It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

Pollycat

Pollycat said:

YorksLass said:

Beef curry and jacket spuds tonight, some kind of fishy meal tomorrow and a liver/bacon/onion casserole for Thursday.

I have bought a 900gm piece of lambs liver (one piece that I'll cut up myself - we really don't like liver cut into thin strips) from the butcher.
It will do liver bacon & tomato casserole with some thick bacon misshapes from B&M with mash.
And what we call Turkish liver with tomato, potatoes, green pepper and chillies in one pot with tiger bread spread with proper butter.
And another meal that I've yet to decide on.

A shout out for this bacon.
The packet says it can be unsmoked or smoked but the pack I bought (£1.29 for 907gm) looked like all unsmoked - and it was.
I got 3 decent pieces to make bacon sarnis, a 3/4" thick piece that I used for the liver & bacon casserole and 2 thick bits that I'm going to cook like gammon.
Really good quality and I'd buy it again.

Nelliegrace

A good price for the cooking bacon @Pollycat Asda have 500g for 90p, each pack is labelled smoked or unsmoked. I divide it into portions and freeze some. Our ration for bacon or ham is 4oz, about 100g a week, though we don’t have it every week. 
I am trying to have more protein and less carbohydrate at breakfast, and keep apace with all the new laid eggs. A small bowl with a microwaved scrambled egg with a few snippets of cooked bacon is a treat after a bit of porridge (no sugar) and blueberries. Today it was a shared tin of sardines in tomato, his on homemade wholemeal bread, toasted. 

Auntycaz

DD's op was cancelled yesterday but not due to the bad weather where she lives, her surgeon was ill and they didn't have a replacement. Very disappointing for her but part of me is glad they didn't have to travel in such horrendous weather. The weather where I live is completely the opposite now, yesterday I woke up to heavy snow followed by sleet then rain today after an icy start the sun is out and its quite mild so I managed to get to the shop and stock up on basics just in case the white stuff comes back. 

YorksLass

@Auntycaz - So sorry DD's op has been cancelled but pleased to hear you managed a shopping trip.  Stay safe.

We still have plenty of snow here but at least the estate roads are clear (thanks, gritters) and the pavements are navigable, with care.  We haven't had the promised sleet (yet) which is probably a good thing, given how cold it is at night - ice and old ladies aren't a good combination!  

DH's slippers arrived this afternoon; they fit and he's very pleased with them.  Now I can bin the old ones that have seen better days.  Most impressed - ordered Wed evening and arrived today - especially given the atrocious weather.  Courier was Evri and I know lots of people have had problems with them but my experiences to date have been good.

Meal plan done for next week and also a grocery order for Tuesday delivery.  Yet more price increases.     Black pudding up 20p, corned beef up 90p, sugar up 4p, tablets of jelly up 20p.  Some items I wanted were out of stock (cabbage, crumpets, basic baked beans) but I can wait for those or find an alternative.  I try to keep the total to around £40-£45 (per fortnight) but this little lot has clocked up at just over £53.  I suppose it's to be expected as I've been running stocks down since the beginning of the year and now need to re-stock.  The only extravagance is a bar of chocolate - I think I'm worth it!     

DH is currently watching the England v France rugby - and not enjoying it one little bit.     I won't repeat what he's saying.     

EssexHebridean

Longwalker I’m sorry to hear about your friend - that’s sad. 

sammy_kaye18

Evening all. 
Have noticed the cost of our weekly shop has been going up gradually. I use to be able to get away with spending about £50 a week and the odd item topped up from the local shop. 
Yesterday I ordered £60 of food from Asda, used a £10 off rewards coupon that Id accumulated and literally had two boxes. Nothing fancy in there. Nothing branded, all shops own. 
Fruit, a few items for the freezer, some fridge filling bits and pieces, crisps for the kids etc and it looked like barely anything. 
My chest freezer is barely half full and a £40 shop from Iceland use to fill it. 
I'm hoping the windy cold weather passes soon to get the greenhouse cover on and back up and producing fresh fruit and veg for us again. 
Thankfully all our house likes porridge so we have been having that for breakfast, husband has it with a cheap syrup, kids like a sprinkle of sugar or chocolate sauce as a treat, and I have mine with a handful of raisins if I want a sweet hit. 

Auntycaz

@YorksLass I know what you mean about ice and old ladies not being a good combination. I've booked a taxi to take me to the hospital on Friday for my bone scan as it might be frosty and I don't want to risk falling. Its only 10/15 mins by car to the hospital but it takes 2 busses to get there and I can't use my bus bass as I will be travelling before 9.30am.
I'm glad I got to the shop today and got milk bread and fresh fruit as the sleet is back again tonight. Fortunately, my DD stocked me up with all the heavy stuff the last time she visited and apart from perishables I could last quite a while.
@sammy_kaye18 it's good your kids will eat porridge. Its a lot better for them than some of the over sweet, over priced breakfast cereals on the market and it is filling and it gives them a warm start when the weather is like it is at the moment Stay safe everyone.

Nelliegrace

I did the risk assessment on Diabetes UK.
 https://riskscore.diabetes.org.uk/start

There are a lot of things we cannot change, age, family history, chromosomes, but some we can, and the most important is diet. A group of GP’s at Norwood Surgery, Southport, UK, have begun to turn the tide against the seemingly unstoppable rise in obesity and diabetes. No fad diets, just unadulterated food as we used to know it, the amounts and proportions we used to eat when photographs of crowds at the seaside in the UK had nobody obese. Not low fat, not ultra processed, not calorie counting, not five a day, not expensive shakes, not magic weight loss injections, Not the weight loss industry, not the NHS mis-named Eat Well Guide, and not too many bananas. 

https://thedoctorskitchen.com/podcasts/170-reverse-diabetes-with-dr-david-unwin

Longwalker

Nelliegrace said:

I did the risk assessment on Diabetes UK.
 https://riskscore.diabetes.org.uk/start

There are a lot of things we cannot change, age, family history, chromosomes, but some we can, and the most important is diet. A group of GP’s at Norwood Surgery, Southport, UK, have begun to turn the tide against the seemingly unstoppable rise in obesity and diabetes. No fad diets, just unadulterated food as we used to know it, the amounts and proportions we used to eat when photographs of crowds at the seaside in the UK had nobody obese. Not low fat, not ultra processed, not calorie counting, not five a day, not expensive shakes, not magic weight loss injections, Not the weight loss industry, not the NHS mis-named Eat Well Guide, and not too many bananas. 

https://thedoctorskitchen.com/podcasts/170-reverse-diabetes-with-dr-david-unwin

Which sounds totally sensible 

A fat child in the 60s was rare , and they were cruelly teased , as was anyone who didnt conform to the norm

We weren't given sweets at the drop of the hat on the way home from school. A mars bar on a Sunday  - cut into 3 to be shared. Sometimes Nan gave me a shilling to go to the shops to get sweets for the 3 of us - and she expected change 

We didnt get pop, a real treat, we drank water or diluting if there was any - one bottle a week for the whole family - we made it very weak.

We had 3 meals a day, breakfast, school dinner and supper. Cereals weren't more then cornflakes or wheetabix , it was usually porridge. Choice of school dinner was either the hot meal or salad and pudding. I hated school dinners but it was eat or go hungry and woe betide you if you tried to scrape it away in the pig swill - the dinner monitor would send you back to the table to clear your plate. If you were really hungry waiting for supper you could have crackers , not biscuits, they too were a doled out treat, not something you helped yourself to. Actually you never helped yourself to food full stop

Of course we moved about a lot. The walk to and from School ( even secondary which was 3 miles away ) , playtime we skipped, played running games , and out after school where we played in the streets. Any dry Sunday you went out after breakfast and didnt darken the door till dinner time, then back out till tea time. 

We cooked with lard, in a frying pan. The chip pan sat on the cooker with its solid lard. Sausages were more fat then meat, bacon not only had fat it had rind ( best bit ). The dinner plate was filled up with at least 4 veg, potatoes were a veg until sometime in the 70's and you would have mash and roast Meat was dear so the portions were tiny

Street food was unheard of. You got a chippy tea taken home to eat and a chippy portion of chips were shared, not for one person ( even now I couldn't eat a full chippy portion ) We would have been shot if we were seen to eat food in the street, that was only for the seaside  

I remember when McDonalds first opened, it was full of families, the whole family went for their tea as a treat. Nowadays its full of kids filling up on their way home from school - a snack meal then home for tea

Even in my teen years of the late 70's, I walked everywhere. Weren't until I got a job up west that bus travel became a regular thing. But out with friends, we walked

I think it was the mid 80's when takeaways started popping up everywhere and food became cheap. Then the supermarkets with whole aisles dedicated to crisps and pop, a whole aisle of biscuits. Even today my Tesco has more floor space dedicated to junk food then it does fresh unprocessed food. Even the meat aisle has more sausages and bacon on offer then beef and lamb and the fast food section has the same floor space that is given over to fresh veg - not counting spuds

And what we cook, when we do cook has changed. So theres a whole aisle of jars and packets to make your tex mex, Chinese, Indian. All highly processed and usually full of salt and sugar. 5 teaspoons of salt in a white sliced, 1 when I bake my own 

Going back to how we used to eat, plain food , cooked simply, has to be the way forward. Yes I like a Chinese and an Indian , its a very rare treat to get an Indian meal out so Ive learned to cook them. Chinese the same, a take away now would leave me poisoned with salt. Eating from a plate not the carton. We did get a Chinese takeaway last night, box meal each. Mr L ate from the box, I ate from a plate, He cleared his, I barely made it half way but I know ( as I have done ) I would have cleared the lot if I had eaten from the box. And yes Ive been awake half the night getting drinks as Im so thirsty thinking to myself never again ( Ill give in in another 4 or 5 months though lol ) I do keep it plain most of the time, meat /fish and veg. I do use a lot of spices. I do use butter and full fat milk, I actively avoid fat free and keep the highly processed down to a minimum 

Yes Im fat. But I drink like a fish. The weight falls off me when I go on the wagon, unfortunately thats not happened since lockdown. But Im active and walk five miles a day at pace. Mr L has the same 32inch waist as he had when we first got together  32 years ago , and his wedding suit still fits like a glove. His cholesterol is very much within the safe limits as well as his blood sugars  Mum is 84, nearly immobile now with AF,  and whilst she loves her chocolates and cake and cheese, shes not put on a pound since I took on her cooking and her blood sugars and cholesterol are well within limits. So it does work. My sugars and cholesterol are pretty bad because I drink way to much, its not down my diet, because they go to normal levels when I stop the drink 

Nelliegrace

@Longwalker Your post was like music to my ears, thank you.
Long walks to school, active games at playtime, lots of skipping, and team games at primary school, and frequent outdoor sport and athletics and the cross country run, indoor gymnastics, volleyball, dance, badminton, and swimming at senior school. We did two 25 mile sponsored walks which most of the senior school joined, and we started a rambling club doing ten miles regularly. We used to sing a lot at school, lots of loud, inspiring stuff, good for the breathing and mood. 

It is still possible, DD’s school kept them very fit, with lots of sport, after school activities, and lots of music, but the next generation are too busy hunched over their phones and on the internet when we were out on our bikes, paddling and swimming in the river, and climbing trees. 

We are doing the ration book challenge this year, getting the right amounts of meat and fat, proper milk, much less sugar than the modern diet, lots of seasonal vegetables, and small portions of fruit. 50g of budget dark chocolate as a Sunday treat. Buying the ingredients and cooking from scratch gives me control of our diet. We eat very well and keep a well filled store cupboard on £20 each a week. 

Campylobacter from the local Chinese cured me of wanting takeaways, pizzas are vastly overpriced for a great wadge of white bread with sugar, with a morsel of protein and a smear of vegetable, fish and chips is for the seaside. 

“Low fat” (high sugar) is a big fat lie to make vast profits for the food industry. It sounds so reasonable but it was never proven by the science. Obesity and insulin resistance have reached epidemic proportions. Children have type 2 diabetes which never happened in the past, their life expectancy is falling.


Wartime rations were based on science, were tested on volunteers, and were proven to work when the whole of the UK had to live on them so everyone got a fair share of the limited amount of food available, for fourteen years. Child health improved and infant mortality fell. You don’t get science trials on that scale nowadays.