The Rising Cost of Food

ceridwen

Red Doe

Thats a difficult situation to deal with re your shopping facilities:(

Is it possible for you to do food shopping by post so to say? Taking your pick of either Approved Foods on the one hand or wholefood suppliers like Suma on t'other hand? Someone elsewhere on the Board mentioned about an Indian supplier that supplies by post as well.

Re fruit and veg. - I nip in and study that Approved Foods website sometimes (though havent bought owt from there myself) and I see they now sell some fresh fruit and veg. (which, as far as I can see, is similar price to ordinary non-organic supermarket fruit & veg) - but at least would be cheaper than your Spar and more choice.

I've often thought that I personally would basically get my food from Suma by post if I moved out into the wilds ever...

GreyQueen

Red Doe, my heart goes out to you with the shopping logistics just described. We city and town dwellers don't know we're born, eh? You might take a small comfort from the awareness that the air quality on the city centre streets around me is reckoned to damage the lungs equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day. This is data coming off the pollution monitoring points, btw, not urban folklore.

I lived in one of Scotland's eastern cities 25 years ago and vividly remember the difficulties of feeding myself anything approaching a healthy diet; fruiterers were rarer than hen's teeth and extortionate when you did find them, plus I was boycotting South African stuff for anti-apartheid reasons, which didn't help the selection. The Big Supermarket was on the far edge of town, about 3 miles away, a trifle by car but a long pull (the reverse journey was a single punishing uphill run on the bicycle) and I was so broke that I didn't have bus fare. Plus, without a fridge, I couldn't buy much at a time as I simply couldn't keep it.

My parents grew up in the rural hinterland of the counties which surround Provincial City, in little villages which usually couldn't support a shop. Cars were unaffordable. Groceries were delivered and there was one "shoppers' bus" into town, usually on a Friday morning which went in and out in about 2-3 hours. Such shoppers' buses still run, almost exclusively the province of pensioners using their bus passes. Working people buy their groceries in town on the way home from work in their cars.

Mum gets very cross even today when she hears commentators on Radio 4 or similar opining that if we didn't have cars, there would be ample public transport. Almost nobody had cars in her country childhood and adolescence, but buses were still negligible. It wasn't uncommon to have to bike up to 3 miles to reach the nearest bus route and have to commute to school. In parts of the counties around this way, UFOs are sighted about as frequently as service buses, even today.

I shop at Little Mr T a lot because my 5 minute walking commute takes me right past its door, twice a day for 5 days a week. My route to the lottie takes me within a few yards of a Lidl. This city has other major supermarkets but they're all a bit off my route and, with M.E. for over 20 years and only a pushbike/ shank's pony, I have to guard my limited energy zealously or I get very ill.

We have a farmer's market which comes into the city twice a month but I have given up going to it. Why, when I am ideologically inclined to support independance, organic, localvore etc?

I don't shop there because I can't afford to give an hour's pay for a single loaf of bread, nor can I afford most of the other lovely things they have on offer and I'd rather not have my nose rubbed in it. I also pass darling little deli-type shops full of artisan foods from local producers which offer me the chance to blow my week's food budget on one or two items. If I lived on DeliWorld, I would be more than fashionably thin...........I'd starve.

So, Mr T is a villian, ASDA is owned by the vile WalMart Family of Companies (pass the barf-bag), Lidl has appalling labour practices and we haven't got a Co Op. I think it's hard to slide a hair between them in terms of bad-behaviour.

I'm sorry to say that I think advanced ethics in grocery shopping is a luxury which many of us struggle to afford.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

I bet if you did go to the local green grocer or fruit and veg stall , and there was a wonky, mis-shaped very large carrot, and a so called perfectly formed slender carrot, you would pick the slender one....Why????? becuase we have been brain washed to think that the slender carrot is going to be sweeter and tender/taste better than the large mis-shaped one.... I think you call it been brain washed by the supermarkets on waht we should be buying

Yes i buy the 'horse carrots' too excellent value...

Red_Doe

Ceridwen, I haven't heard of Suma, do you have a link please? I have been campaigning to Tesco for over a year now asking them to deliver up here...they will deliver non grocery items but no food. None of the other supermarkets deliver either. I do an Approved Food shop on occasion and it's great for someone like me especially as they do deliver, you'd be surprised just how many companies don't deliver to the highlands on the grounds that to them, it's the equivalent of Outer Mongolia!

ETA doh! Sorry Ceridwen, I googled for Suma, should've thought of that in the first place! *blush*

Butterfly_Brain

Unfortunately most of the farms around here have diversified into biofuel so very little produce is being grown locally.

Red_Doe

Mum gets very cross even today when she hears commentators on Radio 4 or similar opining that if we didn't have cars, there would be ample public transport. Almost nobody had cars in her country childhood and adolescence, but buses were still negligible. It wasn't uncommon to have to bike up to 3 miles to reach the nearest bus route and have to commute to school. In parts of the counties around this way, UFOs are sighted about as frequently as service buses, even today.

Lack of amenities in rural areas is one of my soapbox issues.
Here, a couple of decades ago, we used to have a bus service, dentist, three doctors, more shops and a mobile grocery van, none of which exist now. As a result, when old folks die or go into nursing homes, their homes lie empty...no one wants to live in an area where, unless you're fairly well off and have a car and can afford exhorbitant petrol prices to get to the nearest supermarket eighty miles away, there isn't the transport system in place. Young families here move away for the same reasons...lack of basic amenities..and so it's a vicious circle as the area dies slowly and local government just isn't interested in investing in keeping folks here and bolstering the economy. So right now, only the rich (and me, who is dirt poor but can't afford to move!) use this area as a playground of sorts...the hunting, shooting and fishing set, who I see with my own eyes, come here bearing loaded camper vans full of shopping they bought cheaply elsewhere, or who descend on the Spar, clear out the shelves and enjoy the beauty of the Highlands which is becoming nothing more than a scenic playground for the wealthy.
My soap box rant? You betcha...that the Highlands is being slowly depopulated, another Clearances.
Sorry, rant over.

Red_Doe

I emailed Suma to ask if they would deliver to my area as I couldn't find out anywhere on their website. I got an email back which said yes, though not using their own vans, and it was (£300 minimum order for ambient only orders).
Can anyone tell me what that means please? (one fairly dumb auld wifie here, sorry.... )

GreyQueen

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

I bet if you did go to the local green grocer or fruit and veg stall , and there was a wonky, mis-shaped very large carrot, and a so called perfectly formed slender carrot, you would pick the slender one....Why????? becuase we have been brain washed to think that the slender carrot is going to be sweeter and tender/taste better than the large mis-shaped one.... I think you call it been brain washed by the supermarkets on waht we should be buying

Yes i buy the 'horse carrots' too excellent value...

CTC, if you read my posts on the It's Tough threads, you'd know that I buy my all fruit (and such veg as I cannot grow on my lottie) from The Magic Greengrocer, which being my MSE nickname for the 3-generation family independant greengrocer which is about half a mile from my flat. Since I buy their discounted stuff, it is all highly imperfect and I have to cut out bits which are bruised etc.

My parents pick up nets of "horse carrots" when going to and fro to visit my Nan and we split them between us so they don't go off.

As a gardener, I know that a completely straight carrot is a rare beastie indeed; I have grown some which have more fingers than I do and only wish that "That's Life" still existed so that I could offer them up for the amusement of the TV viewing public.

tori.k

Red_Doe wrote: »

I emailed Suma to ask if they would deliver to my area as I couldn't find out anywhere on their website. I got an email back which said yes, though not using their own vans, and it was (£300 minimum order for ambient only orders).
Can anyone tell me what that means please? (one fairly dumb auld wifie here, sorry.... )

It means tin and dried foods and non- edible grocery, no fresh foods Red doe so would be ok if you have a healthy veg plot and keep your own livestock

Red_Doe

tori.k wrote: »

It means tin and dried foods and non- edible grocery, no fresh foods Red doe so would be ok if you have a healthy veg plot and keep your own livestock

Thanks Tori, does it also mean I would have to make a minimum order of £300 too though (which wouldn't happen!)