We went out for a meal for my birthday last night (and it was very good). But while we were there, I got the best birthday pressie ever:
[To the tune of Sing when you're winning (or Sing when we're fishing if you're from Grimsby)]: Snowed on my birthday, oh yes it snowed on my birthday. Snowed on my birthday, oh yes it snowed on my birthday!!!!
For a while now, we’ve been buying quite a lot of our food shopping in bulk. By this I mean the storable stuff – tins, milk (to freeze), flour, oats, dried fruit and nuts, tea etc. This has been partly to reduce the number of shopping trips we have to make and partly to save money.
Having been doing this for a while, I have noticed a number of pros and cons.
Pros:
It’s usually cheaper to buy in bulk than in smaller quantities
Can’t be tempted to buy additional things if you’re not in the supermarket
Can be a good social thing if you have a local co-operative (like the one at www.neeps.co.uk)
If you do have a local co-operative, you don’t have to have the full bulk quantity if someone else wants some too.
Cons:
There’s often more packaging (4 packets of tea come in their usual boxes, in a cardboard tray wrapped in celophane and that particular tea doesn’t come in larger quantity single boxes)
You need additional st0rage space
You need to be sure you can use that quantity before it goes out of date.
Not supporting the local shops (though you might actually be supporting them more, as if you only want a couple of bits/some veg you might be more inclined to get that from a local shop/farm shop/farmers market than travel to a supermarket)
Ironically, it can cost more in petrol if where you get your bulk from is a long way, or not on your way somewhere else.
Rather more cons there – not what I’d hoped for when we started doing this, but what I’d expected when I started this post.
I still intend to continue to buy in bulk, but I’d like to try and reduce that cons list. The last one doesn’t apply for me. One place we by bulk from we only go to if we’re passing anyway. While the other is out of the way, it’s always part of a social event and I usually car share (or my car share partner collects for me, or me for her).
The cons that really bother me are the packaging and the local issues. Well with the latter, I should practice what I preach more often. The former I need to think about. I could change the things I buy, but that’s the only solution I can think of just now. As with most packaging issues, I can’t change the way the manufacturers do things.
I like a pint or 2. I really like a pint or 2 of real ale. I really, really like a pint or 2 of real ale from a keg. I don’t really like beer from a bottle and I hate beer from a can.
As such, I like to go to the pub, but we live in a rural area (it has been said by some that we live in the middle of nowhere, but that was my Mum and she’s prone to exageration!) and the pub is about 5 miles away, so we don’t go that often.
I like to think I’m a responsible drinker, and don’t drink too much – actually I can’t drink too much or I fall asleep! So one or 2 pints is pretty much my limit.
Rural pubs are in the decline. Approximately 20 pubs close every week across the UK. Some are blaming the smoking bans. Some (without actually saying it) are blaming
the tightening of drink-drive laws.
Recently I read the comments of an ex-publican on a forum who wanted to set the record straight and quosh the rumours of why he’d had to close his pub. He made his case very clearly, explaining everything as susinctly as he could. I thoroughly sympathise with him. However, even I found it off putting the nearly every other sentence contained the words “and they only come in once a week and have 2 or 3 drinks and call themselves regulars”. What does he want? People to go in there every night and get smashed?
So what exactly do you have to do to call your selves a regular? If more people went to pubs once a week for 2 or 3 drinks I’m sure less pubs would be shutting.
I know what he was getting at, but I don’t think he helped his cause by putting it like that.
Last weekend, the OH and I (with not a little help from the cats – well, holes are there to be jumped into right?) installed our Green Cone (food waste digester system).
Amid much excitement (it’s been a long time coming), we took it in turns to dig the hole to the requisite 32″ diameter and 24″ deep (we like to “share”), screwed it all together, popped it in the hole, filled in around the sides (making sure we’d covered the base completely) and stood back (with hands on hips and a rather smug smile) to admire our handywork.
There’s a mix of things that can be put into the Green Cone – fish, red meat and poultry (including the bones of all 3), bread, fruit (inc peelings), veg (inc peelings), dairy produce, cooked food scraps, crushed egg shells, teabags and animal excrement – the majority of which can’t be added to the compost heap (hence the reason we got the cone).
According to the instructions, 0.75-1kg of food waste can be put in the cone EVERY DAY! Apparently, this amount is TYPICAL of that produced by a family of 4. Good-o, less in the bin.
That was Saturday morning. I sit here on Thursday evening, and all that’s in the white caddy (that comes with the cone to keep the bits in, because you obviously can’t be expected to find something to put the scraps in and carry them to the cone!) is one small piece of bacon fat.
The raw fruit and veg scraps, crushed egg shells and teabags go on the compost heap. The bread crusts (that’s the ends of the loaf, not the edges) gets fed to the birds (if the OH doesn’t get there first and turn them into midnight toast!). When I cook, I cook the right amount of food, or enough to freeze down for another day, or enough to have cold the next day for my lunch, so we don’t have cooked food scraps very often (only fatty bits and the very rare “I don’t feel too well and can’t quite finish this”). The bones from chicken will go in there the next time we have one (as will fish bones). It’s very rare that I buy food and it doesn’t get used. At the moment all that’s in the cone is (sorry to be blunt) cat and dog poo.
I don’t mind that, that’s why we got the cone really. We knew we didn’t have much in the way of non-compostable food scraps, but we do have a dog and 2 cats. But it got me thinking – don’t people know how much food they’re likely to eat, and therefore how much to buy and cook?
I can think of one family (who don’t even know about this blog, so if you’re reading it, it’s not you) for whom it’s a regular occurrence to buy food, pop it in the fridge and then chuck it in the bin – funnily enough, they don’t compost and are a 4 car family! But is that normal? How can people live like that?
