I'd prefer to buy a little more local, less "big retail" but my longer term accomodation will be on the other side of town, so rather than trying to ferret out local options here only to move, I'll suck it up in the short term and go to Asda.
I still have the habit of shopping like I'm in Germany (= going to the supermarket 2 to 3 times in a week). This habit is a little silly here as refrigerators are closer to American sized so I can buy more, and further--the selection is virtually the same Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday, so there are no advantages to multiple trips.
Because I am temporary accomodation and trying to minimize the disruption, I'm a little limited in cooking properly, for example to have lots of spices on hand or to dirty every dish in the house. So I'm leaning more toward packaged goods than I normally would.
In case you're curious, here's what I've bought during the past two days (Friday and Sunday). In general, I'm flexible with what I buy, so will bend to accomodate sales or markdowns. From the below photos, everything was on some sort of price droppage.
To explain further--Asda has various schemes of pricing--'rolling back the prices' ala Walmart, multiple savings if you buy 2 for a certain price you get the discount, and markdowns due to items reaching their 'use by' date. For the most part, if you're willing to be fleixible--i.e. 'I want any green vegetable to cook for dinner tonight'--or 'I want something vegetarian as a main course which will reheat well on the next day', then you can make your choices according to price and do well. Here is how I did. All prices are in Pounds. Where I put a price (in parenthesis), that is the 'regular' price one would normally pay for this item at Asda.
Old El Paso Fajita Kit 1.50 (2.76)
Old El Paso Taco Kit 1.50 (2.76)
3x Quorn Mince 1.00 each (1.98)
Heinz baked beans .75 (1.24)-->840 gram can!
2x Asda cheese pizza 1.00 (1.58)
Bistro gravy 1.00 (1.58)
Frozen broccoli .84
Frozen peas 1.00
Grand total--> 12.34
There's a little cake/pie on the right side, someone brought those into the office and offered it to me. I'm not a cake person, but being new to this office I didn't want to decline, so I brought it home and D had it with his tea.
Today's trip....it's Sunday and I'm going to the supermarket. I have to say--I prefer Sunday to Saturday for the supermarket, mainly because I'm in the right mindset for food shopping since I'm normally making up my office lunch meals for the week on Sunday.
Today's take:
Asda Baking Potatos, hidden in the back--the only regular priced item - 1.48 for 7 large potatos
Garlic bread with cheese .68 (1.38)
Garlic bread (hidden underneath) .32 (.50)
2x strawberries .68 (1.88)
grapes .38 (.58)
herb salad .38 (1.00)
Quorn mince and onion suet pudding .83 (1.68)
Dairy free sunflower oil spread 1.00 (1.12)
Cauldron veg sausages .97 (1.98)
expensive cheddar cheese 2.00 (2,38)
the supreme bargain of the day - a small squash .10 (1.64) -->who would pay 1.64 for a tiny squash??
Grand total-->just under 10 quid
So what kind of meals are upcoming this week?
-Last week, I used a package of the Quorn mince and combined a can of beans with a cup of kidney beans to make a superb chilli. I'll do something similar to use with the taco shells/cheese.
-There will be baked potatos on the menu, mainly to heat up the house in the evening.
-The bag of salad will go into the office and will last three days
-The sausages and baked beans are the making for a full English breakfast, which is also great for dinner. The only thing missing to supply is an egg and toast.
-The squash will be tonight's dinner, with some rice
-The frozen veg will be combined with last week's pasta sauce and perhaps some of the mince, to go over pasta.
-The 'close to being out of date marked down' items the mince pudding thingy, the sausages, the bread, etc. all went into the freezer for a different day.
I hear the 'tsk-tsk ing' from Germany all the way over here, btw.
But H, grapes and strawberries are inappropriate for the season/location. Just think of your carbon footprint!
Yeah, I hear you. I went up and down the fruit and veg aisle to try and figure out what is locally grown here. It was somewhat surprising to me, that there was not a plethora of 'warmer' EU country items, such as strawberries from Spain or anything from Italy, like there is in Germany or Dutch or UK greenhouse items. Most of the off-season veg (including my strawberries in this instance) comes from more distant, exotic places like Morocco and Mozambique. Ouch.
My primary issue with these far away items isn't the environmental concerns of shipping items so far (although it probably should be!) My concern is in going outside of the EU that the regulation is not as strict or as closely monitored as to what chemicals are used in the growing process. My German colleagues have drilled in me a distrust of Spanish produce, never mind the non-EU varieties. In addition, something which travels such a distance never tastes as good as something local which didn't endure such a long food route.
The only local items which I found so far in the produce area were brussel sprouts on a stalk (last week's rollback deal--1 pound for a stalk which included approx 40 sprouts), and potatos. I'll keep searching...
All told, from the above, I'm under 25 pounds a week for food. While some of the multiple items will be stored for another week as well as the butter substitue will be spread over many weeks (spread, haha!). I'm using things purchased last week, so I think 25 pounds would be about average for a weekly shopping bill for me. For you folks at home, that's about 35 USD on today's conversation rates. Granted, this model is also taking into account that there is no cafeteria on-site at the office so I must buy enough to produce 5 weekday lunch meals, although that is usually just additional portions from my evening meals.
So how is this comparing from Germany, H?
I cannot make a full comparison yet as I'm doing a lot less cooking from scratch in this moment. Once I'm in the new place and back to that method, I think I'll run through this again and cost it out to see. In addition, I didn't shop at the big shops in Germany, so my comparison is additionally skewed in this moment.
If you enjoyed this sort of banal, everyday life analysis, let me know. Or any specifc UK food queries, I can look into it...
4 comments:
How I wish they sold Quorn in Germany... enjoy!
Even though it seems your conscience is not bothering you too much about the carbon footprint, I'll assuage what amount there is by sharing two things.
The first is that the production of food matters far more in terms of carbon emissions than does transportation. A good--though not perfect--rule of thumb is to buy on price, since this will reflect how efficiently the food was produced.
The second, which I bet you already know, is that what you eat matters far more than from where you got your eats. By not eating meat, for example, you're already doing much more to reduce your carbon footprint than the most voracious omni-localvore (and eating local doesn't necessarily mean a lower carbon footprint anyway).
Here's a study from Carnegie Mellon with which you may chastise meat-eaters like me.
Hello!
You can also get fruit and veg delivered in something called "box schemes" and I am sure if you type your postcode and "farmer's market" into Google it would tell you everything you needed to know. They are quite popular in the UK, esp in the big cities.
Abel and Cole are good food deliverers if you want to look into it.
(It took me AGES to find out what they were called in Denmark.)
Jul: maybe someday you'll see it there!
Jeff: thanks, i always love additional ammo to chastise the meat eaters, ;-) although interesting in that study is the difference between red meat and chicken/fish and how close veg/fruit is to chicken/fish in climate impact.
Kel D: thanks for the tip! i had such a box delivered years ago in California, i have not thought to look here for this...
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