Thursday, February 03, 2011

Frugal eating: Zucchini

Here in the UK I'd love to be able to grow Zucchini (or courgettes for the British trained amongst us)...however, my balkon here is way to warm. While in Germany I had no problem to spit them out in containers, in the UK I fizzled once they got to flowers and about two inches. It was just too warm, and they'd rot. (grumble, grumble)

However, I made the 'Markdown Madness' rounds last night. Often, I'll step out for some fresh air and will make a habit to allow Tesco and M&S prices to dictate my menus, making my rounds around when the good markdowns should have just taken place.

Normal price at Tesco for 2 courgettes is 1.20 GBP (1.42 EUR/1.61 USD). Yikes, yikes, yikes!! That's for zucchini about 4-5 inches, and NOT organic!

I realize that is sorta expensive for the US and EU costs, and I've yet to bring myself to pay this. However, let's see ('Schau mal' for my German friends), what I found:

Going to my local tesco around 18.30 results in finding things 75% off. So I picked up 4 packages of them. :-) At .3o p for 2, that's .15 p (.18 EUR/.24 USD) each, or 75% off. I could have purchased 3 more, but the expiry was on Thursday. After giving them a short tap, I estimated they'd be fine until Sunday, so thus I purchased 4 total.

The first offerings...nothing fancy...a little olive oil and onion, and then I added two sliced zucchini, and at the end sprinkled them with black pepper. Here is 1/2 of that. So I had one half on the first night, and then leftovers on the second night.

-->Don't you wish that you lived near my corner of Essex? We have 3 more packages to go through! ;-)
Tomorrow, they'll be making an appearance in fajitas, when New friend Ian will be here.

3 comments:

Tread Softly said...

The Zukes look yummy!
It's hard to believe it gets too hot for them in the Balkans. They produce like mad here in Texas during our hottest months.

Also, loved your series on the Emirate trip.

Tread Softly said...

or maybe I mean balkon...

heather in europe said...

Tread: The heat is just a little too intense, above 100 for too long during the day, in particular as it's a container garden, the container + the dirt itself ends up baking almost.