By 5:15 on the Fourth, the last burger was gone, Cody was eyeing the smoker like it owed him money, and Matt was slicing the final link of sausage into coins so the teenagers would leave the grill alone. Eighteen people in our backyard, a sprinkler running for the little ones, and one receipt total I'd been keeping an eye on since the middle of June: $128.
That number covers everything I bought. Our guests brought the sides and the drinks, which is the only reason a cookout this size fits into a normal July week for us. Here's who came, what we served and where the money went.
Eighteen people, counted twice
The five of us. Kristen and Ryan with Cody and Avery. My mom and Gary, down from Denton. Tuan and Lisa Nguyen from across the street with their two girls. Mrs. Patterson from next door, and Dan and Erin, who have come to every cookout Matt has ever lit a fire for. Seven of the eighteen were kids, but one of those kids is a high school offensive lineman, and I'll get to what that did to my planning.
We'd gone to Kaboom Town in Addison the night before, which means three kids in the van well past ten and Rosie asleep on my shoulder before the finale. So I kept the Fourth simple on purpose: eat around 4:30, once the live oak throws some shade across the patio, and let the kids run through the sprinkler until then.
What I bought and what it cost
I did the main shop at Aldi on Monday and picked up the meat, buns and ice on Wednesday evening. Straight from the spreadsheet:
- Ground beef, 6 pounds of 80/20 at $5.49: $32.94
- Smoked sausage, four 14-ounce links: $13.16
- Beef hot dogs, two packs: $6.98
- Buns, three packs of hamburger and two of hot dog: $6.45
- Sliced cheese, two packs: $4.38
- Lettuce, onions, pickles and two tomatoes to stretch the last of ours from the raised beds: $6.21
- Two watermelons: $7.98
- Everything for one big pan of baked beans: $6.12
- Ice, five bags: $11.95
- Charcoal and a bag of post oak chunks: $14.27
- Paper plates, cups, napkins and foil: $12.68
- Popsicles for the kids: $4.88
That's $128.00 even, or about $7.11 a person. Ground beef was the biggest line. Friday morning I set up my station at the island and patted out eighteen 1/3-pound patties, stacked them between squares of parchment on a sheet pan and slid the whole thing into the fridge so Matt could move them straight onto the Weber.
What everybody brought
This part matters more than anything I paid for. Kristen brought potato salad and a pan of brownies. My mom brought two dozen deviled eggs, which felt like a small act of love after what eggs cost this spring. Lisa brought a huge bowl of cut fruit and a jug of lemonade the girls had helped squeeze. Dan and Erin brought the drinks, Gary brought chips, and Mrs. Patterson brought the lemon pound cake she has carried across the yard every Fourth since we moved in.
I didn't assign anything. I sent one group text that said we had the meat, the buns and the plates, and let everyone choose. We have never ended up with three potato salads, though I'm aware that's luck and not planning.
Matt's sausage, and the burger math I got wrong
Matt lit the offset smoker around one o'clock with post oak and ran the sausage low for about two hours, then moved the links to the kettle to crisp next to the burgers and dogs. The whole yard smelled like smoke by three, and Biscuit planted himself under the picnic table and didn't move until the last paper plate went into the trash bag.
Here's my miss. I planned one burger per person and figured the little kids and Mrs. Patterson would balance out the big eaters. They did not. Cody ate three. Wyatt ate two, plus the bun Eli refused (Eli had a plain hot dog with no bun and nothing touching it, as is his right). Dan went back for seconds before I had even sat down. We were out of burgers by 5:15, and the sausage is what saved us.
Meanwhile I'd bought two packs of hot dog buns we didn't need, and one went home with my mom. If I feed eighteen again, I'll buy eight pounds of ground beef instead of six and skip the extra buns. That pushes the total to about $138, and nobody ends up scraping the baked bean pan with a plastic fork at 6:30.
My catering years still show at cleanup: one trash bag on the gate and another for cans on the fence before anyone arrives, so it takes twenty minutes instead of an hour. Leftovers were thin, which tells me the amounts were close. Half a watermelon and the last of the baked beans became Saturday lunch, and the few sausage coins that survived went into red beans and rice on Sunday night.
Mrs. Patterson went home with a plate covered in foil and the last slice of her own pound cake, which she always says she doesn't want and always takes.
