Super Scrimpers

ciderwithrosie_2

I've just put in a Tesco delivery order for all my drinks (heavy stuff) - beer, cider, wine, malibu, ginger wine, cinzano, fizzy pop, fruit juice, ice cubes and milk. There are 7 of us for Christmas Day (all will be having alcohol of some sort) and we have lots of friends and family visit. At present it's around £80 and that's before I even start on the food. I just feel I'm careful with shopping all year, I don't spend recklessly, so for a few days a year we can relax and have a good time.

Butterfly_Brain

I have six to feed this year and I have spent less than £35 and that includes 2 bottles of wine, the turkey is 9kg so it will do at least four meals plus a soup and stock from the carcasse, the brussels parsnips, yorkshire puddings, pigs in blankets and roast potatoes are already prepared and in the freezer in total I have spent £34.91 spread over 3 months
So the menu is as follows

Crackers - the pulling kind £2.50 in the January sales

Prawn Cocktail / HM soup/HM stoneground bread rolls

Turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots, brussels, HM yorkshire pud with gravy

HM Christmas pudding and HM trifle for dessert for those who don't care for pudding . I will make brandy cream from whatever cream is leftover after making the trifle.

shelley_crow

We don't bother with starters for christmas dinner. It's just me, OH and our sons, 6 years and 15 months.

We have chicken, partly because it's cheaper at this time of year and partly because there's not much difference between the taste IMO. Veggies, roast potatoes, yorkshire puds and stuffing cost pennies.

Pudding will be a fresh cream Black Forest Gateau from Morrisons, mmmm.

We can't really have much to drink in the day but will probably have a few from the stash once the kids go to bed. Our friends went through a spate of buying us booze if they were coming over, which was lovely of them. Now we have a backlog so that won't cost anything.

As another poster said, enjoyment of the meal is paramount, regardless of cost.

On our first Christmas as a family, we went down to our local for a drink to celebrate with the owners of the pub. We found out that one of our friends was going to go home and have a frozen pizza for christmas dinner. He was 25 and his family had gone skiing, it was his first christmas alone. He came home with us and I made the food we had stretch between the four of us. I've learnt to buy a bit more in just in case and a similar thing happened a couple of years later.

Chickenopolis

I have not thought about our Christmas dinner yet :eek:, let alone the amount we will spend . In my head I finish work next Wednesday, then I will think about it. I economise all year so feel that a blow out on Christmas day is quite acceptable and we do like to spoil our guests, thats the real pleasure . We will probably get a nice rib of beef that OH will cook and block the waste disposal unit up with peelings like he does every Christmas :rotfl:(we have two compost bins- the lazy old goat). I might drink one glass of wine and OH does not drink so the focus is on the food and the company tbh. Roasts are my favourite even in a heatwave so its all good...can't wait now!

But I love hearing what everyone else is doing !!

LondonDreamer

I think it depends how "all in" that budget is. If it's just for the main meal, yes it could be considered excessive. But if it's for all food and drink for the entire Christmas, I think it's actually pretty reasonable. Our Christmas celebration usually starts on Christmas Eve and doesn't finish until Boxing Day and includes anywhere from 6-12 people, so that's a lot of meals/snacks/drinks to cover.

I'm not even hosting this year and I've spent nearly a tenner myself. That's just on ingredients for the cake and various sweet treats like shortbread and fudge.

PipneyJane

What on earth are they eating/drinking?

I don't expect my Christmas* dinner to come to much more than £50 and I'm buying a goose from a kosher butcher (take the supermarket price for meat, double it and then you'll be close to whatever a kosher butcher charges). I'm expecting to pay £8/kg for the goose, so around £50, which is still cheaper than the one bought from a regular butcher a few years ago which we took as our contribution to a Christmas meal elsewhere.

We'll have a soup starter (HM probably parsnip & lemon), chestnut stuffing, lots of roast veggies on the side, with Christmas pudding to follow. If I spend more than £10 on that lot including wine, I'll be surprised.




* When I was in the butcher's yesterday, I was gobsmacked when a woman announced that she was "cooking Christmas this year and how long does a turkey take to roast?". Christmas is the Voldemort festival - the one that cannot be named. It's not one of ours but it seems everyone does Christmas dinner anyway, however most Jewish people don't call it that in public. I at least have an excuse - my husband's family are Polish Christians so we host Polish Christmas on Christmas Eve.

oldtractor

It seems to be booze which bumps up the cost significantly. Fortunately we dont much like wine, the odd cheap bottle at xmas and new year is all we have . DH brought 8 bottles from Tescos t'other day for some reason. We chose a fizz for New year,a red for doing mulled wine with and another red to go with the beef on xmas day . The others had Chardonnay in then. I really just cannot drink that,its horrid,so they are being returned tomorrow. I have friends who drink wine every week,some of them quite expensive too, I just cant see the point. Each to their own.

oldtractor

any chance of the parsnip and lemon soup recipe Pipney Jane?

lostinrates

oldtractor wrote: »

It seems to be booze which bumps up the cost significantly. Fortunately we dont much like wine, the odd cheap bottle at xmas and new year is all we have . DH brought 8 bottles from Tescos t'other day for some reason. We chose a fizz for New year,a red for doing mulled wine with and another red to go with the beef on xmas day . The others had Chardonnay in then. I really just cannot drink that,its horrid,so they are being returned tomorrow. I have friends who drink wine every week,some of them quite expensive too, I just cant see the point. Each to their own.

booze and meat. (e.g. we usually have a bird and a ham (ham gets used for sandwiches and left over plates from chritsmas eve onwards)). sometimes we have a couple of geese.

also, IMO, for many (not us) the junk peple graze on for more than the twelve days.

for us a boost in cost is dh being home for longer than a weekend..but I'd rather have the cost of feeding him nd have him here!

personally, in the house we might well have a bottle of wine a week anyay through out the year. I don't drink in jan to the end of march (accept for valentines day when if its at weekend I'll have something with dh) and have been off wine recently too, but while its an ''unnecessary'' cost its a nice one

angeltreats

Wonder if the £50 includes a Christmas cake. If you make it yourself, it's not cheap.