SHOP AHEAD AND SAVE
It may seem premature discussing the winter holidays this early but if you’ve shopped lately, you know the merchants don’t think so. Until some 30 years ago, the marketing tactic was to feature specialized products, at appealing prices, close to their designated holiday. Now by Dec. 1st, many holiday items are sold out and those which remain are at premium prices due to demand, like flavorings, pastry decorations, fruit, especially dried and candied, nuts, gourmet goods and frozen prepared sides and appetizers. If you’re a Christmas Turkey family, as we are, by Thanksgiving Monday you won’t find poultry seasoning, stuffing ingredients, cranberries in any form, sweet potatoes, even the bird is in limited quantity at double, possibly triple the price of the week before.
Nowadays, the wise shopper will have all the holiday menus planned and the ingredients, save for perishables, stored away by Thanksgiving. All the sales on the products needed for the holidays do still exist, they simply quietly take place over the previous weeks, advertised as departmental events not holiday ones. Particularly now with food prices rising, learning how and when to spot these sales not only saves time and stress, but money and it amortizes the holiday food bill. Spreading the cost of holiday meals, entertaining and even food offerings and gifts, eases stress in paying the bills.
So listen up because October to mid-November is the time to watch for those sales and in-store specials. Pay attention to the market flyers and when shopping check the quantities of things you will need, such as pastry decorations, spices, herbs, prepared frozen products and even items such as fresh cranberries, which disappear the day after Thanksgiving, but freeze beautifully for December uses.
It sounds like a lot to remember when shopping but it really isn’t. The first step is to plan the menus for your holiday events, then list the required ingredients, including foods you might need in extra amounts, like butter and also make note of those not in your normal pantry. Keep the list handy when studying the weekly market flyers and add any needed items on sale to your regular shopping list. Keep an eye out for other things on the holiday list when shopping. You know most of the things you’ll need from experience, so vigilance quickly becomes habit and, in fact, a money-saving one to practice all year, especially in our current food situation.
The best prices on baking ingredients and dairy are in October. For produce, meats, canned goods and frozen products it’s early November. But here’s the catch with the food industry, for the last decade or so, in December, the products on sale earlier become ‘Featured Items’ at regular prices rather than holiday reductions. The reason could be simple merchandizing greed. People are in buying mode, caution is replaced by determination to get whatever enriches the holidays and food products are low ticket compared to gift items.
A slyer reason could be that prices always return to normal in January giving us a jolt. If they’re already at normal, we’re less likely to notice a slight hike. You see our food prices have been rising 2% to 7% per year for a decade ever since the government lost control of our food supply to private corporations. Prices were to continue rising at that rate for the foreseeable future, but, as evidenced by the past weeks, the world situation changed that. A government is obligated to care for the people, but the purpose of a corporation, especially in this case, a foreign one, is profit. See the footnote to this post below.
I’ve been preparing for the entire holiday season before Thanksgiving for several years now and it has several advantages. I have more time to plan and shop with no rush and the extra time makes it easier to amortize the food expenses, defraying the cost. Time is also amortized. My schedule is freer and I’ve learned to prepare dishes ahead I never thought possible. The actual holiday is more relaxed and fun for the whole family with no need to panic if something goes wrong. Each year, I’ve written a post on the subject and they’re in the site Archives. I want people to experience the stress relief of knowing that when it’s time to tackle a kitchen project, everything needed is at hand without having to gorge a chunk out of your busy schedule to shop.
Personally, the idea of preparing ahead for the holidays appealed to me because as the nest emptied and family grew, the tasks didn’t increase in number, but they did in size. Fewer hands around to help meant a lot more work for me alone. Professionally, the idea intrigued me. The main function of a personal chef service is to provide meals for its clients to consume later. This combination of motives has given me the incentive for the past several years to explore how far I can push the envelope.
I always made my fruit breads and cheeses a month or more ahead, to give them time to age, using liquor as a preserving ingredient. Then I found cookie batters could be prepared two weeks before baking. Next I learned that elements of stuffing could be made well in advance. Raw seasoning ingredients, celery, onion, herbs can all be chopped or blended as early as summer and frozen. Bread cubes can be toasted or fried and keep in tins for weeks as do decorated but unfrosted Christmas cookies.
All these discoveries brought welcome savings but nothing opened my eyes like a request from a fellow personal chef. She contracted to cater a wedding reception for 400 and asked for help from others in our U.S.P.C.A. chapter*. The job held some real challenges; the bride had downloaded the menu and recipes, most distinct variations on classics; the venue offered a wait staff and dining needs, linins etc., but only a ‘holding ‘ pantry, no real kitchen. All the food had to be delivered ready to serve.
How the chef, an experienced caterer, solved the obvious problems doesn’t disguise the fact that most of the food had to be prepared days ahead. I learned this is normal for caterers dealing with large events and was amazed at the ways these experts in safe handling food, keep it unspoiled and fresh tasting. Imagine being able to duplicate catering methods for your personal holiday preparations!
The first step is to review your normal seasonal routine. Do you host a major dinner; throw a party, entertain house guests, make food gifts or donate a culinary effort to a bazaar or other event? If you follow my weekly shopping schedule you’ll know the first move is to plan your menus for each occasion and compile a detailed list of all the ingredients required. Then as you read the market flyers to plan each week’s shopping trip, if you see an item your holiday list, you make a note to get it at the sale price.
Remember though, supplies bought ahead should be kept in the original package and stored at the same temperatures as in the market. Produce, of course, needs refrigeration. If bought far in advance, or to be served out of season, consult my blog of Sept 22, 2016 on freezing fresh produce and there are more reference posts in the site archives. They will tell you how to take advantage of sales on fresh vegetables and other products now.
Amortizing time with advance preparation is equally straightforward, with a few simple rules. One is never re-freeze anything without cooking it. If adding a thawed vegetable to a dish, cook it and plan to re-heat it. Be aware that most seafood, especially shellfish is frozen for transport. The only exceptions are fish your monger guarantees were caught within 24 hours and shellfish steamed in store daily. The second is that if a product exists in the markets’ glass cases in frozen form, you can freeze your variation, but if it doesn’t there is usually a good reason, so don’t try to innovate. This is particularly true of imitation ‘diet’ and/or ‘no-cook’ cream sauces, which tend to separate when frozen.
Hence, tried and true menu choices are important in advance preparation but even a traditional holiday dinner comprised of family recipes usually affords some wiggle room. Updated twists aren’t always a bad thing. For example, roasted vegetables done a few days ahead can be slipped in with the roasting meat, saving prep time on the day of the event. Frozen vegetables can be cooked to near-doneness and kept chilled, with a little butter or flavored oil, even in their serving dishes, a few days ahead, as can garnishes, and the two combined before or after quick re-heating. Salad ingredients can be cut and stored, chilled in water for several days and the dressings mixed weeks ahead.
Buffets are easier to prep ahead than seated dinners. Food served at table should be hot, but even roasts can be cooked ahead and served room temperature at a buffet. Casseroles and sauced meat dishes are the darlings of advance preparation. They can be cooked, frozen, thawed, reheated and still taste fresh. Of course, cold foods are a natural. They can be prepared and simply chilled until served or frozen and just thawed. No effort is needed at the last minute and minimizing the last-minute work load is one of the main reasons to do advance preparation.
Desserts are a good category to reference to illustrate the optional levels of advance food prep. Cookies, as noted, can be made 6-8 weeks ahead if stored in air-tight tins. All kinds of pastry freeze well rolled and stacked with paper dividers or lining pans, even whole unbaked fruit pies and turn-overs can be made months ahead. However, baked pastry products only hold well for 24 hrs. After that they become soggy as the fillings lose their moisture and harden. To have these desserts table-ready, you must leave room in your schedule, as well as your oven’s, at the earliest the afternoon before, to bake the items and/or make the fillings. This can be a strain during a hectic holiday week.
So what dessert can be made ahead and produced the day of a major dinner ready to be served?
Cake! Several years ago my Yule log survived Christmas dinner almost intact. I decided to freeze it to serve sliced with a bowl of whipped cream on New Year’s. I froze it uncovered for an hour to firm up the icing, then I wrapped it snugly in plastic wrap and put the whole cake, still on the platter, in a plastic bag in the freezer. I was pleased to see it looked fresh on New Year’s morning but surprised that it tasted fresh too. I served it on the original platter, without the cream, and had many compliments with no leftovers.
Now I bake my Yule logs three weeks ahead and limit my December holiday desserts to cookies and cakes. I’ve tested other cakes, layer cakes, bar cakes, even a multi-layer sponge Opera Cake, with the same great results. Planning this way allows me to take the time to be sure I do a good job creating the cakes, and it’s soooo relaxing to know the whole dessert portion of my dinner is ready and waiting. All I have to do is open the freezer.
In point of fact this feeling of freedom is a major part of the overall concept of amortizing holidays. Buying the food as it appears on sale during the preceding weeks and preparing things ahead, saves money, defrays costs and assures time for careful preparation. It provides the security of knowing what you need is on hand when you decide to start a project and the confidence of having been able to do it well, rather than rushing through slip-shod. Above all there is the comfortable assurance that everything’s ready and you are free to enjoy the festivities.
So set yourself up right and enjoy!!
*United States Personal Chef Association
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**The story is simple. When a very efficient exfoliant was developed during the Vietnam era, its commercial value was apparent but crops had to be created which were impervious. Prior to that time agricultural experimentation in the U.S. had been done in colleges and universities under federal grants, which made any results government property. However, private labs became involved in this project, with greater funding and developed a ‘super’ soy bean seed.
In the early ‘80s history was made when the first U.S. patent for a living organism was issued, not for the seed, but for the process which created it. After that, the process could be freely applied to other plants, corn, wheat etc. Naturally, the holder of the patent controlled the seed and consequently controlled the price of the crop. It was granted to the corporation responsible for the exfoliant, which became known under the trade name Round-Up.
Now this process, in some form, has been applied to the seeds of most produce plants making them GMOs. Included is fodder for our livestock which takes the axiom from above one step further. The one who controls the feed crops controls the husbandry industry and, consequently, the prices on meat and dairy. The original corporation has also moved on, having been sold to the German giant Bayer.
If you have any doubts about the global scope of the situation, the next time you’re in a supermarket, take note of the origins, especially of the produce and seafood items, fresh, frozen and canned. You’ll see many products are now farmed internationally according to climate, not limited to their country of origin and transported to markets worldwide. Also note that 99% of packaged items contain soy or corn products, unheard of 50 years ago, when soy was rarely used in the U.S. as other than a cover crop. It helps to explain the complete control international conglomerates have on our food supply and understand why prices are no longer influenced by the economy of any one country and that the reality that the situation can‘t or won’t be altered for many years, if ever.
