Prepping for Brexit thread

euronorris

Primrose wrote: »

I agree. Oxo and other stock cubes can transform the humblest of ingredients into something very tasty and I like the idea of using mashed potatoes with Oxo to create mock dripping. Never tried that! I must use it to eke out the dripping (and the brown jelly residue) we get after roasting duck , which is something which is always fought over in our house !

I think the manufacturers of most commercial meat pies have turned the use of Oxo (or its equivalent) into to an art form as virtually the entire contents seem to consist of Oxo/Beef Stock rather than meat content !

Yes, I remember buying DH a shop bought chicken pie once as I was too lazy to cook that day. He declared it tasty, but when I looked at the ingredients, it listed only 7% of actual chicken!! My home made chicken pie has considerably more than that! lol

AndyCF

MingVase wrote: »

I remember the 3 day week and price hikes - I don't rememnber why prices rose but they really did. We were poor and things like potatoes & sugar got so dear I was struggling to manage.

Some of it was likely genuine and some was mere excess greed. I'm not old enough to remember it but that makes common sense.

I do recall only just about in the early 80's potato issues and chip shop prices doubled (that i do remember!) then when the issue was over, the prices never dropped back!

unrecordings

AndyCF wrote: »

Some of it was likely genuine and some was mere excess greed. I'm not old enough to remember it but that makes common sense.

I do recall only just about in the early 80's potato issues and chip shop prices doubled (that i do remember!) then when the issue was over, the prices never dropped back!

I thought that was down to The Cod War, but I just googled it:
a) There were actually three Cod Wars, the last one resolved in 1976
b) The battered sausage (with a collagen skin) was developed as an alternative to mitigate a lack of fish

euronorris

I'm not a big fan of fish, and prefer a battered sausage. But I always feel a bit ropey after eating one. Too much salt and fat I think.

DigForVictory

I think my inadvertent collection of Marmite jars may come in handy. <sketches half circle on floor with toe of boot>
I liked the different designs, but don't actually eat it terribly often. If I can swap a spoonful in for one Oxo cube, we're laughing. (My Scottish grandmother did & taught my father to cook mince with a spoonful of marmite - which he then taught my mother!)

AndyCF

unrecordings wrote: »

I thought that was down to The Cod War, but I just googled it:
a) There were actually three Cod Wars, the last one resolved in 1976
b) The battered sausage (with a collagen skin) was developed as an alternative to mitigate a lack of fish

Thanks.

I do know 'cod' is sometimes not 'cod' its that Pollock ? Mind you its so rare I have anything like that now I don't think it matters. Must be at least two years since I last had a 'mini-fish' from the chip shop.

Regarding the potato thing its just what I can recall really, I've not Google'd to check. I do recall our local had chips at 16 or 18 pence for a long time it seems (bear in mind my age was probably a single figure then!) but it more or less doubled to 30-something. I recall being told (family was partly in farm sales then) it was due to potato issues or something like that. Point simply being, when the prices did drop ( they did , not back to where they were but they did go down, supply/demand etc ) chippies 'forgot' to drop their prices

Sorry if that's a bit muddled.

unrecordings

AndyCF wrote: »

Thanks.

I do know 'cod' is sometimes not 'cod' its that Pollock ?

Regarding the potato thing its just what I can recall really, I've not Google'd to check. I do recall our local had chips at 16 or 18 pence for a long time it seems (bear in mind my age was probably a single figure then!) but it more or less doubled to 30-something. I recall being told (family was partly in farm sales then) it was due to potato issues or something like that.

I tried googling the famous 1980's potato blight but got nowhere too, but yes, in the grand scheme of things prices are quick to rise and slow to fall - it's called economic growth which is a bit of an oxymoron IMHO

On the cod front, if it's sold as 'cod' then you should not be served pollock. I think there was some shadiness going on in recent years in that pollock was being sold as cod, but I don't remember the details other than pollock is similar to cod, but much cheaper

DigForVictory

Living close to Yorkshire, there is a strong preference on the chip shop side for haddock. Cod is harder to get Over There (I have No Idea why, they have to be closer to the sea than Lancashire!).

To placate the family I do tend to buy clearly labelled (& priced as) cod fish fingers, so the occasional fish finger sandwich can be enjoyed without angst, but as soon as the young no longer eat a box of 30 at a sitting I may refill the box with white fish fingers & see how long it takes Himself to cotton on. (Doubtless improper but as St Martin observes the downshift challenge fun is you can stop as soon as it's noticed.)

[Deleted User]

If there is no cod or haddock and we want fips and chish then pollock, which tastes nice in its own right, and chipses won't be a disaster. I know there will be gnashings of teeth if the exotics go beyond affording or aren't here to buy and we've all got used to almost too much choice and folks have come to regard that width of choice as their right but the world won't end if we have 5 cheeses to choose from not 50 and the nation won't starve if we can't have strawberries in December or Asparagus in November because there are many perfectly delicious alternatives to enjoy and sustain us. Conference pears, buttery ripe, Cox's apples crisp and tangy, fenland celery still with it's black soil crisp and nuttily delicious, home produced eggs for dippy eggs and soldiers, frosted to sweeten them parsnips and brussels sprouts and good local grown spuds will with many other delicious things still be here because they're made or grown here and people WILL adapt, they'll moan like hell but adapt they will eventually.

maryb

We grow sugar beet here and most of the white sugar in the supermarkets seems to be Silver Spoon which is British, so you could make toffee for sticky toffee pavlova. Mind you, I wouldn't have any teeth left if I started down that road!