why do you keep a storecupboard/stocked freezer etc

BitterAndTwisted

I need the mental security of having a decent store-cupboard, plus I stock up on the things I buy regularly when they're on special offer. Like the muesli I like from Lidl: they had it on special offer recently, reduced from £1.60 or so down to a pound a bag so I bought a dozen, the same with cartons of fruit-juice.

I'm currently a long-term temp and my role is in serious danger of being cut at the end of the year, so I'm hoarding essentials now so I can eat properly if and when I'm down to £64 a week JSA. I find it really comforting to know that I could last for about three months and just buy fresh fruit & veg as needed. If I had a freezer that worked I'd be filling that as well

Bronnie

Interesting thread!

With a view to the hoarding aspect, this country does seem to become a nation of shopaholics, with retail therapy almost becoming a national pastime.

I wonder if grocery shopping and subsequent hoarding is for some people a way to satisfy the shopping and spending money habit without the guilty feeling ?

Just chucking a random thought in, folks! Don't be cross with me!

OrkneyStar

Bronnie wrote: »

Interesting thread!

With a view to the hoarding aspect, this country does seem to become a nation of shopaholics, with retail therapy almost becoming a national pastime.

I wonder if grocery shopping and subsequent hoarding is for some people a way to satisfy the shopping and spending money habit without the guilty feeling ?

Just chucking a random thought in, folks! Don't be cross with me!

I think you may have a point, in some cases.

Primrose

ChocClaire - your experience with your Ukrainian flatmate struck a chord with me. Many years ago, also pre-perestroika, a young Russian contact of ours came to the UK on his first visit outside the Soviet Union (as it was then known). We took him round a Waitrose supermarket. He couldn't believe such vast choices of food existed, including foods he had never seen or heard of. He kept asking "Who can shop here? Is it for the apparachiks who have special privileges? (as was the case then in the USSR). He simply couldn't believe it when we explained anybody could shop there. "What anybody? Even the man who sweeps the roads?" he asked. When we said "Yes, of course", he got out his camera and walked up and down the aisles taking photographs. " I must show this to my family and friends" he said "otherwise they will never believe me." He had genuinely believed the Soviet propaganda that everybody in the West was living in semi-starvation and that those living in the USSR were better fed than anybody else in the world. It was only when we went on a trip to Russia subsequently that we discovered for ourselves just how short of food they were. The shops were virtually empty. After that I felt guilty if even a crust of bread was wasted in our house.

thriftlady_2

Very interesting and eye opening stories ChocClare and Primrose. Thank you.

ChocClare

The most thought-provoking thing for me was that Liouda told us that there was actually MASSES of food in the USSR; at the time, all university students had to bring in the harvest before they went back to university in October, so there was plenty of produce and plenty of people to harvest it. The problem, she said, was that it was left to rot in barns because the distribution systems in the USSR were so rubbish. (She didn't tell us this until after she'd been in France for six months and had become slightly less loyal to the Communist Manifesto .)

This really struck me: there is plenty of food in warehouses all round the country, but there only have to be petrol strikes or hauliers' strikes for our own supermarket shelves to be bare very quickly...

foxgloves

What an interesting thread this is! I like a well-stocked store cupboard for all of Stephen Leak's reasons tho' maybe I am a little less worried about alien invasion! I wonder what they'd think of the 50+ jars of chutney I've made. Perhaps they'd think it was the elixir of life or something! For me, it's a case of never knowing what's around the corner. The next wave of the recession (particularly if we have a change of government) is likely to see massive cuts in public services so the threat of redundancy is unfortunately nowhere near over yet. Like trying to have a little pot (or completely miniscule in our case!) of rainy day money, a well stocked larder makes me feel a bit more secure somehow. I also really love cooking and as I think Thriftlady said, if you've got a good store cupboard, you can make almost anything into a meal.

ChocClare

Love your 50+ jars of chutney, foxgloves!

I was definitely a farmer`s wife in a former life as I love making preserves etc. (Either that or a still-room maid.) The trouble with that is that I have no-one to make them FOR. I was thinking this the other day as I picked up masses of windfall apples. When I looked in my storecupboard, I realised we are still eating our way through the 2006 chutney and have a long way to go before we start on the 2007, which is why I didn`t make it in 2008 and shan`t be in 2009. Similarly the marmalade, the jam, the jelly...

Next time you go to Tesco`s, have a look and see which BRITISH vegetables and fruit you can actually buy in the winter - yep, root veg and apples. OK, I know I`m exaggerating, but you can see WHY people used to make loads of chutney and bottled fruit and veg - it would save you going mad from eating increasingly withered fruit and veg through the winter... :rotfl:

My great-grandmother used to make and preserve tons of stuff not only because they had lots of people to feed - not just family, but servants and farm workers - but also because they ATE so much. If you look at the amount people in the country used to eat in the early part of the 20th century it is astonishing that they weren`t all obese - until you remember that they walked everywhere, worked long days and needed to burn calories to keep warm - plus didn`t have any processed food or telly to make them fat (or hours spent on the pc :rolleyes:). If they hadn't stored things for winter (including things we take for granted, like eggs), then it would have cost a fortune to feed them all.

mama67

CCP wrote: »

Like thriftlady, I keep a well-stocked store cupboard simply because I like cooking and need to have the necessary bits to hand. I tend to stock up on stuff I use a lot when it is on special offer (like several other people on this forum I currently have a cupboard full of Napolina tinned tomatoes ), and I buy things like pasta and loo rolls in bulk simply becuase they're cheaper that way. (The loo rolls are not for cooking with, BTW!)

I like to think that my fondness for stocking up at this time of year is a genetic inheritance from my generations of farming ancestors, for whom it was essential for survival, but it probably isn't really. For the same reason I am deeply jealous of people like mummysaver who have a freezer just for meat - that's probably just because I'm greedy, though!

where were the napolina toms on offer pls haven't seen them

mama67

I also keep a stocked cupboard and freezer so that as previous posters have said, meals can be produced without the need to rush to the shops for 1 item.

As things are used they are added to a shopping list and then are bought on the next trip, usually fortnightly, when buying petrol. I also buy non-foodstuffs when on offer and keep a stockpile of these.

My milk, butter and fruit juice is delivered by the milkman, I have an organic veg box weekly and go monthly to the butchers for meat and bi-monthly to "Grimsby Docks" for fish.

I keep at least 20 pints of milk in the freezer as back up supplies for if we need extra, I make my own bread and cakes etc, so the only fresh stuff I usually buy is cheese, fruit and any salad we may want.

My closest shop is a 5 mile round trip away, nearest supermarket is a 25/30 mile round trip away.