We at Consumer Reports are always trying to pass along ideas to save money, and one of the most-effective strategies is to buy store brands  as often as possible. We get on our soapbox all the time, most recently in the October issue. By substituting store brands for national names, you can cut your grocery bill by an average of 25 percent across all categories, according to industry estimates, but in practice, experience has taught us that the savings can easily add up to more than twice as much. And as our tests have shown, quality differences are often minimal.

As Steve Saltzman, my colleague in the Home Franchise, pointed out in a recent blog, the average cost of Thanksgiving dinner for 10 is $42.91, down about 4 percent from last year's average of $44.61, according to the American Farm Bureau.

With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to enter the how-low-can-you-go sweepstakes at a local A&P supermarket. First I filled my cart with many (not all) holiday necessities (estimated to generously feed that mythical table of 10) with the store’s own products, then with the big brands. After all, if you’re going to serve stuffing out of a box, how does it really matter whether it’s Stove Top or America’s Choice? At the end of the day, switching to store brands saved me around $34, or 36 percent.

Just for the record, I’m not suggesting you use packaged goods for all of your Thanksgiving dishes. I’ll be chopping onions, dicing celery, rolling out pie crust, and peeling sweet potatoes on Thursday like everyone else. Also, most of us tend to splurge on the holidays, so you might not want to cut corners.

But if you are planning on buying a few canned, frozen, or bagged products to ease your workload, we’ve got Ratings of stuffing and gravy to make your decision a good one. And if you need an inexpensive, fast oven to cook your bird, we’ve got a recommendation, too.  

• Since A&P didn’t have its own brand, we used the less expensive Shady Brook (99 cents per pound) as an alternative to Butter Ball ($1.29 per pound).