Where to Order Thanksgiving Dinner 2019

To save time this Thanksgiving, you can order fully-prepared Thanksgiving dinners for take-out. Just place an order, schedule a pick-up time, then heat, and eat. Most of these take-out dinners include a main dish and sides, some include rolls and dessert.

Here’s where to order Thanksgiving dinner in 2019 (click each for more info):

Thanksgiving Dinners from Restaurants

• Boston Market. Take-out turkey or ham dinners. Offers Thanksgiving catering too. Restaurants open on Thanksgiving (in 28 states)
• Buca di Beppo. Turkey dinners to-go. Open on Thanksgiving. (in 26 states)
• Cracker Barrel. Turkey and ham dinners to-go. Restaurants open on Thanksgiving (in 43 states)
• Luby’s. Turkey, ham, or prime rib take-out dinners. (TX, OK, AR)
• Marie Callender’s. Complete dinners, including dessert and coffee. Restaurants open Thanksgiving Day. (western US)
• Mimi’s Cafe. Thanksgiving dinners to-go. (western, southern, mid-west US)
• Shari’s. Turkey and ham dinners. Many pie choices at extra cost. (CA, ID, NE, OR, WA WY)

Thanksgiving Dinners from Grocery Stores

• Bashas. Take-out turkey or ham dinners. (AZ)
• Costco. Partnering with Schwan’s to ship Thanksgiving to your door. (nationwide)
• Food City. Turkey and ham dinners including sides. (GA, KY, TN, VA)
• Fresh Market. Turkey dinners. Unique dessert options at additional cost. (eastern US)
• Gelsons. Many to-go dinner options. (Lost Angeles area)
• Giant. Turkey or ham dinners for 4-6 people. (in MD, VA, DC, DE)
• Giant Eagle. Turkey dinners for up to 6 people. (in IN, MD, OH, PA, WV)
• Hannaford. Ham or Turkey Thanksgiving dinners. (in ME, NH, NY, MA, VT)
• Harris Teeter. Turkey, ham, or prime rib dinners. (in in GA, SC, NC, TN, VA, FL, MD, DE, DC)
• H-E-B. Turkey or ham dinners. (TX)
• Hy-Vee. Dinners for 4+ people. (in IL, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, SD, WI)
• Ingles. Thanksgiving take-out. (in AL, GA, NC, SC, TN, VA)
• Kroger. Turkey dinners to-go. (in appx. 34 states)
• Lucky’s Market. Turkey dinners and a la carte items. (in CO, FL, IA, IN, KY, OH, MI, MO, MT, WY
• Meijer. Turkey dinner with several side dishes. (IL, IN, KY, OH, Mi, WI)
• Price Chopper. Turkey and ham dinners with pie. (in CT, MA, NY, NY, PA, VT)
• Publix. Turkey dinners. (in AL, FL, GA, SC, TN)
• Raley’s. Turkey or ham prepared dinners. (CA; includes Bel Air and Nob Hills stores)
• Save Mart. Turkey or ham dinners with side dishes. (in CA, NV)
• ShopRite. Turkey or ham options. (in CT, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)
• Sprouts. Turkey and ham dinners for 2 to 8 people. (in AZ, CA, CO, GA, KS, NM, NV, OK, TX, UT)
• Stop & Shop. Ham or turkey dinners to-go. (CT, MA, NH, NJ, NY, RI)
• Wegmans. Turkey and ham dinners, including pre-carved options. (NY, PA, NJ, MD, MA, VA)
• Winco. Turkey dinners with sides and pumpkin pie. (AZ, CA, ID, NV, OK, OR, TX, UT, WA)
• Whole Foods. Regular, organic, vegan, and gluten-free Thanksgiving choices. (national)

If you can’t get to the store, you can cobble together Thanksgiving dinner from Amazon's offerings, delivered to your door.

Though they don’t offer complete pre-cooked dinners, Aldi and Trader Joe’s have Thanksgiving foods at decent prices.

Wherever you decide to order, hope everyone has a delicious Thanksgiving dinner in 2019.

Was Buying Chairs from Amazon Warehouse Risky?

We were in the market for a 12” kid chair - hoping for natural color solid wood, but not too expensive.  I was seeing options $50+ per chair for these tiny pieces of furniture.

I checked Amazon Warehouse, where you can get used and damaged items at lower cost.

There was a 2-pack of solid oak kid chairs listed there for $22!  They normally sell for $105, and have great reviews.

However, the condition description made me pause.  It read:

“Acceptable: Large cosmetic imperfection(s) on the interior of the item.Item will come in original packaging. Packaging will be damaged.”

Amazon warehouse grades it’s items by: 1) Like New, 2) Very Good, 3) Good, 4) Acceptable.  So these kid chairs were graded as the worst condition on that list.  So this purchase was a risk.

The great thing about Amazon Warehouse, though, is that many items are covered under Amazon’s excellent return policy.  Some things may not be, of course, so double-check before purchasing.

They chairs arrived in a huge Amazon box (picture 1), that contained another beat-up box (picture 2), that contained two beautiful chairs (picture 3).  Though the second box was damaged, the chairs were not, they were in perfect condition.

In this case the risk buying from Amazon Warehouse paid off.  We now have these beautiful oak chairs for only $11 each.

Moving to Tello Wireless; Goodbye FreedomPop

Our main cell phone is a little black flip phone that we’ve had forever.  I love it because it is tiny and a single charge can last up to a week!  It is a prepaid AT&T phone that costs $100 (+tax) for 1000 minutes.

Anyways, a couple of years ago, we decided to get a smartphone to be able to use services like Uber and Google maps.  Our research back then, led us to FreedomPop.  We bought a used Samsung Galaxy 5 Android phone through FreedomPop, and then our smartphone data plan literally was free!  It gave us 500MB of data a month, and that was fine for us, for the times we were away from WiFi. 

So thanks FreedomPop for 2 years of completely free data!

But now, FreedomPop is cancelling their free internet plans for Sprint-type phones.  So we needed to find a new cheap plan for our smartphone.

Our latest research led us to Tello.  They have inexpensive prepaid and monthly plans.  We chose a monthly plan that gives us 500 MB of data, 100 minutes of phone, and free texts for $6 per month.  With taxes added, our final Tello bill is $7.80 per month.  Not a bad price, under $100 per year.

After you use your 500 MB of data, Tello apparently lets you use 2G data (slower) for free.  We haven’t tested this out yet, since our Tello plan is brand-new but we will report back.

I’ve also read that there may be a manual way to roll-over Tello minutes and data? We plan to test that our and will report back on that also.

Tello’s prepaid plans seemed like a good choice too.  Tello’s prepaid rates are here.  At the time of writing, they were 1 cent per minute for calls or texts and 2 cents per minute for data, in the USA.

When you sign up for Tello, there is a box where you can type in a code to save $10.  The code is P34X9ZBC.   Click here to use this code directly at Tello.

Bali Secrets Deodorant Review

Bali Secrets is a a “natural” roll-on deodorant made in Bali, an island in Indonesia.  I have been using the Unscented version for about a year now and really like it.

Here are the Bali Secrets deodorant ingredients:

• Seaweed Extract (Gracilaria verrucosa)
• Natural Mineral Salt (Potassium alum)
• Aloe Vera (Aloe barbadensis) Leaf Juice
• Aqua (Water)
• Alcohol (Ethanol)
• Coconut Oil (Cocos nucifera)

The scented varieties also contain various essential oils.

One of the ingredients, Potassium alum, does contain aluminum (Wikipedia: potassium alum), thus this is not aluminum-free deodorant.

This deodorant product has some good features:

• It works!
• Certified as cruelty-free.
• Helpful customer service – I had to contact them once, and they were kind and responsive.

and it has a few negatives:

• It is expensive, with an Amazon price (at the time of writing) of $13.99 for one bottle
• It is not uncommon to find an “out-of-stock” notice at Amazon when trying to reorder a favorite scent.
• The roller has improved, but is still not perfect.  It can dry out and stick if you don’t use it for a few days.
  

Ikea Knalla Backpack Review

I picked up a red and white Knalla Backpack at Ikea a year ago when it was on sale for $3.99 for Ikea Family members.  I thought “what a great price!”.  Since that time the Knalla backpack has become my most used backpack; it’s with me almost every day.

Here are Knalla’s stats:

• Length: 13 3/4" (35 cm)
• Depth: 7 7/8" (20 cm)
• Height: 17 3/4" (45 cm)
• Volume: 7 gallon (28 liter)
• Weight: 6 oz
• Colors: Red & white or Black & white grid pattern
• Material: Polyester fabric; Polypropylene straps
• Care: Machine washable
• Price: $4.99

There are adjustable backpack straps and a small handle at the top, if you want to carry the Knalla by hand.  It folds up into itself, making it easy to store or carry along.

The best thing about the Knalla backpack is it’s weight to volume ratio.  At only 6 ounces, it can hold 28 liters of your stuff.  For comparison, a typical Jansport backpack weighs double that (12 ounces) and holds less (25 liters).  Oh yes, and this Ikea backpack costs at least 4x less.

The Knalla fabric is thin, but with a typical load (lunches, first aid kit, extra clothes, groceries) it has held up fine so far.  For heavy items, like books, you’d probably want that Jansport backpack instead.

The Swedish word Knalla means bang, crack, or boom in English.