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

Longwalker

YoungBlueEyes said:

And, umm, where do you buy yours Longwalker? 

Not that we’ll read anything into it. 

Direct from the factory shop as well documented on this thread. Ive always said Ive been grateful that I live close enough that I can pop in when passing. 

Longwalker

pumpkin89 said:

Longwalker said:

Sainsbury's, marks, Waitrose chicken all comes from the same place - we process for them up here near me. We also process for Duchy of Cornwall, Ocado, Jaimie Oliver and Spar. We dont do Asda or Tesco.

Read from that what you will

That doesn't really mean anything, though.  There are multiple grades of chicken; just because they are packed in the same facility doesn't mean they are the same meat.  In much the same way that not all the meals you cook are identical just because they come out of the same kitchen.

Precisely

Now when I first moved here, I could pop int the factory shop and buy, do you remember the blue and red packaged value range fron Tesco? Id pay as little as 25p per chicken

So the processing plant has changed hands a few times sine and now they only process HIGH WELFARE Chooks


 The farm I live on has one chicken house,. When I moved here in 2006 it housed 20k birds . Now it houses !4k birds because of looking to the welfare of the food we are eating

The birds are hatched in hatcheries, the males are thrown straight into what is basically a liquidiser , the day old hens are sent out to the barns where for six weeks they live their life out.. Yes Marks and Spencers and Waitrose will show you posters of hens sitting on bales of hay and lots of stimulation around them. And access to the big outdoors

Only these hens have not had a mummy to show them. They are thrown ( literally ) into crates and sent to the hen house they will live their short 6 week life, being fed pellets with growth hormones  


They have access to the outside, only they dont know the outside and dont venture out 

Im telling you how HIGH WELFARE chickens live their short lives 

Thats HIGH WELFARE, how do you think your KFC chickens are raised ?

As for being processed in the same place, our factory here is geared for HIGH Welfare. It costs money to change the line. You will find the same company will be running different lines from different plants. Ours here, from threat  of closure now only do the posh stuff 

YorksLass

I'm officially in hibernation mode!  Thursday night's snow is still with us and last night was topped up by another couple of inches.  And we have freezing fog too.     We're OK food wise with plenty to keep us going so no need to go anywhere yet.

I've occupied myself today by making a pan of tomato & red pepper soup, writing Xmas cards ready for posting (nowhere near as many as I used to send), cutting up one of the old mattress protectors into usable bits to sew for inner covers for pillows or cushions, sewing buttons on a cardigan that I've just finished knitting and washing a pair of sheets.  No chance of them being dried outside!

I've still got the Xmas cake to make but have run out of steam so that's a job for tomorrow.  The dried fruit will definitely be boozy!

skogar

The 100% recyclable symbol on those freezer bags may have disappeared not because the product has changed but there are some changes which happened this year to use of recycling symbols on packaging so I suspect it is due to that and not that the product has changed.

basketcase

Talking about boozy Christmas cake, I used to make one for all the family.

I was following a new recipe in a magazine which called for half a gill of sherry and half a gill of milk.  I thought that was quite a lot so decided, as it was Christmas, I'd start with the sherry and top up as necessary with the milk.

As I finished adding the sherry, I thought it was getting really quite sloppy (though the fruit would soak up a lot.)  Then it hit me...

In the NW of England there were (in old money) 2 gills to a pint - hence my niece's husband calling his sister, Gill, half-pint.  But, in other parts of England there are FOUR gills to a pint.  So I'd slugged 10 fl oz (284 ml for the metrically inclined!) into the cake mix...

The house stank like a distillery for the next month. (My translation of "Ooh, something smells good" from every visitor we had).

I don't like Christmas Cake/Pudding/Mince Pies, but apparently it was very good...  My niece and her husband - both qualified chefs - thought it was hilarious.

YorksLass

@basketcase - Hilarious indeed - I hope you served it with a warning of "Do not eat and drive".     

Whilst not warm here, it's not as cold as it has been and today we've had drizzle - thank goodness, much of the snow has almost disappeared.    As long as it doesn't freeze over tonight, I might get out for a while tomorrow.  I really could do with some fresh air as well as posting the Xmas cards I wrote out yesterday.

Today's culinary efforts - the Xmas cake looks and smells good.  I've used a square tin but, as there was more mixture than I anticipated, there's also a smaller one in a 1 lb loaf tin.  A taster maybe?

SC is doing a batch of a bolognaise type sauce to use up some pork mince from the freezer, one onion, two (almost) bendy carrots, two very wrinkly mushrooms and tinned tomatoes, plus herbs.  There should be enough for four portions, two for Wednesday's pasta dinner and two for the freezer. 

Tonight we're having cooked gammon slices from the freezer, chips and baked beans, followed by tinned fruit and custard.  DH peeled the potatoes and chipped them for me - I'm not sure how many chips he thinks we can eat in one sitting, there's far too many.     I've put some of them in the fridge in a container of cold water and they'll do for later in the week.

Datchet

It’s remarkable how many of my wage-slave colleagues are now into packed lunches and winter soups! Far more than pre-covid or even last year.  The company springs for a  Monday ‘ fruit box’ freebie, which I tend to leave for the youngsters, however I’ve noticed it being depleted very quickly. The office is, I suppose, comparatively affluent, but I’m noting more thrifty habits. Lift shares are another.

elsien

I had a work colleague comment on my healthy eating for lunches, and I did explain it wasn’t about healthy eating it was about saving money. 

London_1

I think after the covid crisis, plus the CoL one  everyone now seems to have adapted to more frugal ways and are a lot more savvy when it comes to splashing the cash. I had it ingrained into me by my late canny little Scots Mum so I've been fairly good with cash for most of my long life.

 I hate waste of any kind and food waste especially. Tonight I dug a bag of things from the freezer. I can't even remember freezing them They turned out to be battered fish fingers so they were duly cooked with some veg and I really enjoyed them
I think I had bought them back in the summer reduced and the box was a bit bulky so I had bagged them up and tucked them away. A little more room in the freezer now as I also found some slice gammon that I had frozen and a couple of sausages so they are in the fridge defrosting for tomorrow.

I peeled and cooked the five slightly wrinkly apples and they will be made into a nice crumble tomorrow which will do a couple of days I have taken a couple of dessert spoonfuls of the stewed apple out to go for my porridge in the morning.

Day four of NSD today I'm eating as much as I can from existing stocks:)

 Tomorrow is coffee morning but I have a couple of freebie coffees on my DDs Dobbies card She only uses it for discounts in the gardening part, so I get to use up her two free coffees a month I have two on my card so every Tuesday I get a freebie coffee with my friends and we put the world to rights .No food shopping to buy though But I will have to go to the post office to send off my overseas cards I have seven for different countries so goodness knows how much that will cost, but its only once a year and my relatives are pretty far flung bless them.I have a separate budget for postage thank goodness

Every penny saved is better in my purse than it a big companies. I think so to those who take packed lunches and soup to work I think its a great idea

One of my DGS Henry works in the City of London as a merchant banker but he too takes a packed lunch , and a hot flask . To eat out in the City is an expensive treat His company treat all the staff to a hot cooked breakfast on a Monday morning which he really likes . Often he is so busy with the market trading he says it would be hard to get away from his desk anyway.

Right, time for a nice hot chocolate to warm me up a bit

Cheers chums 

JackieO xx

Brambling

My first mortgage in 1990 at 16%+ was the start of taking my own lunch to work and I got too tight careful with money to buy  for the next 30 plus years, TBH I don't really like supermarket sandwiches. Now that I WFH it's not a decision I have to make.  I believe each to their own but used to get annoyed when people complained at length about being broke and then go out and spend a £5 on lunch everyday 🤷‍♀️ for years my lunch was often LOs from the night before dinner