[Here’s another great article from our 2020 Holiday Food & Drink Guide! Check the rest out here to make your holidays extra festive!—eds.]
High on my list of pandemic comfort watches is the Food Network show Guy’s Grocery Games, in which chefs gather in a sound-stage grocery store and compete to see whose dish can get Guy Fieri to say “That’s killer” and “Oh, man!” the most times.
A common conceit on GGG: Chefs must create delicious, indulgent meals in the confines of a tight grocery budget imposed by Fieri.
It feels like a challenge tailor-made for the 2020 holiday season. Money is tight for many, and even those of us lucky enough to still have jobs face an uncertain future. We can’t go out for extravagant restaurant meals, even if we wanted to. Most of us will be celebrating with significantly fewer friends and family members than usual. With all those limitations, why even bother trying to cook a classic holiday feast with all the trimmings?
But here’s the thing: You still deserve a holiday feast. You deserve to gather around the table or couch with your family or even just yourself, and to enjoy a meal that feels special, budget be damned.
So, I decided to give myself my own challenge: Blair’s Grocery Outlet Holiday Meal. Before running over to my neighborhood Grocery Outlet, I gave myself these five rules:
