Christmas comes early for Hayes Green WI at festive food tasting
The ladies of Hayes Green Women's Institute met at the Five Ways Inn in Heath Hayes on the evening of November 4, where they enjoyed a social evening with food tasting.
President Val Lomas had been early Christmas food shopping at local branches of Aldi and Marks and Spencer. She brought the supermarkets’ own brand of shortbread biscuits, mince pies, Christmas cake, stolen, and turkey flavoured crisps.
Members were each given two shortbread biscuits to try, they had to chose their favourite and try to guess which biscuit was from which supermarket. Everyone had a score sheet to record their thoughts on. Then they did the same with mince pies followed by the other foods.
The Christmas food was much enjoyed by most members, however there were a few ladies who are not fans of mince pies or Christmas cake. Opinions were varied on which were the favourite brand of each product and no supermarket was outright winner on the food tasting. However when price was taken into account Aldi worked out much cheaper: the total cost Val paid for the shortbread, mince pies, Christmas cake, stolen and crisps from Marks and Spencer was £37.50 whereas the same types of foods from Aldi cost just £20.75.
For this month’s competition the ladies had been asked to bring in a favourite item of Christmas fayre packaging. The winning packaging was a luxury tin of shortbread from Fortnum and Mason. Amongst the other items entered was a Delia Smith recipe book as one member likes to cook her own Christmas goodies rather than buy them from the supermarket.
Hayes Green WI members will be having a Christmas party next time they meet at the beginning of December, with a live singer to provide entertainment and buffet food put on by Five Ways Inn.
