Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 March 2006 13:17:50
Sorry, I am still alive. Just a bit chaotic right now at work. So I thought I'd just post you the beginnings of the feature I'm writing on my lent experiment.
MY name is fishsoup and I am a Sainsbury's addict - but I am doing my best to stop.
Even though I am a little scared of chicken breasts that aren't in blue polystyrene trays and meals that aren't branded “Taste the Difference”, it is time to break the habit of only interacting with what I eat in the clean sanitised aisles of the local supermarket.
That is why I gave Sainsbury's up for Lent. Along with Tesco, Waitrose, and a few other addictions I could mention.
Local shopping for local people is the mantra of my new incarnation; but unfortunately I don't live in a market town where rosy-cheeked farmers will sell me eggs and vegetables, or even in a yuppified bit of the capital where I can go to a ‘darling little delicatessen' and pick up all the taramasalata and quail's eggs I need.
I live in Catford, South East London (or in Forest Hill if I'm being snobby), where local shopping usually equates to a quick dash round Iceland - or a trip to Marks & Spencer's in Lewisham if I'm desperate.
Catford has a shopping centre that is typified, not by fantastic shops, but by the giant fibre-glass cat that guards its entrance. Inside there is a Tesco, an Iceland, and (crucially for this project) a market.
Nearby is a big Sainsbury's Savacentre where my husband and I usually do our weekly shop. But that is all over - for forty days and forty nights at least.
Lent is all about the fact that Jesus fasted in the wilderness, and I rather suspect that might be what happens to us, too. “And the devil took him up to an high mountain and offered him a Tesco's ready meal, and one of those pre-cooked chickens”? Perhaps not.
We used up most of the supermarket eggs on a guilty pancake-filled Shrove Tuesday, but I baulked at eating everything ‘supermarket bought' in the house. That means we have rice, porridge oats, some breakfast cereal, flour etc but no meat.
We have vegetables - a seriously random organic delivery once a week that gets pretty unispiring in the dark days of February and March, and after that we are on our own.
Time to take stock (if we have any). Despite our lack of a Deli it turns out that Forest Hill and Catford are not so badly provisioned after all. There is a baker's at one end of our road, which helpfully also sells milk. At the other end there is a butcher's shop that I have never visited.
Then there is Yaaal stores (with the slogan “Everything for Everybody”), for all our White Lightning and plantain needs. A closer inspection reveals that it is startlingly well-provisioned - it is just that nobody ever seems to buy anything there except milk, plantain and extra-strong cider.
Further away there is a Turkish ‘supermarket' up on Catford Hill that I have always wanted to try. Is that cheating? It has no trollies, most of the food labels are in Turkish, and it isn't part of a chain. I'm no purist, so we go there as well.
So there are some glimmers of hope. This can't be that bad, can it? A shopping trip on Saturday has me feeling smug, thanks to whole bunches of coriander for 59p and tins of coconut milk and chickpeas that are far cheaper than Waitrose.
It takes ages, of course, especially since there is a queue in the butchers. The owners, who appear to be father and son, add everything up by hand and slip a little piece of paper with the total on it into my shopping bag. I want to ask whether the chicken breasts I am buying come from happy chickens, but the butcher is too busy talking to Caitlin, in front of me, about her hysterectomy, and I feel too embarassed and middle class.
I buy them anyway, along with six slices of bacon. Paul (my husband) is entranced. “Look at the blue checky wrapping paper, it is just like a real butcher,” he says, then adds “how much did they cost?”
I pull out my handwritten piece of paper, but realise I have no clue what I usually pay. We buy chicken breasts when they are on special offer, then bung them in the freezer. Paul thinks it sounds about right, but he hasn't got a clue really, and we feel like those MPs who get lambasted for not knowing the price of a pint of milk, even though we are totally au fait with our Nectar Points balance.
No matter, I tell myself, it will come - but rebellion comes first. We are only a week in when Paul realises that my privations must apply to him as well to make it fair. “Last night I had sardines on dry bread with manky beansprouts, this can't go on.
I don't work the sort of hours when I can get to the butchers. And we haven't got milk, or bread.”
I feel guilty. Surely Lent is not about denying others. So it looks like an early morning trip up the hill to buy orange juice and milk before work. I do something I have never done before - log on to the Express Dairies website. How quaint, I think, we could have our milk delivered.
I am sure my parents never ordered their milk online - they had a little spinny clock thing on their milk holder that said “Two pints please”, but it appears that this is what you now do. And I can have organic - the only catch being that it will be four days before they can start. Looks like I am going up that hill after all.
Two weeks in, and the routine is not going too badly, although my friends think I am weird and Waitrose in Canary Wharf is beginning to look like a beautiful shiny forbidden thing. But there are compensations. I'm throwing out less food, as well as far less packaging, and I have never cooked as many Thai curries in my life.
I'm not sure, either, that I'm spending any more money. Some essentials are slightly more expensive - though not as much as I expected- but I am paying 31p for a loaf of bread in the Turkish shop, and it's the best bread I have had in ages. The butcher's meat is more expensive - but better - than Sainsbury and since I have to decide on Saturday what I am going to cook for the rest of the week, I am buying less for the freezer (which is slowly emptying).
Finally, we are getting in touch with what our food costs, I think, but there are several catches. Although I can buy organic milk from the milkman, I can't buy fairtrade orange juice (or tea and coffee unless I take a detour to the health food shop). Am I denying some of my principles in order to indulge others? This Lent thing is more difficult than I thought.