Organic food in supermarkets

raftermysty333

I am planng to organize a smal party so need organic food recipes. Can you help me hwre can i find the recipes?

Edwardia

Hi raftermysty333 welcome to the thread.

Organic food isn't like vegetarian or macrobiotic or low carb, there aren't any restrictions on what you can eat - as long as you can find it. It's possible to buy organic Weetabix and cornflakes, digestive biscuits, shortbread and baked beans for example as well as meat, poultry, vegetables, farmed fish, fruit bread and dairy products.

So any recipe you would use for your normal party food would be fine.

To keep costs down, I would suggest buying organic chicken wings (cheapest 1.97 per pack Waitrose or 2.09/kg (around 10 wings) Abel & Cole) which could be served with organic rice (cheapest place ASDA). or HM barbecued beans (cheapest organic baked beans Sainsbury's).

Alternatively, with pasta salad ( Lidl and ASDA cheapest), rice salad (rice as before, canned Green Giant organic sweetcorn cheapest at ASDA, organic frozen peas 1.47 Waitrose), potato salad (baby potatoes cheapest at ASDA).

Things like tzatziki and houmous would be cheaper if home made. Yeo Valley organic natural Greek style yogurt is often on offer and great for tzatziki. ASDA is the cheapest store I know of for organic chick peas and organic red kidney beans etc.

HTH

Edwardia

Horsemeat amd other Food Shockers (Channel 5) probably the worst 'documentary' I've ever seen.

However I did find out that:

• up to 25% of a salami can be horse or donkey as long as it's listed in the ingredients
• don't push a shopping trolley with an uncovered cut because you can pick up staph
• the average fridge and the average sink are both dirtier than the average loo (not mine)
• to get the same nutritional value as one 1940s tomato you would have to eat 10 and to get the same nutritional value of one 1940s orange you would need to eat 8
• don't wrap fatty foods in plastic as it can migrate into food.. er so why do the supermarkets do it then ?

sophlowe45

How should you store fatty foods then?

I have swapped the plastic packaging from the salmon I bought for individual food bags and put them in the freezer.

I knew that our sinks were dirtier than the toilet but not the fridge too, I thought that the temperature killed germs?

Mojisola

sophlowe45 wrote: »

I knew that our sinks were dirtier than the toilet but not the fridge too, I thought that the temperature killed germs?

Fridges aren't cold enough to kill many bugs but the low temps do stop bacteria from growing. If you do a swab and grow it on, you'll find all sorts are surviving in your fridge. If you take food out of the fridge and leave it in a warm kitchen, the same bacteria will start multiplying.

sophlowe45

Thanks I really need to clean my fridge then.

Edwardia

The programme said greaseproof paper but I'm not convinced that would prevent food from drying out in the fridge of protect it from contamination by anything else. I've personally never been taught/told to avoid plastic.

I don't use a microwave because of the risk of plastic migration but the programme said nothing about that.

Nor did it mention possible BPA migration from some lined tins.

I do clean out my fridge every week and I don't put unwashed veg in there. If anything spills the whole area gets cleaned as soon as I see it. Anything like veg contaminated with blood, it gets thrown away - happened once when a particularly bloody chicken was defrosting in fridge and hadn't been shrink wrapped or put on a tray by Abel & Cole. They were very nice about it though and sent me a bottle of wine which OH drank while I was away

Edwardia

On my mind.. does anyone else agree that supermarkets seem not to have as many offers on healthy food as unhealthy stuff ?

What are you not seeing in supermarkets or via delivery schemes that you'd actually like to see be that organic grapefruits or organic Shredded Wheat or organic samosas ?

Fire_Fox

Edwardia wrote: »

On my mind.. does anyone else agree that supermarkets seem not to have as many offers on healthy food as unhealthy stuff ?

What are you not seeing in supermarkets or via delivery schemes that you'd actually like to see be that organic grapefruits or organic Shredded Wheat or organic samosas ?

Agree.

Shoppers see $$$ and :drool: and bulk buy longer life items on offer, don't suppose they'd bulk buy produce because it just goes off. Plus the average household likely gets through as much or more crap than fruit and veg. Maybe more profit in processed sugar/ wheat junk too.

Although offers on fruit and veggies gets people in the door of Aldi so maybe the big four are missing a trick ....

BTW my Pa went to Morrisons 'store of a future' today and he said the produce section was like a half a normal store in size! I have to get there soon and will try to report back on organic. :j I want to see interesting veggies especially anything purple, like the Natoora stuff (even more on own site compared to Ocado) or Morrisons.

Purple cauliflower, Romanescos, purple kale, purple Brussels sprouts, Flower Sprouts, purple asparagus are all so pretty. And then I am imagining veg boxes sold so you eat a balance of the full rainbow of bright or dark colours each week. For 7th March Ocado's largest box has no blue/ purple and a lot of insipid stuff.

In general I don't see why Tesco and Asda need to offer fifteen different packs of tomatoes, yet there are really only two variants, regular sized and cherry and all are red. Or a 'choice' of thirteen different packs of carrots regular and, if you are lucky, Chantenay but all orange. And, yes, I did actually count on the website to see if I was exaggerating!

You do get a bit more choice in onions (spring, shallots, white, red) and even cabbage (red, white, pointed tenderheart, savoy, kale, Chinese leaf). So Brits can't be *that* boring. Maybe as a nation we'd buy more organic if there was visible point of difference, varieties you couldn't get in non organic, instead of just mucky and manky?

*sheepishly steps off soapbox*

jenniewb

Edwardia wrote: »

On my mind.. does anyone else agree that supermarkets seem not to have as many offers on healthy food as unhealthy stuff ?

What are you not seeing in supermarkets or via delivery schemes that you'd actually like to see be that organic grapefruits or organic Shredded Wheat or organic samosas ?

I'd agree there are few if any offers on orgainic products, and when they are on offer they are still far more expensive then the same products which are non-organic and many times even more expensive then the premium lines.

I'd like to see more fresh fruit and vegetables sold as organic. I'd like to see frozen veg and fish/prawns/seafood as organic and farmed in a sensible and less harmful way AND clearly labelled.

I'd like to see more sliced meats as organic, it's rare you see anything organic within the sliced meat department.

And I'd like to see more veggie (eg Quorn) organic products- but being as it is "fake meat" possibly grown in a lab I understand I may be asking the impossible here!