I thought I would tease you with some food porn. Here is our Saucy Piggy served in tiger rolls with Aldi steak cut chips and a side of Aldi crunchy salad. Delicious!
Dear all
When I was bimbling around on my bicycle, I happened to take a turn down North Parade, which I have mentioned in my previous blog posts. I was very excited to see that one of the little units has been taken off the market and there was a poster in the window, advertising the new business. I nearly burst with glee when I found out it was going to be a new local produce store! I Googled the name of the business as soon as I got home and it looks like a place where I will be doing a lot of shopping. Only a five minute cycle from the college and promises delicious goodies.
‘2 North Parade’ will be opening in September 2013, under the management of Pete Slade and JoJo Goodfellow – both are passionate about food and where it is produced. They are promising fresh, local produce, including cheese, bread, fruit and veg, coffee, preserves, wines, beers, and ciders, and much much more. I am particularly excited to see that they are working with a local coffee company to create an artisan blend for the store. As a coffee junkie, I will be happy to walk round from my office to get my mid-morning fix! Here is a link to their website and I will post more about it when the info becomes available:
http://www.2northparade.co.uk/
Have a great weekend.
Lynsey x
Dear all
Sorry for the lack of posts. My doctorate has been taking up a lot of my time but supporting my local community and rejecting the supermarket are still on the agenda. I have been doing a little bit of research into local businesses in my spare time and I wanted to share the story of a remarkable Oxford-based enterprise with you all.
Oxford Wholefoods
Oxford Wholefoods sells exactly what its name suggests. Delicious wholefoods such as grains, nuts, and dried foods. I bought a bag of polenta from this company last year (via the Summertown Co-op) and I didn’t realise that I was purchasing from a truly remarkable local scheme. This 23 year old enterprise is a not for profit venture which employes 40 disabled people and eight supervisors from the Oxford area. It started at the Slade Hospital, Headington after an occupational therapist witnessed a man with learning difficulties shovelling lentils into a bag in a health food shop. He decided that this was an ideal way of introducing those with learning difficulties and physical disabilities into the world of work – his foresight enabled plenty of disabled people to access work-based training. Oxford Wholefoods is now situated in West Oxford on the Osney Mead industrial estate and according to the Oxford Mail, it has an annual turnover of nearly £500,000.
In the same Oxford Mail article, the MD of the enterprise stated that the company could make more money if it turned to automation and fewer workers but she firmly believed that it would defeat the point in its existence. With its current staff, it supplies more than 100 shops including Midcounties Co-operative, the UK’s second largest Co-op, who were one of their first customers.
Since its humble beginnings, Oxford Wholefoods has given over 80 people work-based training, which has helped to improve the confidence and prospects of those with learning difficulties and disabilities in the community. The staff are paid what the company terms ‘therapeutic earnings’, which are low enough not to effect the state benefits that the workers are entitled to. This may sound like exploitation but it must be remembered that this is not a permanent work solution, it is a training facility that prepares the staff for future jobs.
So to all my Oxford readers, the next time you are out shopping, consider buying an item with the Oxford Wholefoods label on it – you would be supporting a local business that really provides a service to the local community in more ways than one.
I would be very interested to hear of any similar enterprises in your own area.
Best wishes
Lynsey
Dear all
I did my weekly shop today and again, I have saved money by shopping locally. I only spent £31 pounds out of my weekly budget of £40. I am putting the money I have saved into a small savings account to see how quickly it all stacks up. I won’t be rich but at least it is something.
The beauty of shopping locally means that I am not tied to any particular supplier. This week I tried two different traders in the Covered Market for my meat and veg. I went to Bonner’s, a family run greengrocer, and I spent the princely sum of £3.48 on a head of broccoli, Maris Piper potatoes, chestnut mushrooms, shallots, English onions and a carrot. That is cheaper than last week’s spend at the one around the corner and all of this is completely fresh and not likely to go off any time soon. It is nice having the kitchen full of brown paper bags full of delicious smelling veg. I will test the quality, and who knows, maybe I will become a regular.
I also went to a different butcher’s called Hedge’s. They were a bit more expensive than Meatmaster but I thought I would give them a try. I bought lamb mince, beef mince, and sirloin steaks. The sirloins really jacked up the price but remember they are expensive anywhere you go. I hesitated over buying them but the friendly butcher gave me £1 off. You just don’t get that kind of service at the supermarket. Local traders WANT your business. Again, I will check the quality and go back to them if they are nice enough.
Canned, store cupboard and dairy goods were bought at a local shop and came to exactly £16.50. That probably sounds like a lot but the cupboard was actually bare and I needed my staples, such as pasta, tinned chopped tomatoes, purees etc. I have still to check out the People’s Supermarket on the Cowley Road. My laziness has prevented me from doing so, so far! Maybe next week.
I was also fortunate enough to run into a continental market on Broad Street on the way back. The food looked so appetising – I couldn’t resist. I bought a massive garlic foccacia and a huge cinnamon bun – which Cobden has demolished. I don’t know why that boy is skinny. This thing was the size of a bowler hat! I have photographed the foccacia, so you can drool over it. I have still come away with £9 change – so I might be tempted to go back and eat my bodyweight in olives tomorrow. So much for putting it in a bank account eh?
Hope you are having a lovely week!
Lynsey
Dear all
I apologise that I have not posted in a few days. I away away at a history festival and didn’t have internet access. I thought I would make my ‘comeback’ by highlighting a few supermarket scams…read on and work out for yourself if you have been sucked in.
I have read a number of internet articles on the tricks that supermarkets play to get you to part with your hard earned brass. Some of them are subtle, others are just plain rude! They work, however, meaning that the stranglehold continues! Here is a few of my ‘favourites’:
1. Offers you cannot refuse
Everywhere you go in the supermarket, you are bombarded with a range of special offers. They are usually marked out with jazzy tickets and promises for better value. This is often not the case. When it comes down to it, these are often scams. You will often find that they work out as the same price as, or even more expensive than, buying single items or smaller equivalents. These scams often come in the form of multibuys: 3 for 2s etc. I encourage you all to lift that special offer ticket and do the maths. All British supermarkets are required by law to state a price per unit. Tot up the total in your head before you go and buy 12 jars of pickled cabbage! Think about waste too. Special offers are often found on everyday basics, such as milk, cheese, and fresh meat. These are all perishable. Some people may freeze the surplus, if they have the space, whereas others forget and it ends up in the bin. I have been guilty of this, have you?
2. The Metro/Local stores
Now this is something that is really relevant to my situation. Oxford, despite being a city, does not have any big supermarkets located near the city centre or on direct bus routes. Students often do not have cars and are forced to shop at their Sainsbury’s Local or Tesco Metro/Express. I was stuck in this situation until Steve moved up with the car. Online shopping is not an option for some, as it requires a minimum spend – typically £25, which believe it or not, is sometimes out of a student’s budget. So those living in Oxford city centre are forced to shop in these supermarket ‘convenience’ stores, which offer a smaller selection at a higher price than their superstore equivalent. They are capitalising on a ‘captive market’. Avoid doing a weekly shop there if you can possibly avoid it!
3. Rearranging the shop
This is one of my bug bears and it is something that I have been guilty of myself. When I worked for a national clothing store, we often moved around our department to put the items that didn’t sell closer to the entrance to entice people to buy them. Supermarkets often do this to shift slow selling stock but they also do this to get you lost. Getting lost when trying to find a particular product means that you have to hunt for it, going past different aisles crammed full of special offers and capitalising on our instict to impulse buy. Best way to avoid this – have a shopping list and DO NOT DEVIATE. Alternatively, try local shopping 😉
4. Eye level merchandising
This is a very successful tactic that supermarkets employ. When you next go into the supermarket, say to buy some cola, work out where the most expensive equivalent is situated. I can guarantee you it will be at eye-level. Supermarkets do this because human beings are naturally lazy. We will buy the product that is right in front of our faces, instead of bending down to the bottom shelf to find the cheaper equivalents. Check it out when you are next in the supermarket.
5. Understaffing the checkout
This is probably the most common tactic employed by all supermarkets. How often have you found yourself peed off when stuck in the queue and there are lots of staff wandering around aimlessly, when 10 out of the 15 checkouts are open? This supermarket is not understaffed, they are trying to get you to buy more. You will typically be waiting in an aisle or near products. The more you wait, the more likely you are going to buy the thing you have been staring at for the last ten minutes. These are often special offers. Ask yourself: do I need 10 Glade Air Wick plug ins? Sweets are usually located nearby too. How many times have you spotted a child begging a harassed mum or dad for a packet of sweets that were conveniently located next to the queue? Smart eh?
So that is my top 5. Keep these things in mind when you go to the supermarket and I guarantee you will come out with change!
Best wishes
Lynsey
Dear all
My local shopping has officially begun. I took to the Covered Market and North Parade yesterday and got my weekly shop in and I was pleasantly surprised with how much it cost. According to some, shopping at local stores costs them more money than the supermarket. I think that is a real shame but it has not been my experience. Before I went shopping, I went on to Sainsbury’s website and tallied up what I would spend on buying items from there. Here are the results broken down by category:
Vegetables: £6.09
Meat: £23.22
Store Cupboard: £6.86
Bakery: £0.80
Dairy: £3.79
Total: £40.76
Let’s see how the locals fare against a supermarket that claims to offer value for money.
I went into town and took £40 out of the bank. That is how I do things when I am on a budget, as the temptation is there to go mental with a debit or credit card. I walked into the Covered Market and started my local shopping. I went to a greengrocers, I won’t say what one at the moment, as I don’t want to sully any reputations, as I have a couple of qualms with what I got. The stallholder was very helpful and he picked out all of the items for me. I went in to buy: 1 yellow pepper, 2 red onions, 3lb potatoes, 2 brown onions, 1 bulb of garlic, 1 head of broccoli, and 250 g of chestnut mushrooms. First of all, I found out that I only had to buy one of each onion, as they are HUGE! I am not joking – they are triple the size of a supermarket onion. You could smash a window with these! There are a couple of things where this greengrocer did fall short. When I got home, the yellow pepper I received was wrinkly and the chestnut mushrooms had gone off! I wasn’t best pleased but I think it was down to the weather. The Covered Market was roasting! However, the vendor did refuse to sell me any of his broccoli, as it had gone yellow with the heat. He referred me round the corner to the other greengrocer, which is out of direct sunlight and it was lovely. I think I will try him for everything next week. The total I spent:
Vegetables: £5.30 – CHEAPER THAN THE SUPERMARKET!
My next stop was the butchers where I was in for an even bigger surprise. I chose to go to Meatmaster, which is a locally run meat cash and carry. They supply most of the Oxford colleges and I have bought their meat in the past and it is very high quality at very low prices. I bought 6 cumberland sausages for £1.99 (very meaty). A pack of 4 pork loin steaks (2 will be frozen for next week), 500g lean minced beef, and 2 marinated lamb leg steaks – these were on 3 for £10 – can’t say any fairer than that. I also bought a pack of 4 chicken breasts (again 2 will be frozen), and a pack of 2 good sized rump steaks – these were on 2 for £5! I also bought six eggs, which he gave me for 50p – I will put that into the total for dairy later. So the grand total for this hoard:
Meat: £16.99. MASSIVE SAVING!
The rest of it I got from the Nine til Nine shop. I won’t bore you with the details on this one but my shopping ranged from milk to curry paste (yes I am lazy)! The dairy was a bit more expensive than the supermarket but not by much:
Dairy: £1.50 – CHEAPER THAN THE SUPERMARKET AGAIN! (this includes the price of the eggs)
The rest of the stuff came to around £6.00 which is still cheaper than the supermarket!
So essentially, the conclusion I can make here is that local shopping is CHEAPER THAN THE SUPERMARKET, BY £10.97 – hope my maths is right!!! I am going to be slightly better off and my principles are completely in tact!
Best wishes
Lynsey
Dear friends
Thanks for the Facebook comments and shares. I have received loads of hits since this blog went live this weekend and I am glad that you are interested and supportive of my cause. I promised that I was going to tell you about where I was going to spend the rest of my shopping budget, so here is part two of my grand strategy!
I am very lucky to live in a city that is well served with local businesses. From delicatessens to convenience stores, I can shop 100% locally and not give a single penny to the supermarket. As I explained yesterday, I intend to spend 80% of my budget in the Covered Market but there isn’t a locally run shop in there that sells general groceries. That does not mean that I have to sell part of my soul back to Sainsbury’s…far from it. I can choose from one of the many local shops for these goods.
On the grocery section of my shopping list this week, I have 5 items: tins of chopped tomatoes, pasta, olive oil, a jar of curry sauce (I am lazy) and a naan bread. This week, I intend to cycle to my local shopping precinct on North Parade, which is a street that is exclusively independent shops and pubs. I can buy everything my heart desires there from modern art to a tin of beans. I will give my hard earned cash (I use the term hard-earned very lightly indeed), to the man who runs the Nine til Nine shop at the corner of South Parade. I have shopped there before when I have run out of basics, such as bread and milk. I think I will use him a lot more, as he is but a 10 minute cycle away. I am also researching another possibility.
There is a movement of locally-minded people in the United Kingdom, who are also sick of the supermarket. They have been inspired by a Channel 4 documentary to set up their own cooperatives, which give the local population what they want and gives the supermarkets a firm kick in the nuts in the process. ‘The People’s Supermarket’ movement started in Lambeth in 2009 and has grown from strength to strength. The basic premise is that you sign up for membership, donate your time to the shop once a month, and receive a massive discount on your groceries as a thank you. This is something that I really approve of.
There is a People’s Supermarket on Cowley Road in Oxford. That is quite a trek from where I stay but I have a bike and I should use it a lot more. The website states that I can shop there and receive good value for money but if I volunteer for a four hour shift once a month, I will get 20% off my groceries. They claim to buy everything locally and will do their best to stock items that you cannot find on your visit. I think that sounds fair enough to me! I will give that a try next week and ask them a bit more about the volunteering side of things. Here is a link to their website: http://www.tpsoxford.coop/ I would be very interested to find out if any of my readers know of any such initiatives in their own local areas.
So that is the plan so far. If anyone has any constructive comments or criticisms please let me know. Tune in tomorrow to find out about the local shopping that I have done today. I have lots of exciting news!
Best wishes
Lynsey
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for your continuing support. It is with great pleasure that I have made two ‘converts’ out of friends. Kate and Vee have both decided to try buying all of their fresh produce locally. I am so pleased for them. I feel like I am changing the world…one potato at a time 😀 I promised you that I would outline my food mission strategy, so here goes…
Oxford is an interesting city. In fact, I would describe it as more of a provincial town as it is pretty tiny. It has a metric ton of history, dating from the Anglo Saxon period, and one of the best universities in the world, where history is made every day in the realms of the sciences and the arts. What I love the most about Oxford, however, is that it is nestled close to the Cotswolds with sprawling countryside all around. This puts me in a great position for buying fresh local produce and often from an historic venue.
A place that I often pass through is the Oxford Covered Market – I use it as a shortcut between busy Cornmarket, which is heaving with evil tourists, and the High Street. It has the most amazing range of locally run stores, including the usual tourist gift shops and a place where you can buy cookies by weight! *imagines buying 10lbs of cookies* Anyhoo, I digress. The Covered Market has been in Oxford for over two centuries and the building dates back to the 1770s. According to their website, some of the businesses in the market ‘date back to the original opening or are related in some way to the family names that have stood the test of time’. I am ashamed to say that I rarely shop there because I try to stay away from the tourists – anyone who knows me well enough will know how much I deplore the class of tourists that come to this noble city! I will just have to suck it up because the Covered Market needs me, as it does every shopper that passes through its gates.
In April of this year, the local paper The Oxford Mail reported that traders feared that the Covered Market was under threat. Oxford City Council, who own this historic trading post, plan to put up trader rents – up to 70% in some cases! If this claim is true, I think that is disgusting and completely unacceptable. The trading units are tiny, and I mean tiny, and the council already charge £33,000 a year for some of the spaces! Not only would the livelihoods of the people who run stalls there be under threat but allegedly, the council does not care. Apparently, the traders tried to reason with them but it has done no good at all – the council have denied these allegations. Regardless of who is telling the truth, I would rather not take the risk and use it, because I may well lose it!
As of tomorrow, I will be sourcing my fresh meat, vegetables, and baked goods from the Covered Market. I can choose from a meat cash n’ carry, an organic trader, and a butcher that specialises in pies, for my meat. There is an excellent greengrocer that sells local vegetables and some international veg that I have never even heard of, never mind tried. I have had bought veg from them before and the quality is ten times better than the supermarket and it stays fresher for longer. Plus, I will only buy what I need rather than buying these multipacks, where most ends up going mouldy and in the bin. In a country where people cannot afford to put a balanced meal on the table, it is just plain wrong to buy excess to chuck out. Furthermore, there are a few bakeries in there, which I have never used because I always get to them far too late and there is nothing good left. I will not make that mistake again. I love freshly baked bread and I will be putting a loaf of that in my bread bin tomorrow rather than a pack of Warburtons – well…that is only half true. I don’t own a bread bin, it will sit on top of the microwave. I estimate that I will be spending at least 80% of my shopping budget in there.
What about the other 20% I hear you cry? Well you will have to visit my blog tomorrow to see 😉
Lynsey x
Dear all
Thank you for sticking with this blog. I have had many wonderful comments from friends on Facebook and plenty of advice.
A common theme that has emerged in popular conversation and on the television is the damage that the supermarket is doing to the British High Street. Everywhere you look shops are shutting down, especially ones selling traditional fare like the greengrocer, the fishmonger, and the butcher. This makes a lot of people sad but for many it is bittersweet. The amount of times you hear the following statement on documentaries is quite startling:
‘Oh yeah, it is sad that Mr Butcher’s Meat Shop has closed down but I haven’t used him for ten years. I get all my meat from the supermarket…’
That makes me want to tear my hair out. These things will not close down if you USE THEM. I can understand that people are naturally swayed towards going to the superstores. They have everything you want under one roof, they have ample parking, and often a coffee shop or somewhere to socialise. Many people in rural areas pose the question ‘How did I live without the supermarket?’ Well the answer to that is, you did and now you choose not to live without it.
I am from a semi-rural area on the west coast of Scotland. Dalry is a small town in the Garnock Valley and has been described in the national press as ‘the backyard of the middle of nowhere’. I lived there for 23 years and I have witnessed how shopping attitudes have changed as a result of the supermarket, cyclical depression, and economic recession. The common phrase associated with Dalry is that ‘There is nothing in the place’ – well whose fault is that? When I was little, I am talking in the early 1990s, Dalry was quite a prosperous place. Nearly every single small business in the town was locally owned and the major employers in the town were Roche Pharmaceuticals, Z. Hinchliffe’s, and Johnston’s Castings. I have very fond memories of that time. My mum would pick me and my sister up from school on a Monday and we would do the weekly shop in the town centre.
The route we took into the town centre took us past all local businesses. Every single shop on Main Street was thriving. There was a video shop on the corner (which is now the Key Store), a barber shop and gentleman’s outfitters opposite that (that’s where I got my ears pierced – now the Cafe). There was a lovely bakery called Peter’s Pantry, who did the most delicious Chelsea Buns and Yum-Yums. I used to love walking past it as a little girl because there was the most delicious smell of sweet pastry and sugary icing. There was also a chemist which we knew as Garrett’s and I believe that Dr Law’s wife once had ownership. Furthermore, there was a big butcher’s shop and delicatessen called McClymont’s – I hated going in there because they had meat hanging on hooks from the ceiling, which I thought was scary and my mum would stand talking to the shop lady for what seemed like a lifetime to a 5 year old – I think it was Pat Burns? At the bottom end of the street was Matteo’s hardware and electrical shop, Morton’s paper shop, the Dalry Amusement arcade, Neilly’s shoe shop, and a greengrocers in a really dark shop – nothing has been in there for years. And let’s not forget MacKenzie’s bakers and Crawford’s gift shop, where you were told by the grumpy owners ‘DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!’ The only shops that have remained on that street are the chemist, albeit under different ownership, MacKenzie’s and the shoe shop.
If I continued on to doing New Street, we would be here forever, but to summarise there was two ladies clothing shops (Sunny’s and Margaret Sherrie’s – the latter is now a great greengrocers, big shout out to Janette Galloway), a travel agents (now Shear Magic), Iain Bell’s hairdressers (still there), the Penny Farthing cafe (still there), the King’s Arms Hotel (now a shell), a carpet store, another chemist, a newsagent, and a chinese restaurant. There was also two mini marts on that street – the Co-op and Galbraiths. So you can see, Dalry was very well served and people could shop around for the best prices. My mother would get her rolls from the bakers, her meat from McClymont’s or Stalker’s, her fruit and veg from the green grocers, her newspapers from one of the three newsagents, and the rest of it from the Co-op or Galbraith’s. You only got items from the mini-marts if you could not get them anywhere else, like tinned goods, frozen food etc. Oh and not to forget the most important business in the town 😉
Mr John Shaw’s Mobile Shop, run by my wonderful dad. My dad would drive his grocery vans, which were usually converted buses or mobile libraries, around the housing estates in Dalry and Kilbirnie, and also served the local farms. He sold quite a selection of items, ranging from sweets to potatoes. He would allow me and my sister to go out on the van with him where we were taught the work ethic that we both pride ourselves on from a very young age.
So what changed? Well Dalry was hit by the recession very badly in the 90s, under the leadership of Thatcher and then Major. The rule that most people live by in the West of Scotland is ‘The only good Tory is a dead one’. People could not afford to buy as much fresh produce as they once could and they would go outside of the town to get to the supermarkets, such as Asda’s in Irvine, where you could get lots of food and it was all under one roof. Businesses started to close down in the town.
The final nail in the coffin came in the early 2000s, when Tesco opened a large supermarket in Kilbirnie. It had everything one could ever wish for under one roof, including food, clothing, electricals, and a petrol station. As a result, local petrol stations have either suffered or just closed down. The main one in Dalry run by ‘Jimmy Thistle’ – the semi racist name we used for the Indian owner, (which he loved btw and actively encouraged), closed down and the site was redeveloped into a Lidl Supermarket a few years ago. Dalry now has no petrol station and when you live in the ‘backyard of the middle of nowhere’ that is a problem.
The recession and supermarkets have killed local business in my once prosperous little town. I feel sad going back to Dalry now but the business owners are still fighting against the national chains valiantly and a number of new shops have opened in the town.
So to answer the question I have posed in the title of this blog -how can I live without the supermarket? Well quite easily, if I shop at local business.
I will outline my local business shopping strategy tomorrow 🙂
Best wishes
Lynsey
Dear readers
Welcome to my blog. My name is Lynsey Shaw and I am about to explode.
I have witnessed the rising levels of food poverty in Britain both from a distance and at first-hand and I have had enough! Only yesterday, did the Guardian newspaper report that the numbers of people getting food to keep themselves from Trussell Trust Foodbanks had spiralled from 50,000 to 150,000 over the last few months. This figure is unacceptable. Just this morning,I watched a pretty harrowing documentary on the BBC, ‘The Great British Budget Menu’, and it absolutely broke my heart and sickened to me to my stomach! It gave first hand evidence of families, single parents, and pensioners being forced to live on packet soups, cups of tea, and tinned ravioli and beans to survive on low incomes. They were not reporting on extremes – you hear about this type of living every single day and something has got to give.
So who is to blame for this problem? Well the government would like to blame the recession but they have playing that card for far too long. We live in a developed country where people, even those on increasingly meager benefits, should be able to have access to an affordable, nutritious diet. I am not saying that everyone should be eating Duchy Originals Organics but everyone should be able to afford to put a balance of protein, carbs, and fat on the table at dinnertime. Another increasingly-used, middle class retort, is that people are lazy and don’t want to cook from scratch. Ok, I will concede that for some people that may well be the case but the fact remains that it is cheaper to live on processed crap than it is to buy fresh ingredients and cook a balanced meal – and that is where, I believe, the problem lies.
For many, food shopping is all about making your budget go as far as possible. I live with my boyfriend Steve and we try our best to live on £40 a week between us for all of our food and household products. I am a full-time doctoral student and Steve is currently between contracts. We are really feeling the pinch. We usually do our grocery shopping in Sainsbury’s and we are bombarded with cheap deals – that we usually resist I might add.Take this example. Steve and I both love lasagne. In Sainsbury’s, you can buy two Sainsbury’s Basic Lasagnes for 75p each. £1.50 for a meal — that is very cheap. What’s the problem I hear you cry? Let’s look at the nutritional value. One of these 300g lasagnes has:
396 calories
16.1g fat
7.2 g sat fat
1.73 g salt
4.6 g of total sugar.
If you are basing your consumption on calories alone, you may think that this is acceptable for a meal. However, the National Health Service, the institution that suffers the most from the burden of our country’s nutritional crisis, states that we should be cutting down on the amount of high-fat meals to cut our risks of heart attack, diabetes, and stroke. To them a high-fat meal is one with around 17.5 g of fat, the Sainsbury’s Basic Lasagne is not far off that. Steve and I resist buying this type of food, as we enjoy cooking meals and feel more satisfied when it is done from scratch. However, the individual constituents of a home-made lasagne come up to nearly £7! The only item in that which can be used again is the pasta sheets. Now do you see where I am coming from?! I am not saying that everyone should not be eating what they enjoy but if you are eating these types of meal, every night of the week, the effects stack up and you will find yourself with major digestive problems.
Ok so you have listened to my rant and are probably screaming ‘DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT AND STOP WHINING!’ Well, I fully intend to. As of Monday, Stephen and I no longer shop at the supermarket for any of our fresh produce. We believe that people should be able to afford fresh ingredients for much cheaper than what they are currently retailed at. We are not saying that fresh meat and veg should go down to 75p a unit to match the price of ready meals, far from it. We would love to see the prices coming down to give people a bit of a chance and to provide value for money for all. I know that our protest will probably not change anything, as we would require a full revolution to do that but we think this is the best move for us.
Stay tuned for most posts and how we intend to push our ‘mission’ forward.
Best wishes
Lynsey
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Lynsey's Food Mission 