If you are staying in Chico for Thanksgiving and want to put together an appetizing, affordable meal for you and your friends, take a look at The Orion’s cheat sheet of where you can shop for the best prices.

Shopping at Wal-Mart and Save Mart is about $15 cheaper than shopping at Safeway and Raley’s when getting the same items. However, since both Safeway and Raley’s have reward cards, customers can get more food with the money they spend.

For example, customers can get 2 for 1 deals on bread rolls and 4 packages of stuffing for only $5 when shopping with a reward card. This may come in handy when cooking for a larger group.

Even if you have never cooked a Thanksgiving meal before, all of these items are easy to prepare and won’t take as long as making everything from scratch.

To make this Thanksgiving feast, simply heat up the turkey and gravy, make the instant mashed potatoes and stuffing, and slice the jellied, canned cranberry.

For the green bean casserole, steam green beans using a double boiler, add cream of mushroom soup and top off with French fried onions.

You have options with the pumpkin pie: you can either pop a frozen one into the oven and bake it or buy one from the bakery.

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Discount Option One

Save Mart

• Rotisserie turkey breast: $5.99 for 20 ounces.
• McCormick gravy mix bag: 99 cents for 2.64 ounces.
• French’s French fried onions: $3.79 for 6 ounces.

Wal-Mart

• Idahoan Baby Reds flavored mashed potatoes: 98 cents for 4.1 ounces.
• Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce: $1.38 for 8 ounces.
• Betty Crocker Homestyle Stuffing, chicken or turkey flavor: 75 cents for 6 ounces.
• Whole green beans: $1.28 per pound.
• King’s Hawaiian rolls: 12 count, $2.48.
• Sara Lee Oven Fresh 9-inch pumpkin pie: $2.98.

Total cost: $20.62

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Discount Option Two

Safeway

• Safeway kitchens cranberry sauce: 99 cents for 14 ounces.
• Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup: $1 for 10.75 ounces.
• King Hawaiian rolls: 12 count, 2 for $5.

Raley’s

• Rotisserie turkey: $9.99 for 24 ounces.
• Campbell’s gravy: 69 cents for 15.72 ounces.
• Raley’s mashed potatoes: 2 for $4, 13.75 ounces each.
• Kraft’s Stove Top stuffing mix: 4 for $5, 5 ounces each.
• Whole green beans: $2.59 for 32-ounce bag.
• French’s French fried onions: 99 cents for 6 ounces.
• Fresh-baked 9-inch pumpkin pie: $5.99.

Total cost: $36.24

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Christina Saschin can be reached at [email protected] or @Stina127 on Twitter.