Thursday 20 June 2013

Animals

So this is what a bunny and cat care package looks like...

I'm going on holiday for nearly two weeks from tomorrow - first for a long weekend in Edinburgh, where I used to live, and then for a week in the sun in Majorca with my mum.

So this morning I've been to my local shops to make sure the animals are well stocked up while I'm away.

Hasland Fruit and Flowers, my brilliant local greengrocer, was my first stop for a bag-full of veggies for the bunny. Usually she just eats the leftovers of whatever I've been eating (both veggies), so I've put together a choice of spring greens, spinach, apples, banana, broccoli and cherry tomatoes for her for while I'm away.

Then I popped in to see lovely Judi at the pet shop for cat litter, a bag of hay and bought her out of tins of Sheba for the cat.

Judi's always so chatty, she's a fab example of why shopping local is so much nicer than going to the supermarket because you really get to know your local shopkeepers. She was keen to tell me about a campaign to get our local traffic light system in Hasland changed, which I'm 100% behind because there are crashes there all the time, and how we're getting a local butcher soon, which will mean that Hasland has a butcher, baker and greengrocer - so absolutely no need to go to the supermarket. Even though I'm a veggie I do buy meat occasionally when I have friends coming to stay.

So I'm going to be away from this blog for nearly two weeks now, and when I get back I'll have completed a full six months of supermarket-free shopping and be halfway through my challenge.




Wednesday 19 June 2013

Say please!

“What do you say?” the short, brunette, feisty middle-aged lady behind the counter asks pertly, giving her hairnet-encased head a slight twitch of irritation.

“Eh?” The youth at the other side of the counter is almost double her height, and certainly double her weight, but he’s immediately taken on the air of a naughty and bashful schoolboy.

“You say please,” she tells him. “You mind your manners or you won’t be getting anything.”

I’m at one my favourite lunch stops in Derby’s Eagle Market, Morgan and Sons Sandwich Bar and Deli, and I can’t help laughing as the lad just ahead of me in the queue shuffles his feet and apologises for his rudeness.

I give him a conciliatory smile as I step forward to order my own food.

“I’ll have a salad PLEASE,” I tell the lady behind the counter.

“See...?” she turns to the youth. “Some people still have nice manners. What can I get for you love?”

One of the reasons I like this salad bar is that you get to pick exactly what you want from a massive range of choices, including potato and pasta salad, couscous and cottage cheese. You can even choose between two different types of tomatoes and whether you could like your beetroot diced or sliced (I like mine sliced).

It’s kind of like the supermarket-free equivalent of the Morrisons salad bar, which I used to love. And I wouldn’t mind betting it’s a lot more hygienic as the feisty lady behind the counter dishes out the salad, rather than hundreds of shoppers digging into it.



My polite lunchtime salad

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Not shopping at all!

“Ooooof!” I grunted, staggering backwards with the effort and nearly landing bottom-down in the cat’s litter tray as a spray of ice shards cascaded around me.

Nope, I’ve not been mountaineering (although what the cat would be doing crapping halfway up a precipice I have no idea) - merely trying to open the door to my freezer last night.

I swear my freezer gets awkward on purpose, just to annoy me. I leave it alone for a few days and then when I go back it’s frozen solid and I have to chip away at the door to get in, while half-pleading, half-swearing at it.... “come on you b******d, let me in, pleeeeeeeeeease....”

Although admittedly this might be because I overfill it. I think years of watching my grandma (who has never got rid of her wartime mentality and declares a national emergency if she ever dips below having five pints of milk on standby) must have affected my attitude towards food, because I hate wasting anything and always stick leftovers in the freezer. Tubs of homemade pasta sauce.... soup.... loaves of bread.... you name it - I will freeze it.

But it’s this prudence that has been keeping me going recently.

Have you ever wondered what might happen or how long you’d be able to sustain yourself if you stopped shopping altogether?

I’ve kind of unwittingly been running this little experiment for the past few weeks - not as a conscious decision - but due to a few other factors that have meant I’ve been away from home a lot, in the office a lot and staying with friends.

I’ve been popping to the corner shop for the odd tin of beans, nipping to Sound Bites in Derby for my lunchtime sandwiches, and of course still receiving my brilliant veggie box from the now-legendary Banana Bob, but apart from that I’ve barely been shopping at all. Certainly no trips to farm shops or Brown and Green for the usual week’s groceries.

And yet, when I have been at home, I’ve still been managing to feed myself pretty well. Granted last night I just had beans on toast, but I was really tired and had a massive pile of ironing to do (rock and roll) and really just couldn’t be bothered with cooking as well.

But as a general rule I’ve been eating pretty well from the contents of my cupboards and freezer, mixed in with a little bit of fresh stuff from the veggie box.

Admittedly there have been some slightly odd combinations - leftover pizza with mashed potato and gravy being one of my favourites. But thanks to the bad-tempered freezer I’ve not been going without, which just goes to show how much we must over-buy, over-eat, or waste normally.

It doesn’t make for particularly interesting blog fodder though when I’m meant to be writing about my year without supermarkets. Clearly I’ve not been anywhere near a supermarket, but I’m not really exploring the alternatives right now either.

Monday 17 June 2013

Beating the Italians at their own game

Remember my friend Rosemary Brown from Bulebells Dairy in Spondon, Derby, who sent me packing with lots of lovely ice ceam for the newsroom the other week?

Well last week she and her son Oliver (the man behind all Bluebells' fantastic flavours) travelled to Italy to take part in an international ice cream festival - and beat the Italians at their own game.

Their dark chocolate ice cream with lavander (grown by Rosemary) took the Varneli Trophy - beating 13 other entries.

For the full story click here.

Sunday 16 June 2013

Thank you Christine's mum!

I went to see my best friends Christina and Christine last night for a BBQ (supermarket-free - Chris brought farm shop burgers for the grill). Christina is now heavily pregnant with twin girls so we're all getting very very excited about their arrival.
Chris'n'Chris'n'Bump

We were sat  the sofa after the food, enjoying a glass of wine (although none for bump obviously!) when Christine's phone pinged.

"Ooooh it's my mum," she said. "And it appears to be for you Jade."

Eh? Clearly I've met Christine's mum quite a few times over the years - from when they used to come round to our scruffy shared house in Sheffield bringing bags of goodies and cleaning products, to visiting Chris at home in Liverpool when she had her troublesome tonsils out. 

"Yep," said Chris. "My mum says 'tell Jade I'll send her some plastic bags. She'll know what I mean'."

Christine looked at me blankly. "DO you know what she means?"

Helloooooo in there.....
Clearly Christine's lovely lovely mum had read yesterday's blog about my carrier bag shortage and decided (like all good mums) to step in and help out.

So thank you Christine's lovely mum! And yes please to the bags.







Saturday 15 June 2013

Plastic bag shortage

It may take them 1,000 years to disappear, but let's face it, plastic carrier bags are bloody useful aren't they?

And this morning, after six months of supermarket-avoidance, my little stash of carrier bags that I keep in the utility room finally ran out.

I was cleaning out the cat litter tray when the impending crisis dawned on me. The cat, despite having access to my lovely (and yep, hugely overgrown) garden, is resolutely an indoor poo-er. All the neighbours' cats think nothing of taking a shit in my boarders - but not my own. She likes to do her business in a tray in the corner of the utility room and she likes it to be clean, thank you very much.

So every few days the litter gets emptied out into a carrier bag and then taken out to the wheelie bin. 

Until this morning when I ran out of carrier bags.

I realise there are alternatives. Loads of the local shops I now go to hand over my purchases in brown paper bags. Or there's my growing collection of 'bags for life'. But I'm not going to waste a canvas bag on the cat's tray; nor am I going to attempt to transport cat poo and soggy litter in a little brown paper bag - that could get messy.

And thinking about it, I use plastic bags for loads of different things. I put muddy horse boots into them. I empty the bathroom bin into them. I have been known, on snowy days, to use them to line my wellies.

They're just damn useful. And I don't know a single person who doesn't keep a little stash of them tucked away in a kitchen drawer or corner.

But of course, they tend to come from the supermarket. So what now?

Friday 14 June 2013

Sausages!

The supermarkets have scored a juicy goal with their own brand sausages, according to latest reports.

A study by consumer group Which? has found that some of the cheapest own-brand bangers offer the same meat content as some of their pricier, branded competitors.

It said that customers are better off buying an 80p pack of Sainsbury's Basics pork sausages than a £2.40 pack of Richmond sausages because both offer the same 42% meat content.

And Sainsbury's premium pork sausages, at £2.99, are only 59p more expensive than Richmond but contain twice as much meat at 97%.

Clearly as a vegatarian I haven't got a clue what a 42% or 97% meat sausage tastes like anyway (insert innuendo here).

But I do know that several of my butcher friends (yes I have made butcher friends since bringing the supermarket ban in because I still buy meat for others) would scoff at those percentages and tell me that the sausages they sell are 100% meat and handmade in their shops.

Still reckon it's better to shop local - who the hell wants to eat a pork sausage that is made up of 58% "other" ingredients anyway?

Thursday 13 June 2013

Badger-friendly milk

Remember dolphin-friendly tuna? Well there’s a new enviro-phrase in town..... apparently we’ve all now got to look out for badger-friendly milk.

Badgers are getting a bit of a bad rep recently, thanks to the bovine TB debate, and a pilot scheme to cull them has now begun in Somerset and Gloucestershire.

In these two counties cattle farmers can now legally shoot badgers on their farms.

Clearly the local milk I buy from Our Cow Molly, in Sheffield, is badger-friendly because Yorkshire isn’t involved in the cull.

But according to a survey by animal charity Care for the Wild, supermarket shoppers will have less of a say in where their milk comes from.

The organisation found that only three supermarkets – Asda, Waitrose and M&S, can guarantee that their own brand milk comes from farms outside Somerset and Gloucestershire, which aren’t involved in the cull.

Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons and the Co-op were unable to offer customers that choice.

Philip Mansbridge, CEO of Care for the Wild, said: “The reasons why supermarkets can or can’t offer this might be to do with luck rather than policy, or it might be to do with complicated supply chains which, frankly, shouldn’t be so complicated that they don’t actually know where the milk has come from.

“Either way, customers should be given choice – a choice to buy cage-free eggs, a choice to buy free range pork, and a choice to buy badger-friendly milk. I think when they are given that choice, many will take it.

“We got a lot of standard replies about this being a difficult issue for the farmers, which it is. But they seem to be forgetting that all of us are their customers – neither the farms nor the supermarkets would exist if it wasn’t for the people who buy their products. That seems to have been forgotten in the rush to defend this policy.”

Care for the Wild is collecting a petition against the cull on its website.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

The world's most frustrating train journey

Sprinting through St Pancras station in London, briefcase in hand and tie flapping out behind him, my boss Neil White was a man on a mission yesterday evening.

As mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we’d spent the day in London for a conference. But it was also the boss’s 25th wedding anniversary, so he was buttoning up his jacket and eyeing the door as the final presentation had concluded.

“We’re off,” he hissed at me as the last slide flicked up onto the screen on the stage. “Come on, I want to get home to Mrs W.”

We’d been sat on the back row and, like a pair of naughty schoolchildren, we’d made a pretty good job of polishing off a load of Haribo sweets and fizzy drinks throughout the afternoon, so the initial sugar rush saw us making a successful exit from the meeting room, shaking hands and smiling while continuing to move our feet.

Then followed a series of farces, causing the boss’s face to turn an ever deeper shade of purple as he realised we were not going to make the 5.30pm train back to Derby.

Our initial escape from the conference was utterly thwarted by a bizarre revolving door which saw the boss getting completely stranded halfway through.

“Push the button,” he mouthed at me through the glass, as I waved with exasperation at a bored-looking security guard. He was eventually spat out onto the street, but then the damn thing seized up completely, trapping me inside the building while the boss danced about on the pavement gesturing at his watch.

We then enjoyed a lengthy wait for a train at Kensington High Street (which at least gave me time to swap my stilettos for a pair of pumps), followed by an extremely cosy rush hour tube ride. Extremely cosy. I believe I was accidently intimate with at least half a dozen complete strangers within the space of about three minutes in that carriage.

Puffing through St Pancras, it became apparent that we’d missed our train, and the boss’s romantic hopes of being home to see Mrs W at a reasonable time were fading fast.

But then.... “There is a god!” we shouted, staring at the departure board. At 5.45pm train heading back to Derby.... perfect!

Still buoyed by sugar, we ran across the platform and bagged ourselves some decent seats.

Pulling out of the station, we were feeling pretty smug, and the boss was pondering whether he’d have time to take Mrs W out for dinner, when the announcer came over the intercom system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 5.45pm service to Derby, calling at.........” and it then went on to name pretty much every single city, town or suburb between Derbyshire and the M25.

The boss and I looked at each other in horror. It was going to take us three-and-a-half hours to get home.

What then followed was hours of intense frustration as we chugged through the countryside, with the boss making repeated calls home, and me trying to calm him down.

“We actually RAN to catch this sodding train,” he exclaimed at one point, as a faster train (which had left St Pancras 20 minutes after us) powered past (due to arrive back in Derby about an hour before us).

We hatched a brilliant plan to get off at Leicester and jump onto a quicker train, which saw us bounding excitedly out onto the platform, dashing up to the departure board, realising that the faster service was cancelled and then running like fury to get back onto our original train before it deserted us.

Passing Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station for the first time was quite interesting because I’d never seen it before. Passing it for the second time 45 minutes later was downright frustrating.

And poor old Neil was also treated to passing his own house and his local pub twice because he lives along the train line.

Finally pulling into Derby station at about 9pm, we’d both reached the end of our tether.

But at least the boss knew he’d have some tea waiting for him when he got home. I was heading round to Anna’s house, and thanks to the supermarket ban my food options were limited.

I started the car and Travis’s ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me’ blasted out through the radio, causing me to swear colourfully and with gusto.

I ended up in Premier Foods convenience store, just round the corner from Anna’s house, looking for something quick and easy to chuck in her oven. Morrisons, which is just round the corner, was open until 10pm, but clearly that was out of bounds.

There’s not a lot of choice for a vegetarian in your average convenience store, so I ended up with a miserable-looking margarita pizza. A pretty unhealthy end to a day filled with Kitkats, crisps and sweets.

As I was paying I spotted a chocolate Thornton’s Father Christmas nestled amongst some boxes of Malteazers on a shelf behind the shopkeeper.

“Christmas is coming early this year,” he said when I asked what Santa was doing there.

“Nah, only joking love,” he admitted. “It’s from last Christmas. I just keep it there because it makes the place look festive.”

Okaaaaaaaaay.

I ended up eating the pizza on my knee while watching telly at about 10.30pm, then heading straight to bed - a stodge-fest which meant I woke up feeling like I’d swallowed a football this morning. A quick trip to Morrisons could have avoided that.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

The five-fingered Kitkat

After a 5am start this morning, the boss and I have been at a conference in London all day, and I'm writing this from the comfort of the three-hour train journey back home, so clearly I've not been near any supermarkets. So what to write about?

Well ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the five-fingered Kitkat.

(And yes I know it's got nothing to do with the supermarkets, but it's pretty much the only food I've seen all day.)

So the boss and I were sat on the train this morning, frantically annotating our presentation notes, when the refreshments trolly came round, and in a rare fit of gentlemanliness (sadly not replicated later when it came to giving his seat up on the tube) the boss asked if I'd like anything.

"Fancy sharing a Kitkat?" I suggested.

"SHARING?!" the boss (a slightly rotund chocolate fiend) spluttered in reply.

"Yeah but they've got five fingers now," I explained.

Has anyone else noticed this yet? As if we're not fat enough as a nation already, Nestlé have now whacked an extra finger on Kitkats.

Personally this has already caused me no-end of trouble. Kitkats happen to be my driving snack of choice, and I rarely leave a petrol station without one. Four fingers used to be a struggle to manage, and five is simply too much, so I've now taken to eating half, then leaving the other two or three fingers floating around the car for another day.

Hence my car has turned into a melting Kitkat graveyard.

I was driving along the other day when I spotted a familiar brown smear on the dashboard, so without thinking I extended a finger, swiped it up and popped it into my mouth. Unfortunately I forgot that I wasn't alone. The look on the face of my fellow passenger was one of pure disgust, even after I'd explained that the brown smear was chocolate.

And there was an even more embarrassing incident a couple of weeks ago when I inadvertently sat on half a Kitkat (sans wrapping) for the warm hour-long drive to a hospital appointment. I then had to make the agonising decision over whether to leave the brown stain on my bottom (making me look rather more anxious about said appointment than I actually was), or try to sponge it off with a bottle of water and a tissue (making me look like a sufferer of a different kind of incontinence).

So I don't approve of five-fingered Kitkats and I disapproved even more of my bosses decision to buy two rather than one, then devour his in the time it took me to eat a single finger, before proclaiming them the best invention known to man.

On the bright side though, I've just found my remaining three fingers floating about in the bottom of my handbag, and seeing as we're stuck on this train for another two-and-a-half hours I may be making this a five-fingered Kitkat day after all.


Monday 10 June 2013

RIP to my most interesting house guest

So how do you tell if a snake is dead?

That's the question that I've been pondering this weekend. You see, for the past eight months I've been fostering a six-foot-long corn snake for my friend Kirsty, who has been working and travelling in Thailand. At 18-years-old, Nyoka was a geriatric and Kirsty wanted to find him a nice caring place to stay - rather than risk re-homing him with a reptile rescue centre.
Nyoka when he first arrived

And she did warn me that at some point during his stay, he might kick the bucket.

As house guests go, Nyoka has been very little trouble. Defrost a mouse for him once a fortnight, poke him every so often to make sure he's alive, and that's it - job done.

Unfortunately, on Saturday afternoon, Nyoka didn't respond to my poking.

Uh-oh. I lifted his tail. No response. Nothing. I leaned in and stroked his head. Again, nothing.

"Oh sh*t," I thought. 

Gingerly I lifted him out of his tank and curled him onto my lap, like a giant Walnut Whip. Usually when picked up he responds with interest, but this time he was lifeless.

"OH SH*T," I said aloud.

My initial thought was one of intense guilt. I'd made him sit through a Notting Hill movie night the previous evening, and had I known he was in his final hours I would have chosen something more profound. Was it Hugh Grant's slightly-stale English fop routine that had sent him over the edge?

And how do you know when a snake is dead anyway? I can't couldn't check his pulse.

I decided to pop him back into his tank and leave him overnight (I stayed at Anna's on Saturday night anyway) - on the off chance that he would make a miraculous recovery.

But when I got home from work last night I found him still prone, exactly as I had left him.

An apologetic email was sent to Kirsty, who responded very kindly, saying he was very old and had been expected to die soon anyway, and thanking me for looking after him.

And here comes the supermarket-free tenuous link.... I popped to my local pet shop, Hasland Pet Supplies this morning to pick up some hay for the bunny, and got chatting to lovely Judi, the owner.
Interested rabbit

She was kind enough to ask after my hangover after reading yesterday's blog, and then I enquired whether she knew much about snakes. Or more specifically, whether she could spot a dead one.

"Well I'm not very well up on reptiles," she pondered. "But he does sound pretty dead to me."

So that was that. I went home and dug a small but deep hole in the back garden, and then myself and the rabbit (who'd always been very curious about the snake and was keen to get involved), committed Nyoka to his final resting place beneath a pretty-ish little pink bush. 

I resisted the urge to bury him with a bell, just in case, but did give him one final poke (just to double-triple-quadruple-check he was gone) before covering him over.

You can't really bond with a snake - they're not exactly cuddly - but I was still a little sad to see the end of my most interesting house guest.















Sunday 9 June 2013

Finally I break a rule!

There's something very very wrong with my body this morning. For a start, it feels like a heard of elephants are dancing to Madness in my head. My stomach is churning like a tumble dryer, my legs are wobbly, and I've got one inexplicably bruised and swollen foot.

I blame all this on my boss and his free bar last night. Celebrating his wedding anniversary with my colleagues soon turned to raucous and roaring drunkenness.

My memory of the latter part of the evening is hazy, but blips of clarity include insisting that all the boys I work with drink about half a dozen neat Jamesons (forgetting of course that because I'm a girl and can't hold my drink I will always come off worse in the equation, which probably now accounts for the splitting head) and taking my shoes off on the dance floor, making all the boys take their shoes off too, laughing at their socks and then bouncing around to Guns'n'Roses (which presumably accounts for the bruised foot as one of them clearly jumped on me).

I stayed at Lovely Anna's last night and managed to lock myself out of her house, so she found me whimpering on her doorstep at about 1am.

And of course I'm working this afternoon so I've now got to pull myself together enough to go and sort out tomorrow's newspaper.

Anna and I were meant to be going out for breakfast this morning, but when I shuffled out of my bedroom moaning at about 11am she took one look at me and realised that was cancelled.

"Right," she said. "I'm bringing breakfast to you. I'm going to the shop."

"Which shop?" I asked.

"Aldi"

"Oh."

Aldi is of course a supermarket. But Anna assured me that she was going to go today anyway, and of course I cannot insist that my friends only feed me non-supermarket food.

But then I broke one of my rules. The rule that states that I must not ask anyone to get anything from a supermarket on my behalf.

"Do you want anything fetching?" Asked Anna.

"No. No definitely not," I replied. "Actually yes I do. I need Alka Seltzer. And Berocca."

And I handed over a tenner.

So there we go. Nearly six months into the challenge and for the first time a rule has been broken. Not a massive rule, but a rule non the less. I'm sitting (well half-lying) on Anna's sofa now, drinking my Berocca (although somehow I don't think it's going to be me but on a really good day), feeling slightly ashamed but too poorly to give it much more thought. I blame my boss!

Saturday 8 June 2013

Anna gets even lovelier


My lovely friend Anna is being lovely again. In fact, she's surpassing herself on the loveliness scale this evening.

It's my editor Neil White's 25th wedding anniversary bash, and a bunch of us from work have been invited along. Neil and his wife Andrena are a great laugh (especially when drunk!!) and he's laid on a band, food and a free bar, so it should be a good (if slightly messy) night.

And to save me from having to drive (who wants to miss out on a free bar?!); lovely, kind, generous, long-suffering Anna has offered to give me a lift.

Anna has literally been a fountain of wonderfulness lately, so I thought it was probably about time to say thank you.

And one of the great things about My Year Without Supermarkets is that I'm not tempted into buying over-priced crap supermarket flowers for friends anymore. Instead I go to one of the two fantastic florists/greengrocers just round the corner from my house and pick up something much nicer.

So here's what I'm giving Anna later....


Friday 7 June 2013

Ice ice baby

For a couple of hours on Monday afternoon I was the most popular person in the newsroom. Why? Well I'd returned from a trip to the magnificent Bluebells Dairy in Derby laden with tubs of their homemade ice cream for the reporters.

Bluebells is the subject of today's Food You Can Trust feature in the Derby Telegraph, and deservedly so.

I went to the Spondon dairy to meet owner Rosemary Brown and her family and find out more about their award-winning ice cream.

The ice cream made at Bluebells really is something to be proud of and is a brilliant example of what local food has to offer.

In fact, at a recent publicity event in the Houses of Parliament showcasing Derbyshire produce, the Prime Minister David Cameron apparently couldn’t get enough of their Nutty Ella flavour and MPs flocked to try the gin and tonic ice cream made especially for the event.

From field to fork – or in this case spoon – the Brown family do much of the ice cream production by hand, with the aid of a pasturiser and an ice cream maker bought with the help of a business grant, and the finished product really does qualify as artisan.

Bluebells ice cream looks and tastes so much more wonderful than mass-produced stuff. It’s lovingly presented, with hand-created swirls and toppings, and flavours include blueberry yogurt, lemon meringue, raspberry pavlova and tropical coconut.

Bluebells is a family business, with Rosemary’s husband Geoff taking care of the cattle, son Oliver creating the ice cream and daughters Henrietta and Lydia also playing a part.

The Brown family have been farming at the site since 1953, but decided to change from supplying milk to the dairy industry to making their own ice cream in 2008 because, as Rosemary puts it, "we considered lots of products, such as cheese, but as a family we love ice cream so we knew we could get really enthusiastic about it".

They now have about 130 friesian cows and milk about 110 each day. Geoff’s day usually start with milking at 6am and they finish on the farm about 7.30pm, but then there’s all the paperwork to attend to inside.

This Sunday is Open Farm Sunday – a national event where farms across the country will be opening their doors to the public.

Activities on offer at participating farms will include things farm tours, nature walks, milking demonstrations, sheep shearing and tractor and trailer rides.

Since opening Bluebells, the Brown family have gone from strength to strength and now offer a sand pit and play area, petting area with farm animals for children to meet, cafe and small farm shop.

They are a fantastic example of how farmers can help educated families about where their food comes from by opening their doors to the public.

For more read today's Derby Telegraph or visit our website.

Thursday 6 June 2013

(Not) at the car wash

This is going to be another tenuous one so I'll present the usual excuses of having to write 365 of them this year, etc etc, and move on....

Last night I cleaned my car with my own hands for the first time in years - thanks to the supermarket ban.

It's not like I'm afraid of getting my hands dirty. No siree. I present the evidence of the horse bath time a month ago as proof of that. I can roll up my sleeves and get the hose pipe out with the best of them. But I'm also a busy girl so I just don't see the point of messing about washing the car when for less than a fiver I can get someone else to do it for me.

Or rather, SOMETHING else. Namely the car wash at Tesco.

But since January that's been out of bounds. And yes, that does mean the car hasn't been washed yet this year. If I'm really honest, it's probably been quite a bit longer than that. Grey (sorry - "gunmetal" - to go all Top Gear for a second) cars are wonderfully self-cleaning.

Or so I thought. But after apologising profusely for the state of my car when I gave a lift to a colleague the other night (and this was at 10pm - so dark) I decided enough was enough.

To paint a little mental picture, the front bumper had become a graveyard of splattered flies thanks to the daily motorway commute, the roof was covered in cat paw prints and bird shit (no feathers or blood though so presumably those two creatures were going about their business separately), there was a liberal smattering of hay and straw through the whole interior, dubious tea stains on the front passenger seat from where I routinely spill my morning cuppa, a Kitkat melted to one of the mats and two filthy horse rugs ripening and maturing like smelly cheese in the boot.

Not good.

I also realised that I'd lost most of my car washing equipment over the years. I managed to find some car shampoo under the sink, but had to make do with a tiny washing up scourer as a sponge. And oh how the neighbours must have laughed at my efforts to make the hose pipe and hoover cable reach out onto the road.

It turns out that washing a car is less fun than washing a horse. The car didn't close its eyes in appreciation of my efforts, or pull cute faces when I sponged its nose. 

In spite of that though I dutifully scrubbed, rinsed and polished, hoovered out the boot and seats, wiped all the dust and general crap from the dashboard, sponged the tea stains off the passenger seat, prised the Kitkat off the mat, and discovered a rotting banana under the driver's seat. Which may have accounted for some of the smell. Along with the horse rugs.

Job well done, I momentarily considered eating the remains of the Kitkat, before giving myself a stern talking to ("Come on now Jade, even you can't stoop so low for chocolate") and heading indoors.

That's that job done for at least another year then.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

Open Farm Sunday


I'm having a crazy busy day at work so don't have time to write much today. Instead, I'm including a link to this website about Open Farm Sunday - a national initiative where farms all over the country open up to the public to help people learn more about where their food comes from.

It's a shame to see that it's sponsored by M&S and Asda - but otherwise a great idea!

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Tesco's out-of-date baby formula

On Saturday I explained how my best friend Christina, who is currently heavily pregnant with twins, bought some baby formula from Tesco - only to find that it was 13 weeks out of date.

She was livid - it had been destined for her hospital bag and would have potentially been the twins' first feed.

She sent a complaint to Tesco on Friday night, and yesterday (Monday) they responded.

The Tesco customer service department apologised and they have offered to send her a £20 voucher.

Christina was quite pleased with this - she said it would buy two more packets of formula.

Personally I think she should have been offered at least £50 - or a hamper of baby goods. Nappies, formula ect is really expensive and she did explain she was having twins.

Thoughts?

Monday 3 June 2013

Petrol stop

So a couple of nights ago I was locked in a car an forcibly driven to Tesco.

Well okay, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I did end up at the massive Tesco Extra in Chesterfield - the place I’ve been diligently avoiding for the past five months.

I’d been round to see my friends Lucy and Ady, and their lovely baby Oly, and we’d decided to order an Indian takeway to eat out on their decking with a beer as the weather was so nice. But the takeaway needed picking up, so Lucky and I headed out in the car to fetch it.

Lucy pulled up on the double yellows outside Chesterfield’s Indian Blues (probably one of the best Indian restaurants in the world) while I ran inside brandishing Ady’s credit card and muttering his pin number over and over to myself in my head.... “XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX”

The lady behind the counter then insisted in reading out our entire order to me while I frantically tried to keep focus on said pin number...

“So that’s one vegetarian tikka masala sag...”

“Oh god I’m gonna forget this pin.... XXXX”

“One chicken jalfrezi....”

“OH GOD I’m gonna forget this pin... XXXX.... XXXX....”

“One portion of mushroom rice...”

“ARRRRRRRR the pin.... XXXX XXXX XXXX.....”

Anyway, despite the distractions I managed to pay without locking Ady out of his credit card or being arrested for fraud, and then Lucy decided to swing home via Tesco to put some petrol in the car.

Lucy at the pump


“You know I can’t go in here?” I told her as we pulled into the car park.

“Yeah but you can’t stop me!” she replied, heading for one of the pumps.

So I took a few pictures while she laughed at me (sticking my arm out of the door rather than getting out of the car - so I didn’t actually set foot on Tesco property) and felt a bit naughty. But at the end of the day, I didn’t spend any money there, or get out of the car.... so no rules broken.





Sunday 2 June 2013

RECIPE: Potato Salad

I went to my lovely friend Claire's for tea last night - she of The Best Quiche In The World fame - and because there was five of us I offered to take something round. I suggested potato salad, thinking that I'd got a load of spuds in already, and could just whack some mayo over them, and job done.

"Potato Salad is fine," said Claire. "But Taffa (one of the other guests) doesn't like mayonnaise,  red wine, or any shop-bought salad dressing."

Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

There goes that then. So instead I put together a potato salad with red onions, peppers, balsamic and paprika which actually turned out to be really nice, so here's the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:


New potatoes/charlotte potatoes (enough to serve five in my case)
1 red onion
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 close garlic chopped
5 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic
1 tsp paprika
Dash Hendos (optional)


METHOD:

Put the spuds onto boil (slice if they are too large) and then chop the onion, peppers and garlic. Add 1tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp balsamic and Hendos to a frying pan and then fry them gently while potatoes are cooking. When spuds are cooked, drain and add to the pan, along with the rest of the olive oil, balsamic and paprika. Gently stir and then  take off the heat.

Can be served warm or cold

Saturday 1 June 2013

Let's test Tesco's customer service

Ever keen to take one for the team, my lovely best friend Christina has pledged to test out Tesco's customer service for me.

She's now heavily pregnant with twin girls, so yesterday she popped into Tesco and bought some first feed infant formula, which was destined for her bag to take to hospital when she has the babies.

But when she got it home she spotted that it was 13 weeks out of date. 13 WEEKS! And that could have potentially been the twins' first ever feed.

Emailing me last night, Christina said: "Might be joining your anti-supermarket crusade. That could have been the girls' first feed and it's stale!"

She's emailed Tesco's customer service people with a photograph of the sell by date on the packaging and a copy of the receipt. She's also contacted them through Twitter.

Let's see what Tesco say to that one....