Today's Yellow Sticker Bargains

[Poacher]

Yeah, I'm a wally. Guilty as charged.

A cheese souffle is a good way of using up a surfeit of eggs, btw.

Wouldn't dare to attempt a souffle! Should have mentioned I also have the final crop of under-ripe sweet peppers from the greenhouse, which will need using in the next week or so (hence their presence in the cod dish).

Tonight's delectable offering was an omelette which used up 4 of the eggs and 3 of the peppers, along with onion and cheese, served with sauteed potatoes and baked beans. Not exactly cordon bleu, but well appreciated nonetheless.

 

[Reynard]

Actually, a (cheese) souffle's not the dark art many people think it is. A few simple dos and don'ts make life easier though.

1) Make sure the bowl and whisk for the egg whites are grease free - a quick wipe down with some kitchen paper with a bit of vinegar does the trick

2) A couple of pinches of cream of tartar in your egg whites helps them keep their shape.

3) Fold the egg whites in with a metal spoon - you won't knock out as much air as you would with a wooden spoon

4) If the recipe says to coat the dish with grated cheese, ignore that. One, the cheese sticks to the dish making it a pain to clean and two, it actually stops the souffle from rising. Just grease the dish with some butter or marg instead, and put the cheese in the souffle.

and finally...

5) Don't open the oven door during cooking, or you *will* end up with a frisbee...

 

[Reynard]

Some good yellow stickering was had in the run-up to Christmas, and my fridge is nicely full. Won't need to get any groceries in for a while, with the exception of milk. Items I turned up included a duck, a side of salmon and half a kilo of scallops.

But today's bargainous hunting turned up chocolates on clearance. I now have a year's supply.

My best buy were the medium-sized cartons of Lindor at 88p a pop - on a shelf at floor level that no one else spotted. Needless to say, I cleaned them out... (This is a serious advantage to being undertall )

Yesterday I also picked up packs of turkey cat treats at 16p a pack, so once again, I cleaned them out. The girls won't complain. Nor will they complain about the large tins of Felix and Dreamies treats. Plus I bought two Christmas squeaky dog toys for my friend's miniature schnauzers at 50p each.

 

[nickyboy]

Asda 500g Pannatone was about £5.50 in December. Rather expensive for what it is.

Then, week before Xmas it was £2.50 so got one. Really delicious toasted with a bit of butter. Did several breakfasts

Fast forward to early January and clearly Asda had overestimated the local Pannatone market as they were selling them off at

75p !!!!!

My only sadness is that Mrs N only bought one as they're long-dated to July 2020

 

[Blue Hills]

In practice I would imagine you could eat them beyond that date, especially if you like them toasted.
Sadly didn't manage my usual january christmas pud thing this year (if you don,'t count a rather wan looking vegan thing I had to settle for) - not sure why - shops sorted their demand management better, decided to give them to worthy causes, other yellow sticker gannets got there before me?
Did pick up a few stollen though - good cycling fuel.
Lidl and aldi may still have pannetone, no idea how good they are.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

It's panettone!

/pedant

 

[Blue Hills]

It's panettone!

/pedant

Fair point - sloppy early morning typing from me, scoffed plenty of it here and around italy. Seems to have taken over the world or at least europe the last 20 years

 

[IBarrett]

I usually buy a panettone for Christmas but this year I didn’t bother as nobody touched the one I bought last year which I found in the cupboard in November.
I opened it and found it was still lovely, so I ate the lot over a period of about a week. I can only imagine how fantastic it might have been if I had eaten it 11 months earlier.

 

[Reynard]

In practice I would imagine you could eat them beyond that date, especially if you like them toasted.
Sadly didn't manage my usual january christmas pud thing this year (if you don,'t count a rather wan looking vegan thing I had to settle for) - not sure why - shops sorted their demand management better, decided to give them to worthy causes, other yellow sticker gannets got there before me?
Did pick up a few stollen though - good cycling fuel.
Lidl and aldi may still have pannetone, no idea how good they are.

There weren't any christmas puds to be had on clearance in this neck of the woods either. Another of the Tesco regulars was saying the same - and his local YS patch is somewhat different to mine, as he's from Soham.

Fortunately I didn't really have the need for any as I still have two 4 serving ones and two 8 serving ones, but I was hoping to pick up a couple of hidden clementine ones in Waitrose. Now those are truly lush...

I did get lucky with bags of mixed nuts in Tesco, marked down to 37p a bag, bags of roasted almonds at £1 and with bags of dried cherries, cranberries and raisins in Wilkinsons at 50p a pop.

 

[Blue Hills]

There weren't any christmas puds to be had on clearance in this neck of the woods either.

ah, very curious - pretty sure I was in Aldi quite early on the 27th - always been lots - very curious indeed. A mystery to be solved.
Never eat the things christmas day anyway - too full of junk - this year had one as a meal in itself early in the new year - bought of course in January 2019.

 

[Reynard]

ah, very curious - pretty sure I was in Aldi quite early on the 27th - always been lots - very curious indeed. A mystery to be solved.
Never eat the things christmas day anyway - too full of junk - this year had one as a meal in itself early in the new year - bought of course in January 2019.

We did have one on Christmas Day this year - how we managed to shoehorn that in after eating a full-on roast dinner (something I rarely cook) I shall never know!

Am very fond of them though, so will trot one out every now and again

Neither Tesco nor the Co-op had any left on Boxing Day, and Waitrose had hardly any Christmas stuff left, never mind not a single pud when they opened on the 27th... Same was true with the party canapes in Tesco - usually they've got loads going into the reductions, but this time round, I only managed to get one solitary tray.

Mind, there was a bit on the news last autumn, where the supermarkets were getting fed up with the uncertainty over Brexit as they weren't sure what to order as they didn't know whether to get staples in or Christmas stock. Maybe it's related to that...

 

[Blue Hills]

I did read in passing somewhere on the red button news that christmas pud sales had declined by a fair bit this year - can't help but think that folk see them as so old fashioned - christmas food these days so often seems to be incredibly cruddy looking canape crap - folks want to look posh - and then suffer from exotic sought after gastro issues.

>>Am very fond of them though, so will trot one out every now and again

Yes I really enjoyed mine in the new year when fears of doing a Mr Creosote had subsided.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, I did run across that as well.

Some of the poncy "fashionable" festive stuff is rather meh - and hideously expensive for what it is. You could make much nicer canapes from scratch for far less money if you *had* to have canapes.

Although I did pick up some very nice bloody mary seafood cocktail things that were rather nice (shame the prawns were a tad rubbery though) and some mini salmon, dill and lobster savoury cheesecakes which were also decent, other than the bases, which were ghastly (soggy bottoms!!!). Mind, when you buy on sticker, you can be that much more critical about these things, but I'd have been miffed if I'd paid the full whack - £4 for the box of cocktails and £6 for the box of cheesecake things...

Admittedly not everyone likes the traditional Christmas stuff (it's true of other countries' food, not just the UK's LOL) but in the end, what goes around, comes around.

Food trends, like fashion trends, are notoriously fickle...

 

[Threevok]

I got a large packet of Spratts from Morrisons on Sunday for 30p

The cats enjoyed them too

 

[Reynard]

I got a large packet of Spratts from Morrisons on Sunday for 30p

The cats enjoyed them too

Happy kitties, I bet!