(Guilt) Trip to the Grocery Store

I'm throwing myself a garden/goodbye party on Sunday.  The garden bit is spot-on: it's Memorial Day weekend and the weather is supposed to be lovely here in DC.  The goodbye bit is a little premature: I still don't have my visa.  (I should get it any day now - today is the five-business-day mark that the consulate told me about - so I'm just waiting and biting my woefully unmanicured nails.)  But my family's taking a mini holiday to the shore next week and, if everything goes as planned, I'll be off at the start of the second week in June, so this really is the best time for a shindig.

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I sat down yesterday and crafted a menu - undoubtedly one of the best parts of party planning - and it's so nom I can hardly wait.  I have about twenty friends coming, to I'm going to do a big main and four sides/salads and three desserts plus Pimms and white wine sangria.  (There will be a post with pictures on this later - never fear.)  I'll have to do a fair bit of grocery store coordination: I'll be hitting up possibly three different supermarkets to get everything I need at the best quality and price.  No matter how frugal I'll try to be, though, a party for twenty plus people still packs a pecuniary punch.  (Oh, alliteration, how I love thee.)  Thank God I'm getting paid on Friday!

I just saw via The Kitchn a new study by Bundle called "How America Spends: Food and Drink."  It ranks cities in the US by how much the average household in each city spends per year on food and drink.  It's very cool, visually: it gives you how much the average household in each city spends on dining out, on eating in, and the total of both combined, as well as how big each city is compared to the others in terms of population.  The US average total is $6,514.  The average total for Washington, DC (which is where I live) is $10,049.  Yikes!  It's definitely people like me who bump it up - oops.  Very interesting, though.