Cost of M & S Christmas food

Aldi do a good range of Christmas food and sweets, have a look.

We have bought our Christmas necessities and treats from M&S for years. Will be looking elsewhere this year. Had booked my collection slot as always but once i started browsing and seeing the prices I changed my mind. Tesco Finest here I come 😜

The thing is, M&S Food is always busy, and they are expanding their food business every year. There’s no doubt enough people will pay the prices they charge and keep them in profit. I do buy some items in M&S for Christmas every year, particularly from their gluten free Christmas range, which is the best - in fact, their gluten free range generally is better than elsewhere, the only other supermarket with a good selection is Sainsburys.

I booked my Waitrose slot mid September, threw on laundry & cleaning products, fizz, wine and beer.
Are you expecting to make a lot of mess and stains GrannyGravy13? 😹 🍷

I remember reading, about the cons of having a late delivery of the Christmas turkey, obviously wise to take it out of its packaging before the day, as some complained theirs had gone off. Also read, hard to belive, one supermarket retailer, having run out of turkeys, delivered, as a substitute turkey twizzlers hard to believe when it seems there are still plenty in the shops come Christmas Eve.

We get our Christmas meat every year from Donald Russell, online delivery. The meat is great quality and we’ve bought a large turkey crown, a large gammon, a leg of lamb and a lovely beef joint. It was approx £250 including delivery.

We get a few small things from M&S, but nothing excessive and the rest comes from local greengrocers or Tescos.

Day to day we often get our meat from a local butchers, but have found Aldi does very good steaks and great fresh produce.

Shop around and choose carefully, there are 6 adults for Christmas and Boxing Day and we do splash out at Christmas.

As for pressies, I save monthly with Park, and use their Purple card and Amazon card (pre paid from my monthly savings) for online shopping, for both presents and “extras” like Christmas crackers.

There is a very wide range of shops including Boots, who have great Christmas offers.

I have a regular Sainsbury's delivery so i'm in that zone but my next door neighbour forgot she had ordered a 'good' bottle of brandy just to reserve the slot. She had a bit of a shock when it turned up.

I haven't even thought about it and didn't realise slots were open (and probably all gone).

Beans on toast with champagne sounds an interesting alternative to turkey!

GrannyGravy13

Doodledog

I still don't know how many will be here on Christmas Day, but for anyone interested, if you have a Sainsbury's delivery pass the slots are available to book today. For those without a pass I think it is 23rd November. You have to check out, but can amend your order until the day before it is due.

I booked my Waitrose slot mid September, threw on laundry & cleaning products, fizz, wine and beer 🙀

I must to remember to go back and do a proper order otherwise Christmas food will be interesting.

Wow, I thought today was early! I've put in a decent bottle of champagne, so if I do end up going out (unlikely) and forget to change the order we can at least toast my ineptitude .

A friend of mine once got an email asking if she really only wanted cornflakes and gin on her Christmas order - she'd booked early, been invited out and forgot to change it.

Doodledog

I still don't know how many will be here on Christmas Day, but for anyone interested, if you have a Sainsbury's delivery pass the slots are available to book today. For those without a pass I think it is 23rd November. You have to check out, but can amend your order until the day before it is due.

I booked my Waitrose slot mid September, threw on laundry & cleaning products, fizz, wine and beer 🙀

I must to remember to go back and do a proper order otherwise Christmas food will be interesting.

I'm not very keen on all this "party food" stuff. It all looks very tempting and exotic but I've usually found it pretty disappointing and not living up to the hype

Me too.
The "nice bits" of it are too small compared to all the pastry or whatever.

I still don't know how many will be here on Christmas Day, but for anyone interested, if you have a Sainsbury's delivery pass the slots are available to book today. For those without a pass I think it is 23rd November. You have to check out, but can amend your order until the day before it is due.

If you think M & S food is expensive don’t go into central London, restaurant prices both food and drink including nonalcoholic would make your eyes water.

I'm not very keen on all this "party food" stuff. It all looks very tempting and exotic but I've usually found it pretty disappointing and not living up to the hype. It invariably tastes "shop bought". I'm not taking any moral high ground at all, but personally I'd rather just have my own home cooked gammon with crusty bread (and maybe mash or chips) and pickles for Boxing Day. Turkey sandwiches with a good cheese board does the trick on Christmas Day evening.

Not everything we eat has to be healthy. Life can be a balance of good for you, bad for you, home made, convenient or even takeaways.

Allira

escaped

And a Charlie Bigham alternative for two. £29.95
I quite like his meals.

Charlie is here this evening cooking for us 😁

High saturated fat and salt in his ready meals. Tasty but not very healthy.

escaped

GrannyGravy13

fancythat

Nannan2

Visgirl- mùst be rich 😁😆

I worked that out too!

Unnecessary

I thought we'd had a welcome rest from those sort of rude comments for quite a while.

These comments don’t warrant the head space your giving them 😉
They come from a place of envy or ignorance.

SueDonim

We’ve had this same conversation in our family. I assume M&S must now be aiming at a market of impoverished aristocrats who can no longer afford the staff. 🤔

Their basics can be a reasonable price but once anything is added to gussy it up, the price goes through the roof. It also annoys me that their pre-order system doesn’t mean you can go in and collect your order and leave. You have to queue while staff pick out the items you ordered maybe two months ago and it’s all chaotically (dis)organised. A local farm shop is doing a free range turkey breast with accompaniments for £48 and as we’ll be just four of this year, that will be perfect.

Your comment about having to queue while your order is picked made me smile SueDonim.

I worked in a number of M&S stores before I retired, none of which had much back stage refrigeration, so the logistics of handling hundreds of customer orders, most of which were for multiple items was challenging to say the least.

The stock for these orders is of course is on top of the huge amount of additional stock needed to replenish the shop floor, so in my experience the reason your order is picked while you wait is that the store hasn’t the room to store it pre picked.
And yes it was always organised chaos!

Doodledog

Allira

AmberGran

I agree RosieandherMaw I don't buy a lot of prepared food because I like to cook and am able to cook. But the day will come when I am not able, and I will be only too happy to pay M&S/Sainsbury/Waitrose/Co-op/Asda or anyone else to do most of it for me. Can't remember the last time I made puff pastry but I don't think anyone has noticed 😄

I've only ever made puff pastry once.
It was an interesting experiment. 😁

I used to like Tesco's shortcrust pastry made with Normandy butter, no longer available, sadly.

Same here re the puff pastry. It was for a Christmas tree-shaped pie with a chestnut based filling. It was nice enough, but what a faff!

This is reminding me of an old episode of Sunday Brunch when Simon Rimmer was showing us all how to make Battenberg, including the marzipan. They had a viewer phone-in, and someone informed him that (a) you could buy marzipan in the bakery aisle, and (b) it would probably be near to the Battenberg, which at the time sold for 99p . He couldn't stop laughing,

Oh yes, I made a Battenburg cake from scratch too.
Once.

I did always make the marzipan for the Christmas cake too. It's not so oily as the bought stuff.

A few years ago M&S used to have a fair few turkeys left on Christmas Eve. I used to avoid the turkey collection queue, that took up half the food department, and walk round to the poultry section. I would pick up a turkey, which would have been reduced, take it to the check out and use my staff discount to buy it, and then wander home while people were still coming in to queue.

Nowadays I just get everything from Aldi. A couple of turkey joints, all the trimmings, and one of their luxury puddings. I find that my homemade cranberry sauce makes everything taste good. This year I have bought the luxury Sicilian Orange panetonne form Waitrose. I had one last year and it was lovely. I waited until they did their pre Christmas price cut before I bought it.

My late husband used to drive for Waitrose and he said he used to find himself waiting outside the food manufacturers along with lorries from Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury et al

I think the last time I made puff pastry was in domestic science at school. I always like Shirley Conrans saying, "life's too short to stuff a mushroom". and I feel the same about puff pastry.

Allira

AmberGran

I agree RosieandherMaw I don't buy a lot of prepared food because I like to cook and am able to cook. But the day will come when I am not able, and I will be only too happy to pay M&S/Sainsbury/Waitrose/Co-op/Asda or anyone else to do most of it for me. Can't remember the last time I made puff pastry but I don't think anyone has noticed 😄

I've only ever made puff pastry once.
It was an interesting experiment. 😁

I used to like Tesco's shortcrust pastry made with Normandy butter, no longer available, sadly.

Same here re the puff pastry. It was for a Christmas tree-shaped pie with a chestnut based filling. It was nice enough, but what a faff!

This is reminding me of an old episode of Sunday Brunch when Simon Rimmer was showing us all how to make Battenberg, including the marzipan. They had a viewer phone-in, and someone informed him that (a) you could buy marzipan in the bakery aisle, and (b) it would probably be near to the Battenberg, which at the time sold for 99p . He couldn't stop laughing,

AmberGran

I agree RosieandherMaw I don't buy a lot of prepared food because I like to cook and am able to cook. But the day will come when I am not able, and I will be only too happy to pay M&S/Sainsbury/Waitrose/Co-op/Asda or anyone else to do most of it for me. Can't remember the last time I made puff pastry but I don't think anyone has noticed 😄

Charlie is my darling, especially this evening when I got home at 6 pm!

AmberGran

I agree RosieandherMaw I don't buy a lot of prepared food because I like to cook and am able to cook. But the day will come when I am not able, and I will be only too happy to pay M&S/Sainsbury/Waitrose/Co-op/Asda or anyone else to do most of it for me. Can't remember the last time I made puff pastry but I don't think anyone has noticed 😄

I've only ever made puff pastry once.
It was an interesting experiment. 😁

I used to like Tesco's shortcrust pastry made with Normandy butter, no longer available, sadly.