Thanksgiving Dinner In Illinois: Here's How Much You'll Pay

If you're heading to the store to pick up the fixings for your Thanksgiving Day feast, we've got some good news for you: the American Farm Bureau Federation's 32nd annual price survey of Thanksgiving Day dinner shows that the average cost of this year's turkey dinner is $49.12, a 75-cent drop from last year's average. That's the average cost of a 10-person Thanksgiving dinner, putting the price at less than $5 per person.

The farm bureau's shopping list includes turkey, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and coffee and milk, "all in quantities sufficient to serve a family of 10 with plenty for leftovers," the it said in a statement.

"The last time Thanksgiving was this cheap was 2013," said John Newton, the federation's market intelligence director. "The fact you can have that classic meal for under $5 per person says a lot about the U.S. farmer and the harvest they produce every year."

The farm bureau federation's bill doesn't include appetizers or drinks (except for coffee). And lots of people like two varieties of pies and extra desserts. Plus, if your guests have special dietary needs or want to go vegan, the bill could go higher than $155 for a family of 10, according to Money magazine.

But what about in Illinois? We used the farm bureau's list as close as we could to try to figure out what you can expect to pay.

We took a look at Jewel-Osco, one of the biggest grocery chains in Illinois, to see how much you can expect to pay at checkout for a typical Thanksgiving meal. Here are the results:

$3.99 - pumpkin pie (store bought)
$4 - dinner rolls
$31.84 - turkey ($1.99 per pound for a 16-pound fresh turkey; frozen is cheaper)
$3.69 - milk (1 gallon)
$2 - frozen veggies
$3 - cranberries
$2 - Reddi-wip whipped topping
$.99 - celery
$1.09 - carrots
$1.10 - sweet potatoes (2 lbs)
$2.50 - stuffing mix

That puts the total in Illinois at $56.20, slightly more than the farm bureau's average.

What special dishes do you serve on Thanksgiving? Add your ideas to the comments.

Image via Shutterstock

Margo Sullivan, Patch Staff, contributed to this report.