The feasts will go on, with side order of bargain hunting

VIRGINIA BEACH

Turkey. Roast beef. Candied yams. Macaroni and cheese. Sweet potato pie. Potato salad. Peas. Cranberry sauce.

Laverne Johnson's family will be eating well today. And don't worry about dessert: Her sister will be bringing her highly rated chocolate cake. Like many Thanksgiving shoppers interviewed this week, Johnson said she wasn't trimming back on her menu, despite the contracting economy. It's a holiday, after all.

Echoing a common theme, though, she hunted a bit more ferociously for bargains this year.

"I'm trying to get everything on sale," said Johnson, 55, a certified nursing assistant who lives in the Hollywood Homes/Maple Hall area in Norfolk. "I'm looking for the cheapest things."

On Tuesday, at the Farm Fresh store at Independence Boulevard and Haygood Road, Johnson found a deal to her liking: 16 -ounce cans of whole-berry cranberry sauce from Richfood - the Farm Fresh brand - at two for $1. That was half the price of the Ocean Spray variety.

"You can't beat that," said Johnson, grabbing a can.

A few minutes later, in the same aisle, Donna Duncan, 46, was eyeing the Richfood applesauce, also cheaper than its competitors.

"I'm much more likely to look for the generic now, where I used to be a label snob," said Duncan, a bartender who lives in the Thoroughgood neighborhood in Virginia Beach. "That's what the economy and a divorce will do."

The cost to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving meal for 10 adults will rise 13 percent, or $5.15, this year, to $45.89 from $40.74 last year, according to an estimate from the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation.

Such a price increase will depress Thanksgiving spending about 3.4 percent - to $28.5 billion - this year, according to IBISWorld, a Los Angeles-based market research company.

At Farm Fresh, though, sales are up from Thanksgiving last year, said Ron Dennis, president and chief operating officer. He predicted a record season for turkeys.

"It may not be the high-end wine," said Colleen Justice, director of the Farm Fresh store in the Haygood neighborhood, "but they're still buying the trimmings."

More consumers, Dennis said, are switching to store brands and using coupons.

"What I'm seeing is, the customers are certainly looking to save money, and we are obviously very sensitive to that," he said.

The store, Justice said, last week cut the price of sweet potatoes to 18 cents a pound from 69 cents. Its turkey deal: Butterballs weighing at least 16 pounds go for 39 cents a pound, with an accompanying $25 purchase.

The turkey section was a popular spot at the Haygood store Tuesday. After surveying the assortment, Betty Mizelle, 71, and her husband, Melvin, 72, chose a 23-pounder. They expect to feed 10 to 14 people today at their house in the Lake Smith Terrace neighborhood.

"We will have the same things we've always had," Melvin Mizelle said. "The economy at this point hasn't affected our shopping."

Duncan bought a 22-1/2 -pound Butterball turkey. For her, other prices were less delectable - $1.88 a pound for a Smithfield Foods spiral ham, $1.50 for a can of corn for her famous jalapeno corn dish.

"It's not too much for me not to get it," Duncan said of the canned corn. "But I'm like: You've got to be kidding."

Labor, fuel and feed costs have driven up the price of Smithfield hams this year, said Dennis Pittman, a company spokesman. He said he couldn't give an average but that store ham prices could differ by as much as 50 cents a pound.

Like Farm Fresh, Food Lion has seen a "significant shift" toward store-brand purchases this year, said spokeswoman Karen Peterson, who is based in Salisbury, N.C.

Teresa Land, 54, who lives in the Sandbridge section of Virginia Beach, bought most of her Thanksgiving goods at Wal-Mart and Bloom, a Food Lion store.

She volunteers. Her husband is a firefighter. She has a son at Virginia Wesleyan College. Land has cut back on driving and movie going. At the supermarket, she buys more store labels.

But she didn't pare down her Thanksgiving menu, which she estimated cost "over 100 easy." It will include ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes and dressing.

"The holidays - Christmas, Thanksgiving - are huge in our family, and they're big to me," Land said. "I would never cut back on anything like that that's special and brings everyone together."

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com