The Tesco Syndrome
6 weeks ago I went into Tesco to return a dented tin of tomatoes which
cost me 29p (45c) and also to buy 3 things – decaffeinated coffee, a stain
removal bar and some wheat free rolls, for which I thought I had a money off voucher.
I got my 29p/45cents back but managed to spend £40.50/$60 while I was
there. It went as follows:
·
Half a salmon that was on offer at half price
·
A dress that was in the sale for £7/$10.50
·
2 heads of broccoli – because they were on a buy
one get one half price offer
·
Peaches – they were a bargain at 5 for 59p/90c but
this was more than neutralised by the other impulse buys, and actually Lidl had
9 for £1/$1.50
·
I cannot remember what else I bought. I go into Tesco and I get hypnotised, rarely
getting out without spending £40/$60. I try
to avoid going there but every so often there is something I need that the
other supermarkets don’t stock
1. We
have a freezer full of lovely, delicious trout.
2. I
have enough dresses and don’t really wear them. This one looked like a corporate
bank or shop uniform and was uncomfortable.
Why didn’t I try it on?
3. I
have unpicked Kale and spinach in the garden and 2 packets of broccoli in the
freezer.
4. It
turns out my voucher for wheat free rolls was for a different brand and I
narrowly escaped without buying another wheat free product that I did not need.
5. Then
I went to the café and spent another £3.50/$4.75.
if I hadn’t gone to Tesco I would have cooked my own baked potato with
baked beans, using the potatoes from the garden and bargain baked beans with
home grown salad for a total of 50p/75c. what’s
more the Tesco one was not very nice and the salad was tasteless.
6.
I could have spent the time out in the garden
instead of in Tesco.
Inflation of our needs, wants
and desires
Our food bill had crept to £200/$300 per month for two of us when this
happened.
Probably not excessive to a lot of people but I know I can feed us for
a lot less – a maximum £100/$150 a month even taking inflationary food prices
into account.
Not all food has gone up actually, though some has, and bananas have
gone down. It depends what you want to
buy and I suspect much though not all of the food price inflation is really
inflation of our needs, wants and desires as the good old book Your Money or Your life calls it.
So how do you reduce the food
bill?
many (all?) of us buy bagged salad and rocket (arugula) instead of a
loose lettuce, vine tomatoes instead of ordinary tomatoes and fancy mash from
the chill cabinet or ‘specially selected’
baking potatoes instead of an ordinary bag of spuds.
You can still get a sack of spuds for £5-7/$7.50-10.50 and it makes an
awful lot of mashed potato, chips or baked potatoes.
You can make a lot of soup with a humble £1/$1.50 bag of lentils, a few
spuds, stock cube and an onion. Or you
can buy a 1 litre carton of ready-made lentil soup – no doubt special, luxury
soup in some way – for £2.50/$3.75.
And rocket is just about the easiest
thing to grow.
Marrows Free to Good Home please
help yourself.
The other day on the way home, I passed this sign at the side of the
road. Next to it was a veritable
mountain of marrows.
I gratefully gave two of them a good home but once I got them home,
they were getting ignored and I couldn’t quite bear to cut into them. In fact they were in danger of never being
used.
After the Tesco debacle that had
to change.
The left over curry and pasta sauce in the fridge were duly transformed
into stuffed marrow, marrow soup and marrow and potato curry and we had several
effectively free and very tasty meals as a result. I was inspired and back on track!
The leftover tub
This is a plastic tub that you keep in the freezer. All those little bits of things that go off
in the fridge get put into the tub and frozen instead. Not stuff off people’s plates, just the bits
left in the saucepan etc. This idea came
from the Tightwad Gazette many years ago and we have used it ever since.
When the tub is full, I make a curry or stuff pasties with whatever is
in it, plus a few herbs and spices.
No matter what goes in there it is always delicious.
However, the recent tub had been full for ages and because it was full,
little bits of leftovers were going off in the fridge again.
So Hubby made leftover curry which was yummy and I made leftover
pasties, with the remaining curry, adding some grated cheese and a slice of
tomato to each pasty.
And Tesco?
Well to be fair I was impulse buying in other supermarkets too, Tesco
just tempted me more. For the last 6
weeks I have had a rule of one impulse buy of up to 50p/75c per shopping trip,
and stuck to it. What fun I have had
spending that 50p/75c.
And the dress went back and was exchanged for 2 large packs of nappies (2
for 1 offer) as a gift for a new baby.
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