Solitary chicken - need advice

[redbug]

Don't eat cheap sausages always go for good quality had a friend who worked in a sausage factory years ago been finicky about sausages ever since. Also don't eat much in the line of pies. Agree with claret buy only good meat or not at all.

Missed the programme will watch it on catch up.

 

Pam

[Guest]

There is a simple point that most here have missed, but was mentioned in the programme last night. Some people go shopping with next to nothing to spend in the first place. You can educate them till you are blue in the face, but if they only have say £40 for a week to feed a family of five or six (and yes, it's not just those on benefits who have next to nothing to spare on food nowadays), then sometimes they have no choice but to go for the cheaper products. Everyone knows that they are full of , but in a choice between feeding a family for a week, or feeding your family for half a week, all mothers would chuck their principles out of the window. Especially in the current climate, where the economic outlook is so depressing.

 

I, like so many here, am in the fortunate postion of being able to buy local produce, at a price, but would never judge someone else less fortunate than myself who found themselves forced into buying cheap rubbish. Have you tasted value bread? It's foul - no-one would buy it if they had the means to buy a decent loaf.

 

As for the supermarkets, well....they are there to make a profit for their shareholders, and given that the majority of shareholders in supermarkets are the staff, who are earning little more than minimum wage, you can't blame them for wanting to make a profit.

[Clur]

There is a simple point that most here have missed, but was mentioned in the programme last night. Some people go shopping with next to nothing to spend in the first place. You can educate them till you are blue in the face, but if they only have say £40 for a week to feed a family of five or six (and yes, it's not just those on benefits who have next to nothing to spare on food nowadays), then sometimes they have no choice but to go for the cheaper products.

 

I don't have a proverbial pot to pee in, and the credit crunch has bitten me significantly so agree with you. However, we cut our food bill from £120 per week for a family of 4 down to £55 a week just by changing our shopping habits. Apart from a ready-made pizza on a Friday, we don't buy any processed food. We also eat some form of meat or fish every night as DH is one of those that doesn't think it counts as a meal otherwise! Most of our food and things like milk are organic too. We have literally achieved this by stopping buying the cheap supermarket stuff like pies etc, and purely cutting out processed stuff.

 

I was brought up believing buying fresh was more expensive, and making stuff from scratch was a pain in the bum and that buying anything other than economy brands was pure indulgence, but we've proved that's not the case. I work an average of 50 hours a week but make my own bread (not with a machine as that went wonky and I can't afford to replace it), sauces for pasta etc (cheap tinned toms as a base). If you're educated to know what you're shopping for, you can make more informed choices. I'll quite often buy frozen veg if it's cheaper, economy bananas etc (since I found out it's generally because they aren't a uniform size), but I don't believe that ready-made stuff is cheaper or easier, and so-called convenience food isn't any quicker than making your own.

 

I'm not holding us up as paragons of virtue - DH is still addicted to fizzy pop, and I'll have your arm off for a tub of Haagan Daas - but if I can do it as a stupidly busy working mum of two, then anyone can. It's through programmes like this, that I now know what I am buying and can make my choices accordingly.

[chickencam]

I couldn't agree more

 

The only counter to this arguement is are things like dried pulses and other cheap bulk items available to an inner city shopper, the answer to this is probably less if they are prepared to look for them. I suspect that there are more ethnic grocery stores in poorer areas and they are gold mines for cheap good quality nutrititious ingredients.

 

Frozen veg tends to be pretty cheap, as are things like frozen liver and kidneys, which with cheap cuts - as in slow cooking needed not rubbish - of meat can be made into tasty meals.

[redhotchick]

There is a simple point that most here have missed, but was mentioned in the programme last night. Some people go shopping with next to nothing to spend in the first place. You can educate them till you are blue in the face, but if they only have say £40 for a week to feed a family of five or six (and yes, it's not just those on benefits who have next to nothing to spare on food nowadays), then sometimes they have no choice but to go for the cheaper products. Everyone knows that they are full of , but in a choice between feeding a family for a week, or feeding your family for half a week, all mothers would chuck their principles out of the window. Especially in the current climate, where the economic outlook is so depressing.

 

In the programme last night the family of 4 who were tasked with not buying from the supermarket ended up spending less than the family who were tasked with buying only supermarket own brands.

 

The mother in the non supermarket family went shopping to her local market for the first time and searched out the good deals at her local butcher. In the end she said she wouldn't go back to spending £120 every week in the supermarket. The mother in the "supermarket" family looked very interested in what the "non supermarket" lady had to say.

 

I've got nothing against own brand tinned tomatoes and stuff like that, but I couldn't eat the processed pies, pizza or the cheap mince. Yuck.

[Guest]

Sorry, but it was the family who ate nothing but supermarket value products that spent by far the less amount over the experiment. And no doubt, they put a bit of weight on, given the amount of rubbish they must have eaten.

 

The family that sourced food from local suppliers spent more, but ate far better quality foods - given a choice, most people would much prefer that, especially given that she saved money on her usual budget. But she bought less - she said that at the end of the week she had far less leftovers because she had planned her menu better - so she saved money because she bought less.

 

I'm not saying that it is right that supermarkets sell cheap stodge for pennies - far from it - I am merely stating the fact that some people have no choice but to buy it. I'm sure you can all come up with examples of how YOU stretch you budget (I do it - 2 adults, 4 children, 4 chickens and a dog take some feeding), but we are all fortunate - the very nature of this forum dictates that, as we are all here because of a shared interest in keeping chickens, which mean swe all have a shared interest in both animal welfare and food standards, and also means most of us are privileged enough to have access to growing space, to plant a few tomatoes or onions etc. Not everyone has that.

 

I repeat - value products taste like , and I doubt that anyone, even those who have to exist on them, would disagree with that.

[Egluntyne]

I don't have a proverbial pot to pee in, and the credit crunch has bitten me significantly so agree with you. However, we cut our food bill from £120 per week for a family of 4 down to £55 a week just by changing our shopping habits. Apart from a ready-made pizza on a Friday, we don't buy any processed food. We also eat some form of meat or fish every night as DH is one of those that doesn't think it counts as a meal otherwise! Most of our food and things like milk are organic too. We have literally achieved this by stopping buying the cheap supermarket stuff like pies etc, and purely cutting out processed stuff.

 

I was brought up believing buying fresh was more expensive, and making stuff from scratch was a pain in the bum and that buying anything other than economy brands was pure indulgence, but we've proved that's not the case. I work an average of 50 hours a week but make my own bread (not with a machine as that went wonky and I can't afford to replace it), sauces for pasta etc (cheap tinned toms as a base). If you're educated to know what you're shopping for, you can make more informed choices. I'll quite often buy frozen veg if it's cheaper, economy bananas etc (since I found out it's generally because they aren't a uniform size), but I don't believe that ready-made stuff is cheaper or easier, and so-called convenience food isn't any quicker than making your own.

 

I'm not holding us up as paragons of virtue - DH is still addicted to fizzy pop, and I'll have your arm off for a tub of Haagan Daas - but if I can do it as a stupidly busy working mum of two, then anyone can. It's through programmes like this, that I now know what I am buying and can make my choices accordingly.

 

Bravo.

 

Re-educatiing folk is what is needed more than anything.

[TAJ]

We buy meat from a local butcher from locally sourced farms, and then other items we get from a local organic shop - it may not be as cheap as the value ranges, but way cheaper than supermarket standard prices. It is crazy that I can buy local organic cabbage in 'The Natural Grocery Store' locally for LESS than the cheapest value version in the supermarket for the guinea pig to eat if we are running short on the allotment.

 

Produce your own, then buy local - even when I buy from a local fruit grower that sells to supermakrets he tells me how little profit he makes from the deal - did you know when they have those bags of apples with 25% extra free the supermarkets do not pay the producer a penny extra - the demand the offer from the producer, totally at their cost!

 

It was the tomatoes that amazed me most in the programme, the rest was about what I suspected - look at Pork in a supermarket - just like the chicken on the programme it comes with added water.

 

Tracy

[redhotchick]

Sorry, but it was the family who ate nothing but supermarket value products that spent by far the less amount over the experiment. And no doubt, they put a bit of weight on, given the amount of rubbish they must have eaten.

 

The family that sourced food from local suppliers spent more, but ate far better quality foods - given a choice, most people would much prefer that, especially given that she saved money on her usual budget. But she bought less - she said that at the end of the week she had far less leftovers because she had planned her menu better - so she saved money because she bought less.

 

I'm not saying that it is right that supermarkets sell cheap stodge for pennies - far from it - I am merely stating the fact that some people have no choice but to buy it. I'm sure you can all come up with examples of how YOU stretch you budget (I do it - 2 adults, 4 children, 4 chickens and a dog take some feeding), but we are all fortunate - the very nature of this forum dictates that, as we are all here because of a shared interest in keeping chickens, which mean swe all have a shared interest in both animal welfare and food standards, and also means most of us are privileged enough to have access to growing space, to plant a few tomatoes or onions etc. Not everyone has that.

 

I repeat - value products taste like , and I doubt that anyone, even those who have to exist on them, would disagree with that.

 

My apologies Shona, you are correct. Over the 4 weeks the "own brand" family spent £210 and the "source elsewhere" where possible family £336. It would be a big saving and sometimes people can't afford to stand by their principles.

 

The bit that had stuck in my mind was the final week, where the "source elsewhere" mother who had spent £70, and was convinced that she would be able to spend less than that in future. I didn't realise that the "own brand" family had only spent about £30 in the final week

 

All the details are here if anyone is interested.

[The Dogmother]

I don't have a proverbial pot to pee in, and the credit crunch has bitten me significantly so agree with you. However, we cut our food bill from £120 per week for a family of 4 down to £55 a week just by changing our shopping habits. Apart from a ready-made pizza on a Friday, we don't buy any processed food. We also eat some form of meat or fish every night as DH is one of those that doesn't think it counts as a meal otherwise! Most of our food and things like milk are organic too. We have literally achieved this by stopping buying the cheap supermarket stuff like pies etc, and purely cutting out processed stuff.

 

I was brought up believing buying fresh was more expensive, and making stuff from scratch was a pain in the bum and that buying anything other than economy brands was pure indulgence, but we've proved that's not the case. I work an average of 50 hours a week but make my own bread (not with a machine as that went wonky and I can't afford to replace it), sauces for pasta etc (cheap tinned toms as a base). If you're educated to know what you're shopping for, you can make more informed choices. I'll quite often buy frozen veg if it's cheaper, economy bananas etc (since I found out it's generally because they aren't a uniform size), but I don't believe that ready-made stuff is cheaper or easier, and so-called convenience food isn't any quicker than making your own.

 

I'm not holding us up as paragons of virtue - DH is still addicted to fizzy pop, and I'll have your arm off for a tub of Haagan Daas - but if I can do it as a stupidly busy working mum of two, then anyone can. It's through programmes like this, that I now know what I am buying and can make my choices accordingly.

 

Me too Clur; I don't have money to burn. Quite the opposite in fact, but I can shop more cheaply from local markets an suppliers, ofetn cutting deals with them for discounts. Most of our food is cooked from scratch -I batch bake and freeze it in the freezer that I got from Freecycle - it's just a case of cooking thriftily.

[BarbaraJ]

Nothing surprised me at all really. you generally get what you pay for. we are not very lucky here for local butchers/greengrocers.Our town has ALOT of supermarkets and no organic veg market/stall/shop if they did i would use it alot. we have a butchers i used to use who sold free range eggs from their hens but not free range chicken so i stopped going. i need to go back and see where the rest of their meat comes from. i have to buy my fruit/veg from a supermarket or use a veg scheme.

The main change i have made over the years is reduce my quantity of meat , instead of 4 chicken breasts for 4-5 of us i use 2 and pad out with veg etc.

If i could only afford value meat/pies/chicken i wouldn't eat meat!

[Valkyrie]

Saw this programme this evening. Somehow nothing much surprised me except for the chicken breasts. I knew that chickens were pumped with water, but I was rather shocked at the concoction that they injected the breasts with. Yuk yuk yuk - even if they said it was "harmless" I doubt very much that I would be consuming those extras at any time. Anyone wanting nice lamb mince - buy a cheap cut like the belly. I spent a while trimming off the meat, and then used my mum's ancient mincer (a wedding present that I hijacked) - but it did make enough for one meal of Cornish Pastie a la Kooj - with tortillas. I did waste the fat though - should have made my own suety stuff I suppose.

[abwsco]

Going OT a bit but we live in a town but now only have one fruit and veg shop whose produce is not great and 3 butchers. None of them are near each other either so for most people they have a choice of either Sainsburys, a small independant supermarket, Te£co Express or a simply M & S. There is a farmers market once a month but that's not running at the moment and it's never on for many hours anyway. I'd love to buy local produce but am hard pressed to find it

 

As for the value ranges, if I'm not doing an Ocado shop I will buy tinned toms, some veg and tissues but that's about it. Have never bought cheap processed carp even when we've been in the position of having no money left at the end of the week.

[Clur]

Most of the food we buy is from the supermarket. We do have a farm shop fairly near by (not a posh one, but cheap and lovely) but it's not always open on the days I can get to it. As we don't like to take the kids food shopping with us, DH normally does a trolley dash when I get home in the evening.

 

Buying local is fab, I wish I could do more, but I've fallen into the trap of supermarket being cheap and convenient

[Lesley]

There is a simple point that most here have missed, but was mentioned in the programme last night. Some people go shopping with next to nothing to spend in the first place. You can educate them till you are blue in the face, but if they only have say £40 for a week to feed a family of five or six (and yes, it's not just those on benefits who have next to nothing to spare on food nowadays), then sometimes they have no choice but to go for the cheaper products.

 

I don't have a proverbial pot to pee in, and the credit crunch has bitten me significantly so agree with you. However, we cut our food bill from £120 per week for a family of 4 down to £55 a week just by changing our shopping habits. Apart from a ready-made pizza on a Friday, we don't buy any processed food. We also eat some form of meat or fish every night as DH is one of those that doesn't think it counts as a meal otherwise! Most of our food and things like milk are organic too. We have literally achieved this by stopping buying the cheap supermarket stuff like pies etc, and purely cutting out processed stuff.

 

I was brought up believing buying fresh was more expensive, and making stuff from scratch was a pain in the bum and that buying anything other than economy brands was pure indulgence, but we've proved that's not the case. I work an average of 50 hours a week but make my own bread (not with a machine as that went wonky and I can't afford to replace it), sauces for pasta etc (cheap tinned toms as a base). If you're educated to know what you're shopping for, you can make more informed choices. I'll quite often buy frozen veg if it's cheaper, economy bananas etc (since I found out it's generally because they aren't a uniform size), but I don't believe that ready-made stuff is cheaper or easier, and so-called convenience food isn't any quicker than making your own.

 

I'm not holding us up as paragons of virtue - DH is still addicted to fizzy pop, and I'll have your arm off for a tub of Haagan Daas - but if I can do it as a stupidly busy working mum of two, then anyone can. It's through programmes like this, that I now know what I am buying and can make my choices accordingly.

 

I agree with both points here. My sister has very little money and two teenagers to feed - she buys the cheapest food she can - I wouldn't even bother trying to convert her But I spent some considerable time, when my two were young, living on benefits and very rarely bought ready-meals.

 

The difference is that I could always cook - I think I was born knowing how to cook. I bought good meat from a local butcher but very little of it. I was given the very, very, end pieces of the leg of lamb for free. I bought 8 sausages - 2 each for a meal and 2 over, those 2 sausages would make a big sausage casserole and neither child would dare go to the fridge and just eat those 2 sausages as a snack! Six slices of liver, half a pound of mince, chicken leg.

My Mum cooked - not a brilliant cook but no ready meals. My sister never had any inclination to cook and wasn't taught at her school. She doesn't buy ready meals as such and can put a meal together using vegetables plus something - the something usually being the cheapest bought pizza, fish fingers, sausages, mince etc.

 

I think we really do need to bring back proper cooking in schools - not how to construct a sandwich etc. As Clare says Thrift isn't a word used today. We need to educate about using good food wisely - making a chicken last for three meals plus soup, and how to use leftovers. I made the sausage casserole this week with 2 leftover sausages (after I'd stopped Carl from making a sandwich with them )

 

The casserole fed both of us - and I had leftover casserole for my lunch for another two days (leftover leftovers! Yum! )

[Egluntyne]

Put the recipes in the creative leftovers thread Lesley!

[Lesley]

Put the recipes in the creative leftovers thread Lesley!

 

- it would mostly be "empty what you have left in the fridge - add an onion......"

[Egluntyne]

Put the recipes in the creative leftovers thread Lesley!

 

- it would mostly be "empty what you have left in the fridge - add an onion......"

 

.....and some tinned tomatoes.

[Valkyrie]

Lesley wrote:

making a chicken last for three meals plus soup,

 

I agree. A roast chicken does for one meal and from the remains I can do either a chicken pasta dinner or chicken curry - usually there will be enough to freeze half for another meal. OH does his soup. So there we have the 3 + soup. I do tend to buy large chickens though, mainly because of carnivorous son.

[Rona]

Put the recipes in the creative leftovers thread Lesley!

 

- it would mostly be "empty what you have left in the fridge - add an onion......"

 

.....and some tinned tomatoes.

 

.... sprinkle with a little grated cheese and grill until golden and bubbly

[Lesley]

[Shirl]

I only half watched the programme. Was it all chicken breasts pumped with water? We always buy organic chicken from Tesco and we won't be getting it anymore if it's full of extras! We buy the vine riped toms anyway.

 

All our shopping comes from Tesco because it's our nearest supemarket and I only buy organic so local shops are no good for me. I have a really good orgaic farm shop about a 20 minutes drive but it is too far and way too expensive to use. I tried Abel & Cole a couple of times but the apples are gross and there is always something that is delivered in a past its best or rotting state.

[Guest]

I wasn't sure what he was trying to achieve really. Supermarkets don't just have a premium range and a cheap range, they have several product ranges in between so it's not as if you can't buy something a bit better for a few more pennies!???

[Old Speckled Hen]

 

 

 

The difference is that I could always cook - I think I was born knowing how to cook.

I think we really do need to bring back proper cooking in schools

 

 

Hooray to that

THAT is what makes the difference and enables you to utilise food and live more cheaply.

I remember cooking ... and making a mess ... with my mother.

I cooked and made a mess with my daughter and am now doing the same with my step grandson.

[The Dogmother]

We've always cooked too, and I carry it on with Rosie who is nearly 11 and able to produce a small, healthy meal with minimal supervision.

 

My mother hates cooking though and we all laugh that she cooks with a grudge - my sister is the same and will only eat reheated freezer food. I guess that the gene missed them.