(KNSI) – Inflation doesn’t have to take away from family holiday meals, but they may require more planning.
University of Minnesota Extension Educator Susie West says there are several ingredients or sides you can buy now that will keep until you are ready to use them for Christmas. Being proactive also allows you to make decisions about what must be included and what can be substituted or skipped.
West says if nothing else, it brings peace of mind. “My husband and I have done this, where we’ve gone to do all of our holiday meal shopping, and then we also realized, ‘Gee, we got to buy other food to eat the rest of the week.’ It can be kind of a hefty grocery bill doing all the shopping at once. So, sometimes breaking that up is a little bit easier.”
West says the foods you’ll want to wait on the longest to purchase are your dairy and fruit products since they tend to go bad quickly.
Given the circumstances, West says there are opportunities to create new Christmas dinner staples. She recommends trying everything, including some healthier options.
“One of the things my family did, actually at Thanksgiving, was we had a fresh fruit platter and we also had a couple of chopped salads that had some of those more seasonal ingredients. Dried cranberries and some roasted brussel sprouts, and you could throw some roasted butternut squash in there.”
She laughs as the fruit platter was a home run with the kids at the dinner. West isn’t sure if the adults even got a chance to try some, as it was gone so quickly.
West says you don’t have to be perfect regarding what you eat from a nutrition standpoint. She still recommends sneaking a cookie or two, no matter how sugary. Most cookies can be frozen, and West likes to spread them out through the months of January and February rather than attack them all as soon as they have been baked.
She says alcohol is another place to cut back, both for potential health benefits and because of cost. Restaurants can save you time, which has its own value, and catering in food could be an option. West also says to think about what corporate holiday functions you might have on the schedule. If you have a big meal already on tap for around Christmas and another at New Year’s through work, that would allow you to cut back on your personal meals.
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