From frozen vegetables to frozen fish

Last weekend, I went off to the frozen food section of my supermarket in search of broccoli and instead ended up looking at fish. Fresh fish is wonderful but very expensive. Over a year ago I bought frozen fish to make a fish pie. Obviously for pies and chowders you don't need fresh fish so since frozen is less expensive, it is the way to go. To my delight (and that of my wallet) I found 500 gram packages of individually vacuum packed pieces of haddock from Iceland for £1. I was expecting a lot more and still have no idea why it should be so inexpensive. Could it be the devaluation of the Icelandic currency? I don't know but we have been feasting on fish. The first night we had it oven cooked in foil. I put pesto sauce on mine and also included tomatoes, red pepper and snap peas. Tomorrow night we're having breaded fish and later in the week, either fish pie or a chowder. YUM. It pays to have a look in the freezers at the supermarket.

More on Cheap Food

I did watch the programme but only managed to watch part of it. I am going to try and see it later this weekend. However, I did see enough to know that part of the programme followed two families who were trying to lower their monthly food bills. One of the families bought the cheap supermarket lines of food and did save but decided at the end of the month that the only thing in that line they would continue to buy was the fruit and vegetables. The other family gave up the supermarket and started shopping at a local butcher for their meat and at the town market for much of the rest of their shop. They managed to save a considerable amount as well. However, for all of them, their savings also came from finishing what they had in their fridges and cupboards before buying more. They all planned better and had less wastage.

Cheap Food

The story continues on the issue of cheap food. Mary Jane and Naomi have both made comments on the previous post which are worth reading. Naomi pointed out that there is a program on channel 4 tomorrow evening on which the article I read was based. She's right that it could put you off processed food forever. However, I'm not a big one for processed food so I should be able to avoid most of those pitfalls. But what about other types of food that aren't processed such as Mary Jane pointed out. Chick peas, who would have thought that they could be a problem and I suppose that anything from China should be considered as suspicious.

I suppose the answer is to buy basic ingredients and build meals from those. However, if you don't have the expertise that can be quite difficult. I have just finished making the recipe from a few posts back for Banana-Chocolate energy bars. So far so good! They are sweetened by the bananas and the oatmeal makes them slow digesting. I'm not sure about the bitter chocolate but I shall give them a try and test my blood sugar levels and see what happens. They taste great and would be something simple to make for children and adults for the lunch box.

I shall watch the programme tomorrow night on cheap supermarket food and report back. I hope it isn't too disgusting!

Poor quality food for the poor!

I was reading an article today in the Observer about the quality of 'budget food' sold at super markets. How depressing! In Canada pork sausages have to be 100% pork. That obviously isn't the case in the UK because supermarkets sell 'value' sausages with only 40% pork and part of that 40% includes pig skin. Apparently, it's high in protein but would you want to eat it? I'm not certain that I would. There are even some beef pies that only have 18% beef in them and apple pies with only 4% apple. Even more of a concern is the fact that it would cost 1p at most to dramatically improve each one of those and of course, that isn't the choice of the supermarkets.
So, the poorest in our society eat the poorest of food. They suffer from malnutrition and their children under perform at school. And of course, with the economy as it is, even more people are turning to lower cost food.