Planning and hosting a party is always a fun experience and is enjoyable for the host and guests alike. Often times it is extremely easy to overspend on foods simply because the ingredients are expensive. Buying in bulk and planning and purchasing your food ahead of time will also save you money because you can wait to buy them when they are on sale. In addition to those two money saving ideas, here are four cheap ingredient substitutes you can use to lower the cost of your party.
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Alexandra Moss
1 Meat
If you plan to have a barbecue, make meatballs, or have any kind of ground meat dish, the easiest way to save money is to stretch your meat by adding cheaper ingredients to it. For example, by adding oatmeal, breadcrumbs, onions, or even beans to your meat you make it go farther and you will save a lot of money, especially if you are serving a large group of people.
2 Tortilla Chips
Tortilla chips are a staple at most parties. While tortilla chips are usually not extremely expensive you can make your own using corn tortillas for almost half the cost. By making your own you not only save money, but you can experiment with different chip flavors and different dips. An added benefit is that since you will be baking them yourself, the homemade chips will be much healthier for you and your guests.
3 Honey
While this may not be an ingredient you consider common at parties, if you have tea drinkers or are serving cornbread or homemade desserts you may very well use it. You can save a lot of money by using homemade substitutes because honey is very expensive. You can make your own honey substitute by creating homemade simple syrup. Simply add 1.25 cups of sugar and .25 cups of water and stir until well combined.
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Misserion
4 Wine
Good wine always seems to be the expensive kind, but there are many kinds of wines that are much cheaper (even as low as $2) and taste just as good. Many people prefer to purchase the expensive kind so they can appear wealthier than they are or show off to friends. An easy trick is to find a cheap bottle of wine that you like and simply remove the label on the wine bottles and refuse to tell friends where the wine is from or what kind of wine it is. They might find that they enjoy it more by not knowing what it costs.
