This is a local shop, for local people
I've been meaning to try this for weeks. The exciting excel spreadsheet below indicates what I bought at Stokes, my sometimes blogged favourite local greengrocers where the eggs are from five miles away and almost no food is wrapped in plastic. It compares the prices I paid on Saturday against the online prices you'd pay tonight to buy those same goods (or as near as possible) in two well-known supermarkets in the UK. 
I've helpfully used conditional formatting to show if the supermarket prices per item are higher (red) or lower (green) than my local greengrocers. Yes, geeky. For eggs, I compared Stokes' supply against large free range eggs from the West Country (one specified Devon, the other is Woodland, which is IIRC a West Country brand). Some of the maths involved division and multiplication as some items are not sold loose in supermarkets. Like flat mushrooms, which I bought loose whereas in the supermarket you can only buy in 250g plastic cartons wrapped in cellophane. Stokes sells aubergines by the kilogram, whereas supermarkets price them per fruit. Or vegetable. I've never really been sure about aubergines.
The final trigger for this was watching a somewhat patchy Dispatches on the rising price of food* which highlighted the fact that I didn't feel the price had risen that much. It turns out that's because I'm already saving money by walking down to the local greengrocers on a Saturday morning. So when the middle class media are chattering about how shocking the cost of large free range eggs are, wonder where they are shopping.
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*my problem, aside from finding Jay Raynor a more irritating food critic than Giles Coren (who at least willingly dons Elizabethan gear to wander around Southwark and Borough), was that a part of the piece talking about the wholesale price of rice mentioned that it had doubled in six months. It also mentioned that some rice-producing countries have brought in controls on exports to the West. Yet it neglected to point out that these controls were to protect the internal food supply i.e. prevent their own people starving.
Labels: shop local, shopping
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Posted @
10:45 pm
on
Monday, June 23, 2008
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Getting slaughtered in a pretty home
Kitty Jim-Jams sums up the whole dichotomy of growing up. Our culture tells us that in our late-20s/early-30s we are still young and wild and crazy but a tiny inner part of us is bored with that and wants to do 'grown-up' things. The very fact we call them 'grown-up' rather than 'adult' indicates our youthful attitude. So now I can go to a sticky-floored gig in some student bar somewhere on the Saturday night, and dish up freshly made pancakes on the Sunday. A little from column A and a little from column B.
This weekend is a freebie (i.e. no chap). So far I have: drunk too much San Miquel whilst watching a Black Books DVD; painted an outer wall (before, during, after) and got a nasty blister right on a finger joint in the process; prepped a dessert for a friend's dinner; drunk lots of wine and got the last bus home; and made fresh blueberry muffins for breakfast (with fruit from my local Stokes). Next weekend I'll be out on the town on the Friday and at a festival on Sunday. There will be no cooking, just going to Cafe Mozart for breakfast. I want to be able to do all of these things, all tangled together because life shouldn't be shoved into a set of compartments and a person neatly labelled as one type or another. I want to be able to do my own DIY, walk across cobblestones in wedge heels, tramp through the mobs at festivals, cook and sew. Oh, and write. Since the blister prevents me from doing more DIY this weekend, I may do some serious work on the various stories. I want a little from columns A, B, C, D and E.
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Posted @
11:36 am
on
Sunday, August 20, 2006
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eggs over easy
I went to the big supermarket a mile from here just now, to stock up on stuff which I should have bought yesterday from Stokes, the local grocers, but didn't for various reasons. I shudder at how much more the fruit and veg is, and how much further so much of it has come (why are the potatoes from Israel? Why?) but:
- I was amazed how my only thing not from the fresh section was the frozen puff pastry for making the morning pastries. This is the influence of the How to Cook Like a Grown Up weekend, I think. My cupboards now contain all the dry essentials and I have zero urge to buy any ready-made things. Not that I had much urge before, I just wasn't confident enough in my own cooking skills to know I can make a healthy meal from scratch in the same time as I'd be waiting for a readymeal to cook.
- I can cycle back from the supermarket with all my food in my rucksack including a carton of eggs. I am rather chuffed I managed that. I also didn't change gear on Old Vicarage Road whereas a month ago I used to have to go up one on the slight rise. But I think cycling a mile with a carton of eggs without breaking them is pretty damn cool.
I have rewarded myself with a fresh fruit smoothie. Banana, apple juice, orange juice, lime juice, ice and a dash of milk.
It's sunny enough to cycle in a tee, pedal-pushers and little girly ballet shoes as well, which is deeply satisfying after a winter using bicycle clips to keep my cords out of the chain. It's clothing which suggests cycling is fun and doesn't require sepcialist equipment. I saw a speed cyclist on Old Vicarage Road and I'm sure the goretex top, tight leggings and special shoes are great for speed but they do suggest cycling is a specialist sport instead of a way of getting from A to B and back.
Ha! I am retagging all my music, and Housewive's Choice (mp3) - a theme which practically screams "cycling along country lanes like the Famous Five" - came up. Thanks to being back on the desktop, I've reorganised the organically evolved filing structure this PC has to match the more structured filing system of the laptop. This means my music has moved from \samples\songs to \music (because when I first got this PC I didn't keep music on it - the mp3 revolution happened afterwards) and therefore needs retagging into playlists. I have a surprising amount of ska and french yeh yeh.
I am also working on the Contractually Signed Thing. I've ended up going back and combining elements from two drafts and I might pull in some things from the third attempt as well when I get that far. Amazing how a deadline concentrates the mind.
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Posted @
11:45 am
on
Sunday, May 14, 2006
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delicious del.icio.us
I was replying to a meme Annie had been lured into, over on the Going Underground blog. Amongst my replies, I included "learn to enjoy cooking". Several others put "eat more healthily" etc. It's something I'd been thinking about recently, as the Guardian have started a vegetarian cookery column this month. But I couldn't work out how to then file the clippings because the old starters - mains - salads - desserts organisation of traditional cookbooks is deeply unhelpful. You dig into some poorly designed index, look up something you do have like 'sweet potato', find the one recipe which includes it and discover that you have none of the other ingredients. Or it has meat in it. I used to have one cookbook called 'Vegetarian Cooking for One' which I used to call 'Vegetarian Cooking for Masochists' as the recipes were so strict and bland.
Then there is the fact I have no clue how to start with some things. Until a week ago I used to put courgette in with the pasta to boil for a few minutes. Then I read that I could fry it with pepper and garlic etc and, damn, it tastes good.
So I was walking home and thinking about
a) dinner
b) how to organise the recipes I wanted to clip
Tagging, I thought, is what cookbooks need. A way of putting one recipe in half a dozen places in the cookbook. So if I have a couple of sweet potatoes, I can look for recipes which include them then narrow the list down by picking other ingredients etc. So, after a smudge of faffing, I have created...
moosifer cooks del.icio.us
I've used the tag bundles to organise them by different criteria. I'm a big fan of the shop local principle and use Stokes for my fruit and veg (that poor courgette had come all the way from Dorset), so there's a bundle for seasons e.g. autumnal food. There's regions, like morroccan, etc. so actual themed meals could be planned. If I were that organised.
And it did take me a while to spot the rather obvious "delicious del.icio.us" joke.
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Posted @
11:03 pm
on
Monday, September 26, 2005
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