Farah Nadia
5 hours ago
Deepavali falls on Sunday 8 November, which gives us a little over two weeks from today. The festive promotions have already started on the shelves: TF Value-Mart's Deepavali run is on from 22 October to 4 November, which means the last four days before the festival happen at normal prices. That four-day gap is what I keep getting caught by, not the festival itself. I cook for about fifteen people that day, and the things that actually run out are boring: ghee, dhal, curry powder, the biscuits and the flour. Last year I left it to the week before and spent a Saturday driving between three supermarkets for ghee, which is not how I wanted to spend a weekend. But buying too early has its own cost. The biscuits go soft in this humidity, and I have opened a tin in the first week of November that was already stale. So I am trying to work out where the line is between buying early enough to get everything and early enough that it is still worth eating. For those who cook the full spread at home: when do you start, and what do you refuse to buy before the last week no matter how good the pallet looks?
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Two weeks out is when the ghee disappears from the supermarket near me, and the restock does not come until after the festival. I buy that, the dhal and the curry powders now and leave everything fresh for the week itself.
The festive promotion at TF Value-Mart ends on 4 November, four days before the festival, so anything bought after that sits at the normal price. That deadline sets my shopping date more than the state of the shelves does.
Write the menu first and the list from the menu. Half the extras I used to buy early were things nobody in the house actually eats, and they would sit in the cupboard until next year.
I stopped buying the ready-made murukku early. The tins keep, but the ones I bought three weeks ahead had gone soft by the time anyone opened them, and nobody said anything, they just left them on the table.
Does anyone know which morning the hypermarkets restock? I keep going on a Sunday and finding the shelves half empty, then going back on a weekday and finding them full again.
Keep the receipt for the big tins. Twice I have opened one that was dented from the way they stacked the pallet, and the shop swapped it without an argument both times.