Wellies on a mission in the supermarket

I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately. Growing it, planning it, meal planning (which I hate but I know works) and bargain hunting for it.

I’m keen to get the veggie garden on the go over this year – I’m going to grow a HUGE selection of stuff which will help a lot with the food costs.

Meal planning works, its official – I do hate it – but being a goodly bit organised means even a [semi-hard working] Mum like me can know she’s putting a nutritious and ‘cheap’ meal on the table after work when you just don’t feel like moving. I’m not great at it – but I’m putting in more effort to this in 2011, we often get stuck in a rutt with our food, so I’m ‘going to try harder’ this year.

Food bargain hunting – it’s a tough one. Here we’re well versed with a few of the national supermarkets. I prefer to buy local when I can but the supermarkets here do stock local stuff. One advantage of living on an island it would seem is the amount food gets reduced to in the supermarket, rather than being hauled away ‘sooth’. Even in this last week we’ve had a huge amount of bargainous food at ridiculously knocked down prices – Local premium meat included - £5.49 for this normally 27p the night I went in. There were so many packets of them I took a few then bagged them up and into the freezer they went. We use soya mince too to make our meat go further – so each pack gave us 4 good sized family portions for a meal.

I find the notion of shopping in the largest supermarket here (which only arrived a couple years ago, red and blue logo’s I’m sure you have a monster one by you) a bit tragic. To be honest, lately I’ve avoided it like the plague. It’s a real dilemma. On the one hand I want the bargains, I’m on a budget – all money needs to be very usefully used. On the other hand I don’t want my local shops to disappear and I’d prefer to eat local/home grown where I can.

A friend put it into perspective the other day it went along the lines of this:

‘Just think of your bargain hunting as a subterfuge shopping method of undermining the large corporation locally. If you’re only really buying highly reduced food which is being ludicrously marked down – really you’re helping them make a loss.’

It did make me think! Anyway, I went in the other day with my head held high, on a mission to undermine a huge corporation. Came out with many things from 4p to 45p. And counted 6 or 7 people in there wearing wellies, which made me chuckle. Do you think they cater for the 'wellie clad on a mission subterfuge shopper' normally? Perhaps they do!

Oh, and just for an update - the chickens are still rampaging around the garden - they appear to have no scruples what so ever. I am not amused.