Cooking for one (Mark Two)

moneyistooshorttomention

Logical sense indeed Pastures.:T

It wouldnt work that way for me here and minus a car - but I can see a "Which store has what product" thing would work for a lot.

Floorspace as well - a friend of mine asked a local friend of ours how big a new store was and was told it was massive. Said friend of mine visited it in high hopes - and then came back and told me it was tiny and that's what I'd think too about it. It's all comparative - and goes to show we all have pictures in our mind of what we mean when describing the size of something and our pictures might be very different.

[Deleted User]

so far the A2 milk experiment is having very good results and everything has quietened down, to the point that I thought I would give myself the ultimate test last night and had spelt flakes with A2 milk for supper. Nothing happened and my stomach never complained at all, the whole night. So far so good. I started introducing small bananas yesterday morning as the last one immediately gave me heartburn, many months ago. So far so good with that too

Today I am having a mid day meal that I had months ago, small amount of brown rice in the bottom of the rice cooker plus sliced ginger, carrot and an umboshi plum, a deep frozen small chunky piece of cod on top of that and all set to be ready at 12. I will add shredded pointy cabbage at 11.30. All in one pot as I will be busy later, when my meat arrives, I have to split into solo portions, vac pack, date and quick freeze

Breakfast was soaked oats, walnuts and raisins all soaked overnight in A2 and just now I had a lightly boiled egg, preceded by a small banana. I have a small portion of grapes to eat today and some green salad,on its own probably with a squish of apple cider vinegar. Maybe a fresh fig. I am liking fruit in between meals, it suits my digestive system

caronc

Good morning everyone,
While I can understand regional & demographic differences in what SMs stock what I can't understand is how stores can vary so greatly in the quality of stocks which must in part be down to local management as they are stocking virtually the same product range.
PN- what a sensible suggestion if only the SMs could offer that. I suppose they might argue that many offer "click & collect" shopping where you can pick the store but that is no use if it just one or two items you want:mad:.

We have had a bit of an upset, quite literally for my son's partner who came off her bike late yesterday afternoon. She's cut her eye and broken her arm but was lucky as it could have been much worse. To complicate things she's currently in Belguim studying so my son is now on his way to get her. He's driving which makes me a bit :eek: as he only passed his test in September but fortunately he has managed to get a ferry to Dunkirk so it's only about 100km on the motorway from there. I'll be on tenterhooks though until they are both safely back in Cardiff!

Breakfast was the usual toast & fruit and lunch will be LO ratatouille from last night (in the end up I had lamb chops, ratatouille & sweet potato wedges, all from the freezer) and no doubt I'll scoff the last piece of cream sponge. Tonight I'm having fish pie & sprouts assuming the fish pie has defrosted, if not I'll have that tomorrow and have pasta tonight.

Today's cleaning challenge will be the front porch and if it stays dry the front windows. Neither are big jobs but no doubt as always will take me ages.

PasturesNew

Late breakfast, just eaten, ended up being two bits of toast (that same, now out of date, loaf.... near the end of it though!), topped with baked beans and 2 scrambled eggs. Splash of the brown stuff and a black coffee.

It's very filling and warming.

I'd gone through to the kitchen to make a cheese omelette/chips/beans for lunch, but then realised I'd run out of oil. The bottle of oil I'd run out of was about 500ml and had lasted me 3-4 years, so it's not something I'm used to buying so had forgotten I'd got no oil. I now need to buy a bottle of random cheap oil for cooking.

It's the only oil I had/have, when you only get through 500ml every 4-5 years you don't need more than one else you'd have two sitting and gathering dust

AndyCF

PasturesNew wrote: »

If you want to buy something from Argos you can find out which stores have stocks of that item online. It'd be good if supermarkets had that.
There might be one product you want to buy and there are 2-3 stores within a 10 mile radius - and if you could check online you might find that it's not stocked at the one you usually go to, but if you go to another one the same distance in the opposite direction they have it there....

Their computer knows which goods ended up in which stores, so it's not a complex SQL query to drag that out into a searchable interface.

Ditto with the floorspace. It'd be nice if each store's web page gave you the selling floorspace so you could look at, say, 2-3 online and "go to the biggest one".

We all know the nearest store, beyond that there are markers you can see on their store locator map, but if you never go to those places you've no need to. If, however, you could spot that another one was 2x the size of your usual one (or smaller) you might choose to visit that store instead.

Things people in ivory towers don't think are useful/important for many shoppers.

Oh no, another SQL guru :T

The tool is useful on that site and the few times I've used it, it is appreciated to see 'where the nearest one that does have item xyz in stock' is.

I actually used to go not to the nearest one but one that was the third 'away' as such simply as there was always loads of free parking at that one and although it was a busy shop there were no silly "mega length" queues compared to the other two: One small one being in the middle of town and the other, a larger one on a retail park just outside the town centre. Pick the wrong time and both were packed.

Turning slightly towards foodie things: With my online shop shop I actually use the 'Market that is about the furthest away (if I was driving there) simply as you can forget about locality and concentrate on which offers both the best value and has what you want in, well usually has anyway. , I'd probably very rarely use said place simply as its too far even when I did have transport.

I guess all I'm saying here is I got out of the 'mindframe' with online ordering to not say for instance "lets get from Sains" as that's where I'd go if I had transport, simply as with online distance = not really to be factored into the equation so much.

PasturesNew

I tot up the cost of driving to other shops. My car does 10 miles to the litre, which is handy as that means whatever the current litre price is as shown on the petrol stations, 1/10th of that is my "per mile" cost for fuel alone. For other running costs I'll factor in a further 50% of that cost. So I mentally tot up the cost of "going out anywhere".

With my local garage showing fuel at about £1.20/litre at the moment that's 12p/mile, so a 16 mile round trip to 4sda "to see ...." costs in fuel alone £2. I always figure "I can buy a lot of food for £2 simply by not going there then".

In the main, my costs at a till are typically £3-6 each time, so it's not as if I'd be spending £2 on fuel to return with £50 of shopping; I've NEVER spent anywhere near that much! I guess an expensive shop, done about once a year, would see me spending about £20.

I know there are lots of great foods at 4sda, but that £2 just to get there/back makes me think "might as well just spend £2 on food locally". ~£2 can get me, say, a loaf of bread, 4 tins of beans and a cheesecake, or a pack of 6 sausage rolls, bag of frozen chips and a bottle of fizzy pop. Or it can buy me a family sized meaty pie. £2 is disproportionate to my spend.

[Deleted User]

oh dear caronc, they will be back in no time but I bet the time is going so slow right now. Cardiff! my most favourite city, I lived near pontyclun for over 30 years, loved living there and loved the people and so easy to get anywhere

I have packed the meat, really not such a big amount but it is expensive and I only eat small portions of it, like one lamb chop. I could devour two but I don`t. 28 solo portions done and labelled and that includes one short back rasher plus one pork sausage in one pack. I was getting so fed up of having to do something with bulk and then re-bulking with beans and the like and then I would not look forward to all the repetitions wrapped in small foil dishes. I decided to only keep what I really like, not what I should like

AndyCF

Oh I agree on the 'cost of travel vs local' in my case there's not a lot of local choice . A bit of research showed there was not very much in the cost compared to "walk there and taxi back" vs "bus there and bus back" , the former would be my option here if I had to do this.

I could do a "walk there and back" once I'd treated myself to some kind of 'cooling bag' to keep frozen goodies sensible I guess. I have no 'style concerns' with being seen with some kind of trolley either.

Farway

'Afternoon folks
The remark by money on apple methods prompted me to nuke / stew one of my nicked apples last night, eaten with Greek yoghurt & honey. Very easy and same again tonight I think

Another bumper shop in Lild this morning, over £6, but it did include choc biscuits & yet more mince pies. Plus stocked up on mushrooms on offer, and shallots also on offer.
The mushrooms & shallots will go into a planned beef stew thingy because I noted stewing beef chunks are on offer from Thursday and it seems ages since I had a nice HM stew, and weather forecast is Arctic winds by the weekend, seems like a meal pre-planned in the stars

Nil breakfast
Back to cheese & salad sarnie for lunch, with a slice of tea cake
Dinner is a deja vu yesterday, including nuked nicked apple for pud

PS Andy I could do a "walk there and back" once I'd treated myself to some kind of 'cooling bag' to keep frozen goodies sensible I guess. I have no 'style concerns' with being seen with some kind of trolley either
I have a trolley, and use a cooling back from Lild, guess most shops, especially Iceland, would have something similar. What I like is that it is flexible, so can easily be rolled, squashed to fit in when empty, and only used when frozen, or chilled products are bought

Wednesday2000

I have eaten very weirdly today and I'm having a glass of cider now too.

Dinner will be marinated, oven roasted tofu, penne and whatever veggies I have lying around.:)