Christmas food bank donations

[SideOrderofSprouts]

Afternoon

I'm going to be starting to
Add an extra bit to my shopping each week between now and Christmas to do
A big donation to our local food bank

What would you include?

As soon as the advent calendars are in store I start putting a few in every time I go to Tesco, and then selection boxes in December. At the end of December/start of January last/this year, all their little bits and bobs - Maltesers reindeers, chocolate coins etc - were massively reduced but still had long dates on them so put a load of those in.

Thanks to whoever suggested Christmas cards, I'm going to add that to my list for this year!

My parents help run a food bank so here is their input:

Please donate in the run up to Christmas, not close to it. The bank my parents help with are asked to make extra parcels which are generally picked up on around the 19th of December. So they really really struggle to get supplies to make these on top of the usual weekly parcels.

Little luxuries are great, mince pies, shortbread, panettone etc. To make it Christmassy.

Advent calendars, often children won't get one or be the only one in their class without one.

Other than hat check the local lists. You never know what is needed and what is not. (Currently my parents are actually turning away cereal - a local supermarket for double order of a cereal delivery due to computer error!)

Oh and as a nice link to the Christmas bargains thread I bought 10 felt Christmas trees from hobby craft for my parents to give to some of their regular families who won't have enough money for a tree.

When I told the lady what I was buying them for she gave me 3 more for free!

Brilliant ideas on here! I usually buy gifts throughout the year when i see them on offer (generally for the kids birthday party presnt box) when we get towards Christmas i clear it out to give to the food bank or salvation army. My nan gave me a couple of boxes of crackers this year so I will pop those into the food bank too. I also picked up some hats and scarfs for 50p in the sale and they'll be off there too.
We had a chat about Christmas at the dinner table last night and discussed what we were going to get for the food bank for Christmas. I tend to struggle with regular donations because we shop online but I will get back to a monthly donation I think.

Ain't no misery guts welcome on the Christmas threads, stay over in aibu with the others

I have organised an office food bank collection for Christmas, we try to do something for a local charity every year at Christmas, our collection list includes:

Selection boxes
Christmas puddings
Tinned puddings/rice pudding/custard
Cranberry sauce
Goose fat
Gravy granules
Tinned vegetables
UHT Milk
Cereals
Sugar
Stuffing mix
Christmas Crackers
Christmas cake
Biscuits
Chocolate/boxes of chocolates
Crisps

My local food bank are always asking for UHT milk, loo rolls, tampons/towels and tinned meat or fish eg tuna. I would imagine that they'd need these items at Christmas too.

Love it Bimbo
Think it could be Christmas topic - subtitle

Thanks happy, it really annoys me !

Love this thread, I want to put a load together for the foodbank for Christmas too.In the past I've done a shoebox, but past two years not really done anything.
I've always done it with the kids involved to show that not every child is as fortunate as them and don't get a sackload of presents as well as stocking and selection boxes and an advent calendar too.
Going to start buying some extra tins each week when we go shopping. Taking on board needs to be delivered mid November if including such stuff as advent calendars, sounds obvious but stupidly didn't register!
Those saying goose fat. Genuine question. I've read foodbank threads on here before and they've said people are fuel poor which wouldn't have occurred to me before. So is goose fat a good thing if not many people can cook fresh roasties in the oven from scratch for ages?
Just wondering how much people would get out of it.
I was thinking like:

• teabags, coffee, hot chocolate, instant milk powder, biscuits, advent calendars, jams, christmas puddings, soup, noodles, tins of fruit salad, fancy boxes of shortbread/tins of chocolates such as Roses/Celebrations/Quality Street etc as it's not Christmas without one of them open.