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Festive food frenzy!

Christmas seems to be full of the usual madness. I was in Sainsbury’s yesterday buying Ian Mitchell’s wine recommendations. The amount of customers with not one, but two full trolleys was unbelievable. It’s one day, only 24 little hours!

Five fascinating facts

Curiosity got the better of me and I did a bit of research to find out more about our Christmas shopping habits. Here’s what I discovered;

One in five of us only bake for a special occasion such as Christmas, with cakes being the most popular. This explains the success of the ‘Christmas cake kits’, popularised last year by Waitrose and Delia. Rumour has it they were changing hands on e-bay for £80 (MRP £9.99)

As a nation we spent over £300m in 2011 on turkey, and nearly £200m on Christmas chocolate, less than Easter and much more than Mother’s Day, a lowly £22m.

We clearly feel Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without dried fruits and nuts and spent £579m on them, that sounds like tons to me.

Most of the alcohol we buy over Christmas is a gift for someone else. Christmas is a time when we like to try new drinks. That said, white wine is our favourite at-home drink.

It’s clear that liqueurs are synonymous with Christmas. We obviously like Baileys, because we drank the equivalent of several Olympic swimming pools full of the stuff!

Prudent shopping
So, had I done a further inspection of those Sainsbury’s trolleys maybe I would have discovered they were full of cake (or cake kits), turkey, chocolate, wine and Baileys! Evidence surely that despite the challenging economic environment, we still want to treat ourselves and spend money on food and gifts but we do it in a discerning and prudent way.

Festive tipples
If you are looking for some ideas for a tipple to surprise and delight your guests over Christmas, take a look at my YouTube Page. I have prepared four divine drinks! Have a wonderful Christmas everyone, may it be a delicious time of love and laughter for you all.

Best wishes
David James
Source: Mintel