a month without supermarket - new challenge for 2011 starts at post 1013

kimnhol

Kscour - got round that we are making our own, kits on ebay if you cant find local wine shop. Or plenty of make your own wine books in charity shops. :beer:

Is a wee bit stronger than normal shop bought wine (ok lots and makes you wobbly after only a couple of glasses :rolleyes: )

But highly recommend it :beer:

kscour

kimnhol wrote:

Kscour - got round that we are making our own, kits on ebay if you cant find local wine shop. Or plenty of make your own wine books in charity shops. :beer:

Is a wee bit stronger than normal shop bought wine (ok lots and makes you wobbly after only a couple of glasses :rolleyes: )

But highly recommend it :beer:

My nan used to make her own - Parsley was my favourite, nice bit of squash until you tried to stand up! I did try once when I had more time on my hands but ended up making an ultra strong type of sherry! Then I tried with a shop bought kit because I thought that would be foolproof and produced 4 bottles instead of 6 and I dread to think what %!

Got to admit I quite fancy giving it a try again but OH goes pale when I talk about it:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Zed42

LOL at the alcohol comments ... my DH has been making his own beer since the middle of last year, and so far is going well ... so he says with a happy grin (From kits)

Other alcohol wise, we tried to make some wine last year, but not yet brave enough to actually sample it!

And we've made a few bottles of sloe voddie / sloe gin .... which should keep the MIL quiet this weekend :beer:

lil_me

Best HM alcohol I tried was Schnapps made by someone who lives in Austria, they just bung the fruit in a barrel and leave it, result = plum schnapps that managed to get a local 'big drinker' so drunk he was found the next morning on his driveway by his wife, she rang to see if he was still at my neighbours house where the Austrian family were staying, cabby dropped him off but he didn't get in the house :rotfl: oooops she looked outside and there he was snoring on the drive

I just worked it out, with what I have in for main meals, apart from potatoes and other veg I should have enough to last until 2 weeks time, my god!! Need a few mains for the boys for when we have the likes of chilli etc, which they won't have, going to get some chicken from farm shop tomorrow to do some hm nuggets, and some sausages for the little sausage addict. Need soem packed lunch things too, ham for DS1 especially, baking some things tomorrow to go in them and must remember to make jelly for him. Poor ickle fella is scared to eat yoghurt at school as his motor control is bad and can't stand to have a 'spill' on his top all day, but jelly doesn't leave a mark.

angelatgraceland

Glad to see this thread as it is something Ive been contemlatin since about last November. I kno w its difficult-habits are hard to break but this week I bought meat at the market, veg in the veg shop, milk in the supermarket. OK so two out of 3 aint bad as the saying goes.What I have also tried to do is to buy English and not foreign. when I went to the veg shop there were apples from Canada and America, further inside, from France and then yippee! Braeburns from England! Good price and good quality. Needed a few storecupboard items today and went to Health food shop for those. Got wholemeal flour for bread-a bit pricey, but Ive made up my mind to give up eating the bread in packets and only to bake good quality bread. Not asking the whole family to follow me-they like the white stuff. Given up buyin cakes-bake my own. Ready meals are long gone. Spent a lot of money on dandelion coffee after realising what a caffeine junkie I am. Still spent less this week though.£50 on groceries for 3 adults and a teenager.

angelatgraceland

Glad to see this thread as it is something Ive been contemplating since about last November. I kno w its difficult-habits are hard to break but this week I bought meat at the market, veg in the veg shop, milk in the supermarket. OK so two out of 3 aint bad as the saying goes.What I have also tried to do is to buy English and not foreign. when I went to the veg shop there were apples from Canada and America, further inside, from France and then yippee! Braeburns from England! Good price and good quality. Needed a few storecupboard items today and went to Health food shop for those. Got wholemeal flour for bread-a bit pricey, but Ive made up my mind to give up eating the bread in packets and only to bake good quality bread. Not asking the whole family to follow me-they like the white stuff. Given up buyin cakes-bake my own. Ready meals are long gone. Spent a lot of money on dandelion coffee after realising what a caffeine junkie I am. Still spent less this week though.£50 on groceries for 3 adults and a teenager.

competitionscafe

sandieb wrote:

How much do you all expect to pay for a non-supermarket whole chicken? I prefer organic, but am interested in the "going rate" for both organic and the free range ones.

Thanks!

For example this farm sells free-range chickens here at Edinburgh farmers market, a whole chicken is £4.30/kg so a 1.5kg chook is about £6 ish and a 2kg big bird is £8.60. Of course because they raise them on their farm, you get to meet the farmer when you buy and can ask them any questions.
http://www.gartmornfarm.co.uk/about.htm

Organic tends to go for around £12 a chicken (1.5 to 2kg), free-range is quite a bit less but make sure what they mean by 'free-range' as standards vary.

Organic ones from here are £6.80 per kg, for example:
http://www.moorlandsfarmshop.co.uk/acatalog/Whole_Organic_Chicken.html
Their freerange chooks are £4.90/kg by way of comparison:
http://www.moorlandsfarmshop.co.uk/acatalog/Whole_Free_Range_Chicken.html
Apparently their mutton is excellent by the way

Can also recommend Donald Russells chickens (which are from Loue, France, so not so local but very tasty!) - £7 each, 1.5kg min weight per chicken (box of 2,frozen) and free delivery if you go via the link on Delia Smith website (Delia.com) - BUT be careful as their courier is carp and my order from week before last turned up 2 days late so I lost £56

Can also recommend this place in Essex - they even trust you enough to send 4 chooks without payment, (then when they arrive you send them a cheque):
http://www.labelanglais.co.uk/html/labelanglais.htm
It's £9.95 per 1.4kg chicken for a box of 4 but this does include delivery.

sandieb

Thanks for that competitionscafe! Such detail. I had looked online at an organic meat supplier and their organic chickens came in at £14 which seemed quite expensive. Ones I had previously bought at Mr T cost around £7 so I was interested to hear what everyone else pays for non Mr T chooks! Many thanks.

[Deleted User]

For anyone having problems with bread:

this will take time to get going but try the sourdough way. It is so SATISFYING to start your own sourdough culture from the air and then to make your own bread by hand with good quality flour and no additives. The dough is very amenable and will raise over 24 hours or so and the culture can sleep in the fridge until needed again. I now bake my bread every 14 days or so and keep some sliced in the freezer. A rustic wholemeal loaf will keep happily for over a week. It is so satisfying that you only need to eat a thin slice and because of the very slow raising will not give bloating or digestive problems. I cook mine in a very hot pot with a lid

Anyway thats how I cope with the bread situation. Now my situation is a bit different in that I don`t have good local shops of a farm shop so I get all my consumables by mail order and I`ll make another list

https://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk
https://www.martins-seafresh.co.uk
http://www.shipton-mill.com/flours
https://www.craigfarm.co.uk
https://www.riverford.co.uk

I get my eggs and all my milk from riverford

sandieb there is organic, where the chickens are fed a mainly organic diet but they are still kept indoors and there is soil association where the chickens are kept outdoors on grass in good conditions. T chickens aren`t soil association and could be imported from anywhere

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,1887953,00.html

Justie

Thanks Triker you've inspired me to make more of an effort to do this - can't go cold turkey at the moment but will work really hard to reduce the supermarket visits with an aim to cutting them out completely ASAP. :T