Are we being prepared for Christmas food shortages?

Since our DCs left home (one has our DGCs) we don’t ‘do’ Christmas.

As there are so many in laws and other considerations we could see what was going to unfold.

We say to our children that we don’t expect to see them at Christmas, which frees them up to go wherever they choose to.

Our trade-off is that they come to a villa with us for a week of the year. They only pay for their own flights and any extra food/alcohol. Now that they are older they all pay for a restaurant meal for one of the nights.

At Christmas DH and I eat an anti-Christmas meal - a homemade curry or similar - we sleep in late and sit around in our pyjamas watching television all day.

Which is all to say that a lack of ‘traditional’ Christmas food won’t be a problem.

I do think that some people get really wound up about Christmas.

Sitting in a tin is the Christmas cake I made in October 2020. I'm assuming it will be fine. Not that it matters that much if not as I'm unlikely to have more than 2 people with me on "THE" day, and it's quite possible that I will be on my own for the 4th year running. Cake usually gets eaten by visiting friends in the first half of the following year but of course we had lockdown last year!

I've hated Crimbo (won't even use the other "C" word) for as long as I can remember, even telling my mum when I was 8 that I wanted beans on toast for dinner on 25/12! (I didn't get what I wanted so, being stubborn, I sat at the dinner table with a roast dinner and refused to eat it and in true form, my mum made me sit there all day until bedtime, then it was put back in front of me at breakfast. I sat at that table all day, every day until 28/12 with the same plate of cold food in front of me).
Some may say 'baa humbug' but even my sons (32 & 25) don't care for it, I don't have a tree or decorations other than a 10cm stuffed snowman that I hang on the hook on the inside of my front door for a few days (there's a wicker heart hanging there the rest of the year).
The boys now have their own lives and I live alone. I pick up my final bits of shopping (milk, bread etc) on about 21/12, go home, lock the doors and see/speak to no-one (my choice)
until at least 28/12, so 25/12 is usually spent asleep with the dog curled up by my side.
I don't do turkey or any big meal, I'm happy with a small piece of gammon (£4 in Tesco or Asda) which I do in my pressure cooker with a few carrots, new potatoes and some honey, which will see me through at least 4 days and I'll have whatever else I fancy that's in the fridge/freezer/cupboards until well into the new year when all the silliness is over and done with.
I've cut back on card and present buying too, I don't buy for anyone other than my best friend and my sons, although the lads usually get cash unless they know what they want and tell me in September/October, so some years I can get away with buying just three cards, one gift and doing bank transfers for my sons!

A couple we know breed turkeys for Christmas.
They have already asked us for our order of 2.
I am growing the veg at the allotment.
Have some sausages and bacon in the freezer.
Have a jar of cranberry sauce and packet of stuffing in the larder.
I will make everything else or we will go without.

My eldest and youngest daughters are very much like me. Especially the youngest.
Middle daughter will buy everything ready made ( food ) and an excess of it ( to be fair it is actually her husband who does the shopping when he comes home every 2 weeks (Navy). He will also buy an excess of alcohol. That daughter will also also buy new decorations, new Christmas pyjamas !!! etc etc. They will also buy far too much chocolate than necessary.
Don't know what they will do if there are any shortages

This is not relevant I know but it looks as though we might get our holiday together ( 14 of us plus foster grandaughter) in Bude to see the New Year in after 3 postponements and then cancellations of other holidays during Covid. All 8 adults double jabbed. All others under 12. Hence the 2nd turkey.
So excited

GranJan60

I love Christmas but I agree it will probably have to be scaled back this year. We will manage with what we have/can get but it really angers me how ordinary people have to put up with all the inconveniences that will only increase now because of Brexit. The worst for me is probably not being able to see friends in Germany and France over Christmas - feel like I’m stuck on Plague Island disconnected from Europe which is just what this Government wants.

Sadly you’re in the minority here GranJan, most people seem delighted that everyone may well be forced to scale back their plans whether they wish to or not. It’s interesting to consider where they’ll draw the line - would they be as happy for example with masses of porridge (cheap, simple, filling and nutritious - none of your fancy modern or foreign muck, what’s not for them to love?) instead of Christmas dinner and pudding? From the general tenet of the contributions here, it would appear so.

I make what I can - stuffing, pigs in blankets, cranberry sauce, mince pies, puds, brandy butter. It’s not virtuous, I actually enjoy it and I do have the time.

No cake any more, though - hardly anybody ever ate it, not even my non-iced version (nobody liked icing) - with just assorted nuts on top. I used to end up giving much of it to the birds.

Dh will eat any amount of Chr. pudding, though - last year I made 2, just for us, plus a veggie ‘suet’ one for dd and family. We were eating it through much of January. ??

alltheglitterglue, the villa idea sounds great and the anti Christmas meal in pyjamas

Granjan60
How sad you cannot see friends in France and Germany over Xmas .Myself having colleagues with relatives in both of these countries have not 'as yet' found this a problem.
Clearly not such a 'walk in the park' as before Brexit but not totally surmountable.

We will eat what we have got, otherwise we will do without and I’m sure it will do us all a lot of good.

I read a letter in The Times responding to the media hysteria at the prospect of pigs in blankets being unavailable at Christmas - “The cooks of Great Britain have got 4 months to practice wrapping a rasher of bacon round a chipolata sausage and cooking it” Fancy that!

Just decided will defrost freezer to set Turkey Brussels sprouts early and black currant cheesecake when I store .Hopefully grandchildren can decide early enough for Christmas.before shops run out My daughter has waited months to get her daughter logo uniform ?cause

Nannan2

Thanks for the pud advice CC.?

I do love a good Christmas pud!

Im just carrying on as normal.

Offspring have just invited themselves around for Christmas Day. So it’s plans, lists, shopping and cooking as usual.

I love it!??

I've still got last year's pudding as no one came to eat it. I buy crackers and cards in the sales after Christmas so I've got them all ready. I make my own mince pies and cranberry sauce and will hopefully be able to get the ingredients. As for the rest we can eat whatever's around.

I’m going to start soaking fruits in rum to make a Caribbean black cake for Christmas
Will order goose from our local butchers and potatos about 2 weeks in advance for Christmas.
Have a pudding left over from last year
Will make chicken stock for the gravy a few weeks before and then get some veg nearer the time but canned sweetcorn will do if nothing else!

Working full time so not much time to shop anyway. It’s only one day!

Christmas has become too commercial now and lost its
Meaning.
Obesity is now a problem in the Western world whilst many are starving.
Children spend too much time on their electronic things to play with all these plastic toys which end up on the rubbish tips as will all the packaging from the food etc.kk
When I was young although I came from a middle class family we had chicken for Christmas dinner and we only had one present at Christmas and birthdays.
My greatgrandchildren are playing with wooden toys that my husband made for my children.

I remember last year, fear of shortages and reading about Xmas on gransnet and feeling tense and comparing myself to the grans with well stocked larders and freezers and home cooked puddings and big family parties and so on and today I am pleased to read this thread and find myself very relaxed about this Christmas. I don’t really feel a need to eat any sort of special food. I can’t eat chocolate or dried fruit anyway so most traditional sweet treats are out. I hate roast dinners and roast birds. It would be nice to go to a carol service but that will probably be off the menu with covid. I am experiencing a good thing the plague has brought. A time of less stress and of becoming used to fewer things and experiences of all kinds. Of feeling accepting of this. Calmer. More appreciative of what small things I can have rather than being exercised by what we are led to believe we should have. There have been losses, but at the moment I am feeling a small gain.

I actually think talking about Christmas and what to buy is obscene. So many people using food banks in our country and so many in Afghanistan who might have no future at all . It seems dreadful that anyone should be talking about stocking up for Christmas, at any time but particularly now.

Beans on Toast it is then

As long as we all have some kind of food to eat and things we can give our loved ones - hopefully we will be able to see them this year - then that’s all we can ask for in comparison to the poor folks made homeless by the taliban. Maybe this year people will be more realistic and less materialistic!

I'm finally the end of my box of 12 crackers. Have only needed 2 each year so at least I can finally change the colour Christmas 2022

So happy to have an alternative Christmas too xx

Maybe the Christmas past of all excess is passe now and out of Kelter with modern society.

I stopped buying loads of Christmas food a couple of years ago as we threw it out when we didn’t eat it so wasted our money. Christmas falls on a weekend this year so I think it will just be a Sunday dinner with a few extras on Xmas day then gammon and chips on Boxing day. I’ve already done my Christmas present shopping in last year’s sales so not panicking at all.

A vegetarian Christmas for everyone and let the Turkeys et al have Christmas too.
Let's start a new fashion