How I Avoid a Christmas Food Disaster and Why Finding Marmalade in the Supermarket is a Skill
By Anna Waters-Massey
I love Christmas! I love my fam being together and all the food and laughs that come with it. My family rotates Christmas lunch between a few houses, it’s very diplomatic and I highly recommend it. Instead of the host family doing all the cooking we divvy up the dishes between us. Suzette is great with turkey and pavlova, Vicki always excels at chicken and lamb, Sarah does a stunning Rocky Road, the men gather round the barbie and the Millennials and Gen Zers bring salads and cocktails. My main job is potato bake and the Christmas ham. Oh, I also do a mean chocolate dipped strawberry. God I’m drooling just thinking about all that food.
Plan Ahead
Now there’s a trick to doing Christmas grocery shopping and it’s an art! Supermarkets notoriously run out of the good stuff so it’s important to make a list, check it twice and get in early. Here’s my suggestions:
- Preorder anything you can for pickup on Christmas Eve so you can be the smug shopper who waltzes past the frazzled queue to pick up your order. These items include breadsticks, prawns and croissants.
- Some things must be purchased ahead of time because they will disappear quicker than toilet paper in a pandemic: Christmas pudding, brandy cream, brandy custard, Christmas bon bons, leg of ham, orange juice, chocolate melts to dip the strawberries in. Oh, now I’m dribbling again…
- 3.The good fruit is always gone by Christmas Eve unless you get up at sparrow’s fart for the farmers market, so try to snavel as much as you can on the 23rd Dec. Must haves are mangoes, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, basically all the berries.
- Alcohol is a no brainer, you should have been stocking up on that for weeks whenever there’s a special. If you forgot, just make a list and send the man in your family off to Dan Murphys. They will gladly escape the house and enjoy a bulk liquor store just as much as a trip to the tip or Bunnings.
For God’s sake familiarise yourself with the supermarket layout. This is crucial. Without a doubt there will be a last minute dash needed and this is where things can go horribly wrong. For some ridiculous reason I have found that things get moved around in the supermarkets, often at festive season. Just when I think I know where I can find everything, someone decides that the aisles need rearranging and suddenly nothing is logical. Dried fruit is in the healthy aisle, my favourite sauce has been moved to the international section and don’t even get me started on where to find the apricot nectar!
Avoid Disaster
Now back to me and the Christmas ham. After a near disastrous experience a few years back I am now more organised than a paranoid prepper for the zombie apocalypse. The calamitous Christmas catastrophe occurred a few years back as I was preparing the basting sauce on the stove. The delicious leg of ham had been scored into a delightful pattern of diagonal squares, closely resembling a skewed version of the chess board from The Queen’s Gambit. The saucepan was prepared with orange juice, honey and wine, when I turned to get the marmalade from the pantry and realised I hadn’t restocked it! Noooooooo. Let me tell you there is nothing harder to find than a jar of marmalade on Christmas morning. After ringing all my friends, neighbours and rellies to check their cupboards, then scouring Seven Elevens, service stations and corner stores, my niece Sarah came to the rescue finding a jar hidden at the back of a shelf behind the Vegemite and peanut butter. The day was saved, it was a close shave, but my reputation as glazed ham Queen remains intact.
Lesson learned. As the 25th approaches, put pen to paper, make a list on your phone and adopt the motto ‘Be prepared’.
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Looking for the Marmalade
Parody of the hit disco tune ‘Lady Marmalade’
This one’s for my shopping sisters, don’t get overwhelmed sisters
Refined sugar, raw sugar
Bleached sugar, brown sugar
Almond flour, rice flour
Wholemeal flour, spelt
My mind it explodes in the supermarket
Too many labels to read
Let’s get this done quick
In and out in a flick
Gluten, vegan, dietary fibre
Trans fat, monosaturated
Fructose, lactose, vinegar cider
Where’s the orange marmalade?
Farm laid, barn laid, cage free, grain fed. Say What?
Bleached, unbleached, all natural, say what?
Should I try vegan and give it a go?
I’m not all that fussed about meat.
But that means no milk
No eggs and no cheese
Hell no I can’t do without gouda
Camembert and brie are my life
Wine and cheese are married forever
I still can’t find the marmalade
Oat milk, goat milk, rice milk, soy milk? Low fat?
Homogenised and pasteurised what?
Who owns the screaming kid in aisle ten?
How can I possibly shop
Look If she wants chocolate I’ll buy her a bar
Does she want two, three or four?
Is 621 food colouring or not?
It’s monosodium glutamate
I need a scientific pharmacalogical degree
To be sure sure sure
Gluten, vegan, dietary fibre
Trans fat, monosaturated
Fructose, lactose, vinegar cider
Where the f..k’s the marmalade?
Farm laid, barn laid, cage free, grain fed? Say What?
Bleached, unbleached, all natural, say what?
Oat milk, goat milk, rice milk, soy milk? Low fat?
Homogenised and pasteurised what?
Farm laid, barn laid, cage free, grain fed? Say What?
Bleached, unbleached, all natural, say what?
At last I found the marmalade!
Anna Waters-Massey is a writer, actor and vocalist from the Gold Coast. She loves entertaining people and making them smile with her writing, song parodies and acting work. She is the creator of the comedy series Stage Mums which aired on Network Ten and animated series Insta Infamous and Forest Road.
You can follow me on my socials for more of my song parodies.
