Will That Be Cash or Check?

The big holiday family dinner — for guests it’s a delight, but for the cook it can be a nightmare, a torture, even a bankrupting debacle. And that’s if it’s a GOOD year.

So baking and cooking moms and grandmas all over the world, as Christmas Eve settles in — take heart! You can always follow the example of one British grandmother who decided to charge forty-five dollars a head for a holiday feast for her family and friends. 

Hayley Garbutt, of Filey in Yorkshire decided this year that instead of going broke from cooking for a dozen people on Christmas, she’d turn the tables and see if she could come out ahead of the game. So she made her guests, each one, pay forty-five bucks upfront for a place at the groaning board. And, surprisingly enough, they all ponied up cheerfully.

Why, you may ask. 

It probably has something to do with the fact that Garbutt has told her guests that once she’s deducted the cost of the ingredients for the dinner, she’ll use the rest of the funds to buy them all presents. So her guests will not only get a good meal, but a gift bag afterwards. And as they say up in Yorkshire — “You can’t say fairer than that!”