Review 2021:
The Christmas Sandwich Reviews:
Asda Festive Feast Sandwich with Cumberland Sausage.

Food  Back when we were living in Speke in the 1980s, visiting Asda in Hunts Cross was a bit of a luxury.  It was newly opened and our nearest large supermarket, the local shopping area, South Parade, mostly having at various times a Kwik Save, old school Iceland and somewhere popularly called VeeGee but which had Colin Sykes on the hoarding (which no one I knew could ever explain to me).  The biggest shops we ever had were at Christmas when the hamper my parents had saved for all year would be delivered and we'd spend the afternoon working through and discovering the tins.

Memories of those visits aren't strong and certainly not as strong as the Sainsburys in Woolton (we'll get to there), partly because the Sefton Park shop has become the Platonic Asda in my head since it became our main shop for the past decade.  It has such a pull, in fact, that since my Mum's death, I've only managed to get through it on a couple of occasions, both of which involved me breaking into pieces, sobbing in the ready meals, because of the weight of memories and not being ready yet.  This was bought at outlet behind the Richmond Tavern on Church Road, Wavertree.

On first glance it seems identical to the Tesco, as the packaging proclaims, this has Cumberland sausage and  beechwood smoked rather than cured bacon.  The Asda sandwich smell and taste too, with the sausages which make their mark on opening the packet and a rich cranberry flavour on eating.  The turkey and sausages are nice and soft too, as is the bread, although its difficult to judge how much of this has to do with it sitting in my home fridge for a couple of days (to be eaten on the "use by" day pictured above) (I warned you I was writing these ahead of schedule).

Six days in and there's a definite formula developing as to what appears in these sandwiches.  This typically seems to be turkey, bacon, stuffing, cranberry sauce, maybe sausage plus unique ingredients, in this case fried onion (which I didn't notice).  Of the six, this is probably in the top three.  A reviewer for Reach ranks this as her top choice.  She's a tad harsh on the Tesco, but I am a sauce lover.  Fortunately I'm not forcing myself to give each of them a mark out of five because lets be honest the point of this exercise isn't to really review the sandwiches.

Just one interesting anomaly.  The sandwich I bought was called Festive Feast, but it appears on Asda's website, with identical packaging as a Turkey & Trimmings and glancing across the web reviews, that seems to be the case across the country with it appearing under each title in various places.  I wonder why that might be, assuming I'm not muddling up some chronology.  As that website says it was £2.18 which makes it the cheapest sandwich by quite some margin.

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