Money Dinner

Tax day has come and gone.  In the Miser Mom Household, we celebrated Tax Day with our favorite new tax deduction, appropriately documented . . . .

. . . Baby A!  K-daughter's daughter celebrated her first night out of her own home by joining her MiserNana in our annual Money Dinner.  We decked the table with coins from around the world, plus a few left-over chocolate coins from a friend's Hanukah celebration.

And then we feasted on some of our favorite money-themed foods, including the bringin'-home-the-Turkey-bacon from market, plus a giant pile of the green stuff (kale chips) . . .

. . . and some scrounged food as well, a la these giant tortilla chips.

(The chips, I got in my usual mooched-food way: I helped to clean up at a a big event on campus.  After urging as much leftover food on other people as I could, I took home my own baskets of sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, and these great-for-our-money-dinner chips).

This year we played a small quiz game:  do you know what a penny looks like?  (I printed out a few sheets from http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/common_cents/).  This was surprisingly tricky and fun.

There was, but-of-course, themed clothing.  I wore a vest with coin-like buttons, plus stockings that remind me a little of dollar signs.

Looks rich, yes?

There was money jewelry adorning certain diners at the table, too; plus, let's just take another look at this adorable one, yes?

Enough already, Nana!

No?  Okay we'll stop.

***
Okay, but it's worthwhile pointing out how much our celebrations cost the Miser Mom household.  This year a bunch of people were out of town, so the Money Dinner was a small event:  4 eaters plus Baby A.  Oh, and then later, J-son came home and ate all the leftover food on the table, so maybe that counts as five eaters.

I splurged on the Turkey Bacon, buying 5 pounds for $30;  I split this into 6 equal parts and froze most of them, so let's say $5-6 for meat at the dinner.

[Or you could say more like $20, if you want:  I wouldn't have bought that expensive meat if it hadn't been for the dinner, so the extra will just make our other meat-enhanced dinners that much more expensive.  We're replacing cheap (say $10-ish) ingredients over several meals with something that costs $30, so maybe the bacon expense incurred by this one meal is more like $20].

We also bought $4 worth of kale.  And . . . that's it.  The rest of the food was scrounged. Even if we hadn't scrounged food, we would have made a simple alternative (I think our usual homemade dollar-shaped pretzels are actually yummier than the tortilla chips anyway).

So this celebration that we look forward to each year costs us somewhere between $9 and $24 this year.  Having fun doesn't have to be expensive!