By Susan Cooke
I ONCE heard tell of an elderly lady who made her list-making very obvious to her family and, having filled the page each morning, ticked off the first item without moving from her rocking chair.
When her grandson queried how she could do this, she showed him the list. The first item on it was: ‘Make a list.’
But before you head for the rocking chair, you need to do some research. You can’t make a shopping list without knowing what you already have. Now is the time to defrost the freezer and find out what is lurking in its depths. You might be pleasantly surprised and discover some treat long forgotten.
pic: Susan Cooke
Unfortunately, what is more likely is that you will be faced with a stack of unlabelled pots of unidentifiable spludge and, if you want to make space for the Christmas goodies, you are going to have to do something about them.
List the good stuff as ‘festive’ or ‘non-festive’ and plan your early December menus to use up all the mundane items like cottage pie and macaroni cheese to make room for more exciting fare.
Tidying the pantry will also help to refine your shopping list, but it’s not just a case of topping up stocks of essentials. Christmas demands some ingredients that you may never otherwise buy – like ground almonds – and you may have to look further afield than your local supermarket. If you make your list now, there may still be time for your regular supplier to order what you want.
It’s no good muttering that the local store doesn’t stock this or that. If the manager doesn’t know that you want it, why should he put it on the shelves? Communicate… and if you do it in good time your supplier has a reasonable chance of being able to satisfy your needs.
Once you know what you have, you can retire to the rocking chair with a pen and notebook to work out what else you need. Now you have earned that cup of coffee.
Now there’s a thought… coffee. You might make do with a cheap chicory blend all year round, but how about some REAL coffee for Christmas. Give your upcountry visitors something they can’t get at home and probably didn’t know existed – genuine, locally-grown South Coast coffee.
