Flavour and quality or cost?

Allexie

Curry_Queen wrote:

certainly looks green to me!!!!!

Ewwwwww,,,you've damaged me sensitive sensitivities...may never be the same again....

Queenie

*races to local farm shop ... closed :eek: ... breaks into storage barn, grabs copious amount of various orgasmic veggies for Allexie ... wraps well in packaging .... :think: ... failes to note snail mail addy .... :idea: ... scoffs the lot to save on wastage .... .......





.... :think: .... ooh errrr, ..... ... .... vows never to play The Good Samaritan EVER again ... *

Allexie

orgasmic veggies!!! oooh errrr.....

Magentasue

MATH wrote:

If you can afford quality over cost you are fortunate. I've only recently found myself in this position after years of having no choice but to buy cheap. To be honest I've not been that impressed with the organic, top price, top quality beef or lamb from my local butcher and can tell very little difference from Tesco bog standard. Chicken is much nicer but I've shied away from upscaling too many things incase I spoil my taste buds and then have the pain of lowering my standards if things get desperate again.

For a lot of people there isn't a choice because their budget dictates. I spend more on food than most people on this board (£350 pm for 6 people plus frequent extras) so I can manage ground coffee, the odd block of parmesan and so on. I can't remember what MATH said he spent for his family but it was probably half of what I spend.

I am hoping to reduce my grocery spending when the garden veg is ready. Lidls coffee and cheese is cheaper than Asda and Tesco but you still can't have the best at Tesco value prices. And it's true that it's hard to make do - when we spent very little on food, there was little choice. Then Smartprice (or was it called farm something?) and Tesco value came along. When I started working again, our budget went up and we've gradually abandoned the smartprice for Asda's own and bought more organic. It would be hard to go back again. Hard for me, a nightmare for my kids who are a lot fussier about a lot more things than I am.

[Deleted User]

Before my kitchen was finished I was buying a lot of microwave meals for a while - and these are a false economy but with no kitchen for a while it sort of did the trick for a hot meal.

Because of the cost I started buying value type microwave meals but the taste and texture of them were so bad I used to end up throwing them away.

The Sainsburys ones in the white boxes at around 89p are particulary awful and in all honesty I wouldn't feed it to a dog. I know people are constraind by their budgets and some people have no choice to go for the value type stuff - but I do wonder how nutritious it actually is.

Curry_Queen

Deleted_User wrote:

I know people are constraind by their budgets and some people have no choice to go for the value type stuff - but I do wonder how nutritious it actually is.

I think this partly down to the way society is these days, and many people not having extended families to pass on cooking skills etc, but it always amazes me when I see programmes on tv featuring, for example, single parents on benefits buying these type of meals because they say they can't afford anything else.

Take a shepherds pie for example, I don't know the cost of these ready-made frozen ones but I'd have a guess at maybe 99p each? So, say you're a family of 4 eating these, that's £4 before you add any extra veggies, so say another £1 for a bag of frozen peas.

Now for £5 I could make enough shepherds pie to feed 8-10 people, using fresh ingredients and veggies (ok, maybe not organic but a damn sight better quality than the frozen reconstituted muck they sell), and probably have enough left over to make a simple pudding too!

What people need is education, and hopefully Jamie Oliver's campaign has made many sit up and take notice, and particularly in schools where I think Home Economics (or whatever they call it these days) should be made compulsory!

Magentasue

Curry_Queen wrote:

Take a shepherds pie for example, I don't know the cost of these ready-made frozen ones but I'd have a guess at maybe 99p each? So, say you're a family of 4 eating these, that's £4 before you add any extra veggies, so say another £1 for a bag of frozen peas.

Now for £5 I could make enough shepherds pie to feed 8-10 people, using fresh ingredients and veggies

I agree with everything you say ... had to go and check how much Tesco Value shepherd'd pies are. Can you believe 61p for FOUR! 48p for a bag of oven chips... 49p for a bag of chicken nuggets. It's shocking how cheap bad food is.

I think your shepherd's pie should be compared to Marks and Spencers rather than Tesco Value!;)

squeaky

I've generally worked towards reducing costs where it doesn't really matter too much but ploughing it straight back in to buying more fresh foods. Now I've learned to release a little more cash and am again ploughing it straight back in to sourcing more organic foods.

My budget hasn't gone down, but the amount of quality stuff I buy is well up on what it used to be.

Curry_Queen

Magentasue wrote:

I agree with everything you say ... had to go and check how much Tesco Value shepherd'd pies are. Can you believe 61p for FOUR! 48p for a bag of oven chips... 49p for a bag of chicken nuggets. It's shocking how cheap bad food is.

I think your shepherd's pie should be compared to Marks and Spencers rather than Tesco Value!;)

You're joking!!!! :eek: ... 61p for FOUR!!!!! :eek:


Well, I swallow my words then ... I mean, what can you say to that :doh:

squeaky

Your words are probably easier to swallow than those shepherds pies!