but other poultry and meat I have bought this way have tasted much better than conventional poultry and meat. Since switching to buying at the farmers market and places like whole food, I buy less and enjoy it more.

We bought all our thanksgiving fixings at Whole Foods and only spent $30 more than we usually do on groceries. It's not much more. I think the flaw with this comparison is the focus on the turkey. Side dishes are where you can stretch a dollar. Veggies aren't that expensive and too much meat isn't healthy.

Organic wines drive me insane. You're drinking something with ALCOHOL in it (12% to 16% roughly, depending on the wine), do you really think that a few ppm of pesticide are going to make that much of a difference. Also, if you really want to get organic wine, look for something that's not factory wine. Most foreign producers technically produce organic wines, but in their countries people already know the stuff is organic, so they don't bother getting the products certified or labeled. If you want good organic American wines, go with Honig or Frog's Leap. Both are world class producers are out of California and 100% organic despite not having big green ORGANIC logos on their labels, and Honig is biodynamic and they use 100% solar power.

As far as sulfites go, again steer clear of factory wine (anything made by gallo or any huge conglomerate that produces 80 billion bottles of the same wine and packages it under 50 different brand names). Anything that's not poorly made doesn't need extra sulfites, and yes they are in the wine regardless of whether the winemaker adds them or not. Allo of the no sulfite added wines that I have tried have been dodgy at best. White wines usually have more sulfites added to them than reds. Whites are less shelf stable, hence the need for more sulfites as preservatives. Most people who say they are allergic to sulfites aren't actually having a reaction to the sulfites, they are having a reaction to either the tannins in the wine or the ethers and esthers that were pulled out of the oak barrels during aging (same reason some people get more hungover on brown liquor than clear liquor).