I bought the ingredients for the Christmas cake today. The first time I made this particular recipe in 1974 the ingredients for a 5lb cake (uniced) cost £1.20: today the same ingredients cost £4.60.
Saturday
Made the cakes - one for me, one for my sister, and a little one to eat now as fruit loaf.
Made the mincemeat - possibly not enough. I may do a second batch. When my nephews and niece were at primary school they tended to come home with pots of mincemeat which they had 'cooked'.
I have a pudding left from last year - in the freezer once it had matured sufficiently.
Checked over Christmas presents: I seem to have bought three best suited to Becky - 2 of which I shall have to reassign, one which duplicates something Glen already has so that will need reassigning too, and one brilliant choice for Liz and Ed has gone walkabout. I have wrapped Rick's silly to post.
Dear Lissa,
Not sure if you were pleasantly surprised that the cost in 30+ years had increased by a little under four fold, or dismay.
For comparison a house we purchased for £6.9K in 1974 was sold a few months ago for £138K so much more than a four fold increase.
'Raw' basic ingrediants, especially those not purchased prepacked or endorsed by some celebrity chef, do seem to have held their price steady for years and years - bags of flour and sugar for example. Tights are another example - 3/11 when I was a girl or about 20p post decimalisation. The pack of five I purchased last week was £2 so only a doubling in price in over 35 years. But I wonder if sandel toe, light support, body shaping, restores tired legs variety were available then? Or finest superfine, extra light, made to rise self raising sponge flour that costs ten times that of own brand bog standard SR?
Hope the cake turns out well
Pam