The Frugal Life: Food and drink

Food challenge: Aldi week begins

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:59:03 GMT

Phew! My worries last week on the Woolton pie front were thankfully unwarranted, despite tales that the vegetarian pie, named after the famous Minister for Food, was a standing joke during World War Two because it was considered so unappetising. Even DJ, who initially pulled a face on Friday night when he got home and found out what I was cooking, said he enjoyed it. Maybe it was because I did, admittedly, doctor it a tiny bit by adding a few dried herbs to make it a bit more palatable. Or perhaps the taste of the gravy covered it up! But surprise, surprise, DJ actually said he would eat it again, which was a big thumbs up for the recipe and, frankly, my cooking in general.

Now, happily, I am leaving the frightening days – and food (apologies, but I won’t miss some of these bland, tasteless recipes, I must say)– of World War Two behind and throwing in my lot with the discount supermarkets.

Cut-price stores, like Lidl and Aldi, have sprung up all over the UK in recent years. And while some British consumers might not like to admit to shopping there, as the credit crunch bites Aldi has reported a 25 per cent increase in sales as price conscious shoppers desert Tesco and Asda to hunt for bargains there. (Check out this interesting article on supermarket snobbery on MSN)

Aldi has even started a website campaign – www.saveamillionwithaldi.co.uk - to encourage more people to shop at its stores by showing them how much they could save over a lifetime. The supermarket reckons one mum of a family with three children, based in Lincoln, who recently ditched conventional stores to shop at Aldi could save more than £44,000 over her lifetime (based on her previous shopping bill of £90 a week). It claims she saves at least £20 a week on her bill now.

So, I thought I’d see for myself whether, snobbery aside, there is any significant difference in price and product quality between Aldi and conventional supermarkets, by doing all of my food shopping this week in our nearest store.

I’m not entirely a stranger to Aldi. I have been in our local one before, although I’ve yet to try out the food. About a year ago I bought some tomatoes and mozzarella from there but sadly ended up throwing them away as a sniffy DJ refused point blank to eat them.

One issue, though, is that our nearest one is almost six miles away and we need to see if the savings we make are worth the extra petrol spend to get there.

Would you shop at a discounted supermarket like Lidl or Aldi? If you shop there already, does it help you save on your grocery bill?

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WW2 Challenge: Can you dig it?

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:33:44 GMT

I’m making Woolton pie tonight, named after the famous wartime Food Minister - admittedly not a popular dish - and am wondering if DJ will make it home for dinner at all. I fear he is tiring already of eating World War Two style food and tempted to get something on the black market...Oh dear!

Woolton pie comprises of cauliflower, carrots and swede, and I had to buy some of the veg in especially. So it struck me that if our vegetable patch was in full flow and we’d stored veg from last year we wouldn’t need to buy it. Unfortunately, all that’s ready to eat right now are some early Anya potatoes, albeit delicious. We had problems with some seeds not germinating, so the crop isn’t quite ready yet. But the courgette plant is flowering and peas are on the go.

Allotments, of course, were vital during the war in producing food to feed the nation, and I wanted to find out more. Luckily the Churchill Museum in London is running a fascinating exhibition called Dig for Victory: War on Waste and has reconstructed two allotments in St James’s Park.

Melody Allen, exhibitions assistant there, says the project was inspired by growing interest in sustainability. “The allotment started up last year,” she says. “It was very successful and we encouraged many school children to grow their own vegetables. So this year we thought we’d continue it. We’ve got two allotments side by side, one cultivated as a modern day one and the other as a World War Two allotment. The wartime one is growing potatoes, carrots and onions, while the other has other vegetables more popular now.”

The Museum is gardening organically, but this wasn’t always the case during the wartime Dig for Victory campaign, which encouraged people to dig up their gardens to grow food. “Back then priorities were very different because they were growing food for the nation,” Melody explains. “For example, nicotine fumes were used in the green house [to kill pests]. But we can learn from their recycling methods. Burying an old mattress under broad beans helped retain moisture, while old window frames were used to make cold frames.”

Allotments sprung up in the unlikeliest of places. “Kensington Gardens, most of London’s Royal Parks and even the Tower of London’s moat were dug up and used to cultivate veg,” she tells me. “People dug up their backyards and some even grew vegetables on top of Anderson Shelters. There were 1.4m allotments and over half the UK’s families were growing their own to supplement their rations. They produced over a million tonnes of veg each year.”

The Ministry of Food supported gardeners by distributing 10m instructional leaflets and organising food into different food groups - not unlike the modern Five a Day campaign. “Amateur gardeners were keen to grow fruits and salad vegetables. But the government encouraged them to grow sustainable crops like potatoes, carrots and cabbages [which could be stored easily],” Melody points out.

She believes that as a throw-away-nation, we have a lot to learn from wartime recycling techniques. “People were very resourceful then,” says Melody. “But now the UK produces 434m tonnes of rubbish each year and if we continue to by 2010 our landfill sites will be full. So we’re particularly looking at sustainability this year. We’ve got lots of ice cream tubs planted up and are trying to encourage people to save yoghurt pots and newspapers to make plant pots.”

And just as the allotment was vital during the war, Melody claims growing your own could help us save on our food bills. “I think growing your own on an allotment is an affordable way of producing food. It’s possible to produce £300 of veg a year plus you get exercise from it and it builds a sense of community. If you don’t have space you can grow courgettes or salad leaves in pots.”

Meanwhile, the Churchill Museum’s allotment is thriving. “The veg is doing particularly well this year,” she tells me. “The only problem has been black fly and as we’re gardening organically we can only spray soapy water on them. We’ve also used World War Two techniques such as companion planting - planting flowers to attract the insects away from the veg.”

Do you grow your own? Does it help you save on your shopping bill, or do you think it's just another fad that will disappear eventually? What are your recycling tips? Leave a message and let me know. Have a great weekend, xxx Piper

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WW2 Challenge: The £5 Banana

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:33:00 GMT

Living on wartime rations isn’t easy – I’ve already poisoned myself with one simple recipe! So in an effort to learn more, I caught up with Terry Charman, senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, this week and picked his extensive brains about diet and food in wartime Britain.

He was amused by my experiment. “It’s interesting that when recession looms people look back to the war period,” he told me. “What we can learn from wartime Britain is not to waste food. Back then everything was turned into something else. People used up food scraps and even made imitation food – such as mock goose – to capitalise on what was available. It was a very different world and people living now would find it difficult to go back.”

We often consider World War Two as a time of privation, but the Ministry of Food went to great lengths to ensure everyone ate healthily. “The wartime diet was extremely healthy because you didn’t have the fatty foods and there was the Dig for Victory campaign, which encouraged people to grow their own vegetables,” Terry explains. “You wanted a fighting fit nation. Bacon, ham, meat, sugar and butter were all rationed and things like potatoes were seen as big fillers.”

But the food was boring. “You could live quite well on the wartime ration, but you would find it monotonous and the lack of oranges and bananas difficult,” he says. “At the museum we have photos from a fair during the war where they auctioned off a banana for £5. That’s the length people went to [for fresh fruit]! What is so difficult to convey is the enormous choice we have now, but then they had to put up with what was at the butchers or bakers. Nobody went hungry but people couldn’t have what they wanted.”

Leftover meat would be recycled. “Meat was rationed at 6p, which would buy an individual two lamb chops,” Terry explains. “But the housewife would buy the family meat ration in one go – a leg of pork or a shoulder of lamb – serve it for Sunday dinner, and then it would continue to put in an appearance until the Tuesday as rissoles, cottage pie etc. Only meat was rationed in monetary terms, everything else was rationed in weight.”

But not everything was rationed. “Chicken, turkey and game weren’t rationed, and neither were fruit and vegetables, although bananas, oranges and lemons almost disappeared as shipping space was needed for munitions,” he says. “Restaurants were ordered to serve meals costing no more than five shillings, although luxury ones got away with charging for extras, such as the band. People were encouraged to keep rabbits and pigs in a pig club. Offal wasn’t rationed, but a lot of people turned their noses up at it. People didn’t drink much coffee then either. Nobody even thought of rationing coffee.”

I admitted I found some wartime recipes uninspiring. “People’s tastes were blander then,” Terry points out. “They hadn’t done the foreign travel we have. If they had a takeaway it would be fish and chips.”

Ironically, Terry says money wasn’t an issue then. “What could you spend the money on? Consumer goods had more or less gone and food prices were controlled. Entertainment was the main thing. Books flourished in the long hours of the blackout and people went to the cinema.”

Difficult for consumers to bear was the continuation of rationing nine years after the war ended. “Rationing went on until 1954,” Terry points out. “Meat was the last thing that went off ration. People couldn’t understand. We’d won the war and defeated countries were no longer on rationing. But rationing actually increased after the war, with bread going on ration for three years. There is a mindset that people would accept this in wartime, but during more intangible things, like economic downturns, it is much more difficult to rally the troops.”

Could you stand to live on World War Two food? What do you think could we learn from the wartime Britain’s diet and approach to food? Leave a comment and let me know.

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Food challenge: Going Wild!

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:32:22 GMT

Wow! I’ve been chatting to professional forager Fergus Drennan, and I’m feeling very excited about wild food week, which is about to begin!

As part of my challenge to beat rising food prices, I am spending a week introducing foraged fare into my diet to see if it will save on my shopping bill. So getting Fergus’ advice was vital. He has been attempting to live solely on wild food since April, and hasn’t found it easy despite being a wild food expert and chef. “I never realised how stressful it can be,” he told me. “You’re constantly thinking about what’s for lunch, what’s for dinner. I didn’t realise how insanely tense it would make me.” Unfortunately he is laid up with a painful bad back and unable to meet up, but still able to impart great advice over the phone.

As well as getting to know your plants, another limiting factor to foraging is your location. “It takes years [to become accustomed to identifying wild foods],” he says. “It’s repeated familiarity. If you live in a town [it can be difficult] but if there are plenty of wild plants and you know that the council hasn’t been spraying then there’s all sorts of things. Herne Bay where I live is looking its most verdant and beautiful because the council hasn’t sprayed. So all I’ve had to do is walk around.”

But if there aren’t wild plants nearby foraging can prove costly. “Unless it’s within cycling or walking distance you’ve got to drive, so you’ve got to think about fuel costs,” he points out. “But even in London you don’t have far to walk to get to a park where you can pick some nettles, fat hen or chick weed.”

Fergus says one of the best ways to use wild food is in soup. “Depending on the resource, I make 40 to 50 portions of soup which I freeze. That really does help me save money. Cook it with some onion, leek, potato and some stock and it’s great.”

Mushrooms are also useful. “You can use wild fungi in quiches and risottos,” he explains. “My friend Chris and I found a 6 ½ kg chicken of the woods that could feed you for the whole week. Shallow fry it with garlic or use it in stews. They’re around this time of the year growing on oak or chestnut. Disregard it if it’s growing on yew or any trees that aren’t native to the UK.”

The wet weather also means mushrooms. “I’m seeing field mushrooms coming out already and giant puffballs have been around from the 8^th May. These are easy to identify. Plus there’s marsh samphire around the Thames Estuary.” However it is very important to know exactly what it is that you've foraged to avoid any upset tummies or being poisoned. So make sure you carefully identify your mushrooms.

Our squirrel, courtesy of John the Poacher, still languishes in the freezer. So I asked Fergus how to cook it. “Squirrel is absolutely delicious,” he says. “Pot roast it in a light stock (2 hours at 150 degrees) so you can get some idea of the flavour. Throw in some wine. Another nice recipe is to cook it with elderflower cordial.”

And if all else fails, there’s Mother Nature’s spring greens. “It’s a wonderful time for making salads,” says Fergus. “I like the sour taste of dandelions but you can put them in water overnight to lessen it. You can also pickle the buds before they open or shallow fry them.”

A plant called reed mace, growing by lakes, can also be used like leek. And elderflower fritters are another tasty seasonal recipe.

Hopefully Fergus’ advice will stand me in good stead! I’m also foraging later in the week with another professional wild man, so maybe there’s hope for me yet!

Have a great weekend and thanks for your great comments this week xxx Piper

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Food challenge: the low income diet

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:45:09 GMT

Being a hypochondriac I wondered about getting some nutritional advice before I change my eating habits for the frugal food challenge. I’ve always had a delicate stomach. Plus I’d read how you should consult your doctor before starting a new diet.

So sheepishly, I contacted the British Nutrition Foundation for advice. The kind lady on the other end of the phone seemed bemused by my ramblings about shopping in Aldi and eating wartime rations, but she put me through to Lisa Miles, a senior nutritional scientist, who put my rather pathetic fears at rest.

While she admitted she wasn’t an expert on wild food, Lisa assured me that changing my food shopping habits shouldn’t affect my health. It was down to me whether I was eating healthily. “With any approach to food shopping you need to ensure you are getting a healthy diet,” she told me. “A third of your diet should be starchy foods – potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, while a third should be fruit and vegetables and a third meat and fish or beans – protein – with also some fats and sugary foods in addition. Shopping on a budget you should still be able to meet your requirements. You could use canned and frozen or dried fruit and vegetables and make sure you eliminate as much food waste as possible.”

The idea of using canned or dried foods is a good tip. But my concerns weren’t entirely unfounded. Lisa also told me that there is a clear correlation between low income and malnutrition. “People on lower incomes tend to have poorer diets,” she says. “That’s quite well known. Obesity tends to be more of an issue.” And she sent me a frightening study by the Food Standards Agency which demonstrates the fact.

The Low Income Diet and Nutrition Study carried out between 2003 to 2005 and published last year makes for depressing reading. According to the report, the people on low incomes interviewed tended to consume more processed meats, pizzas and table sugar as part of their diet and less the national average amount of fruit and veg. On average men consumed 2.4 fruit and veg portions a day and women 2.5. They also ate excessive amounts of fatty foods, and smoked and drank more alcohol than the wider population. One fifth of the children interviewed were obese and 14 per cent overweight. 38 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women had an increased waist circumference associated with diabetes.

Admittedly, lack of exercise was also an issue - 76 per cent of men and 81 per cent of women did less than 30 minutes of exercise a week. And shockingly, 39 per cent said that they had feared their food supplies would run out before they received more money, while 36 per cent said they couldn’t afford to eat a balanced diet. 22 per cent admitted they cut down on or skipped meals altogether, while 5 per cent said they hadn’t eaten for an entire day because they had no money for food. I’m still shocked from reading the 50 page study.

And while you might say, ‘well, these statistics are from 2005’ it seems that more UK children and pensioners than ever are living in poverty. According to figures from the Department for Work and Pensions this week, 3.9m children were living below the bread line during 2006/07, up 100,000 on the year before, while the figure is 2.1m for pensioners – up 200,000. It makes you wonder just how many of these 6m people are eating a poor diet. Sad and truly horrifying stuff.

What can be done to combat poverty in the UK? Should the government be doing more? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Food challenge: A Pizza the Frugal Life

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:15:39 GMT

Oh dear…as I write this I am feeling very full…excuse me…Some peppermint tea might be in order…Ah…that’s better…Thank goodness for elasticated-waist trousers…that’s all I can say…

Why am I feeling so fat when I’m on a budget food challenge, you may ask? Well, all I can say is its Kerry’s fault. She left a helpful comment on Saturday’s blog entry, in which she made the obvious suggestion that instead of buying the pizza which was still outstanding on my shopping list following my visit to the farm shop, I should make one myself! And so this lunchtime I got down and doughy in the kitchen.

Admittedly this isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to make a pizza. A few years ago when I was really skint I tried out a recipe, but the results were mixed. The main problem was trying to get it in a vague pizza shape. Despite the use of a rolling pin, most attempts ended up strangely resembling the Isle of Wight. And the dough didn’t really taste much like pizza dough.

This time I adapted a recipe from an old book my neighbour leant me called The Cost Conscious Cook by Maggie Brogan.

225g plain or wholemeal flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon sugar

Half packet of fast acting dried yeast

150ml water

You combine the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl and then gradually add the water in using a rounded edge knife until you have a sticky dough. Then you knead it on a floured work surface for 10 minutes (I did this, forgetting that I could just get our bread maker to do it for me! But there you go, it’s probably character-building), roll it out to about 1cm thick and place on an oiled baking tray in a warm place (I put it in the oven on a very low heat) to rise.

While it was busy rising, I made up a tomato sauce using about two tablespoons of tomato puree, ¾ of a tin of tinned tomatoes and olives, chopped onions and garlic (from the first garlic bulb picked from our veg patch no less! The house stinks of garlic now!), a splash of balsamic vinegar, seasoning and half a chopped chilli I found languishing in the fridge, and just reduced it down. When the dough had become puffy, I smeared on the sauce, added chopped up sweet pepper, frozen peas and almost forgot the cheddar cheese! I had to take the pizza out after five minutes and sprinkle it on. What an idiot!

And to begin my foray into wild foods for the food challenge, for good measure I added some dandelion leaves onto the pizza when it was done – wilting them as you would spinach, as well as making a little nasturtium leaf side salad.

The pizza was absolutely delicious, which was a real surprise after my past attempts. I think making up the tomato sauce instead of just smearing tomato puree and canned tomatoes on top made a real difference. And the dandelions worked well. I wasn’t sure at first, because when I tasted a couple before I cooked them I found them a bit sour. But DJ explained that he’d discovered it was actually the stalks that were tart, not the leaves, so I cut them out. The nasturtiums were also rather peppery, not unlike rocket, so I think next time I’ll use them sparingly among other salad leaves.

And it was certainly a frugal success, costing roughly £1.40 to make compared to a bought Dr Oeker pizza costing £2.10 from Asda, which we normally buy. It was also about 1/3 bigger and much more filling. Sorry...must go and lie down now as too fat...

Do you make your own homemade, cheaper versions of fast foods? If so let me know your recipes!

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Food challenge Day One: Tuck in!

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:34:45 GMT

Getting stuck into my food shopping experiment today, I decided to kick things off by doing exactly what we used to do in my school chemistry lab of yore…creating a control arm!

Don’t worry - it won’t be something toxic-looking, producing pink flames, but simply carrying out my normal food shop, so we have something to compare my weird and wonderful shopping experiences with over the coming month.

But instead of being boring and heading to a supermarket, I thought I’d go to our local farm shop. For ages my neighbour has been raving about how cheap it is, so today I decided to give it a visit.

The only problem was, I wasn’t sure whether it took debit card and my neighbour was out. So I jumped in the car and headed to our local supermarket’s ATM. Things didn’t augur well – a road rage incident in the store car park meant 20 cars were stuck in gridlock traffic. For a while I thought I’d be forced to shop there anyway! But the car park attendants managed to stop the fight and peace ensued.

After a 15 minute drive I got to the farm shop, where life was more sedate than the supermarket! Farm shops don’t always mean good quality produce, but in this case the fruit and vegetable display was glorious. Outside mountains of fresh potatoes, leeks, melons and apples greeted my eyes. I lingered over some gorgeous looking raspberries, but dragged myself away as they weren’t on my shopping list. I’d carefully planned out our meals for the next week to avoid spending on things we don’t need:

(we eat cereal and toast for breakfast):

Thursday

Lunch – pasta & pesto

Dinner – chilli con carne

Friday

Lunch – leftover chilli con carne

Dinner – sausages and mash

Saturday

Lunch – leftover sausages, salad and couscous

Dinner – quick dinner of pizza and salad (busy day)

Sunday

Lunch – DJ’s spaghetti Bolognese

Dinner – roast chicken, roast tatties and veg

Monday

Lunch – boiled egg curry and couscous

Dinner – leftover chicken, salad and chips

Tuesday

Lunch – homemade veg soup and bread

Dinner – veg noodle stir fry

Wednesday

Lunch – beans on toast

Diner - roasted vegetables and couscous

Inside the farm shop it wasn’t quite as glamorous. The aisles were narrow and the shopping trolleys rickety. I got stuck behind another couple who seemed transfixed by the mountains of cheap chocolate biscuits. The place was full of people struggling to navigate around the produce and each other. The shopping experience was one of function over comfort. And it was chaos at the till – a long queue and nobody opening extra tills as you might get in Tescos etc. The shop took debit card but one of the cashiers was having so much trouble putting one through that I paid by cash.

But most items were fabulously cheap. I helped myself to two jars of Lloyd Grossman pesto for £1. One pesto jar currently sells for £1.12 in Asda. And 1kg of fusilli pasta for £1 (£1.24-£1.30 in Asda). A bag of onions which normally costs me about 70-99p in the supermarket was 50p. I was naughty and treated myself to a packet of popcorn for 39p, which normally retailed for 89p.

Altogether I spent £11.35:

1kg fusilli pasta - £1

1kg spaghetti - £1

Popcorn – 39p

Spinach – 99p

Semi-skimmed milk - £1.25

Red kidney beans – 39p

2 bottles pesto - £1

7lb potatoes - £1

Pack onions – 50p

Cos lettuce – 69p

Pack apples - £1

0.315kg Parsnips – 69p

0.255kg mushrooms – 31p

Broccoli – 39p

Leeks – 75p

Total: £11.35

However, by the time I’d finished there were still outstanding items on my list. There was no meat for sale there or household items like kitchen towel and bleach, although the latter obviously won’t form part of our food shop. And I couldn’t find any couscous or noodles. For my week’s meal plan I still need couscous (£1.24), noodles (£1.72), a free range chicken (£6), two packets of mince (£5.50), a pizza (£2.10) and sausages (£1.98). So the total week’s control arm food shop will be about £30.

Fortunately we have chips in the freezer and baked beans (and we make our own bread using the bread maker). But it looks like I will still have to visit the supermarket after all!

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A Frugal Food Challenge!

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:00:23 GMT

With food prices going through the roof and many people feeling the pinch at the supermarket till these days, its challenge time once again for your aspiring frugalist. MSN have set me an assault course of food-related tasks over the next month to test my frugal mettle and see if I am a man or a mouse (or should that be a woman or a mousse?).

Over the next four weeks I will attempt to beat the spiralling prices of items such as meat, cereals, bread and dairy products, by adopting a handful of different cunning, and sometimes eccentric, strategies.

When the going gets tough, the tough…go…er…foraging…of course! Week one of my challenge will see me attempt to save money on my grocery bill by learning more about wild foods and introducing them into my diet, whether weeds from my back garden or plants and berries foraged from the wilds of Essex. I will be sampling different foraged food recipes each day and examining how much they help me save on my shopping bill in the process.

The following week will see me travel back in time to the dark days of World War Two and rationing. Will I be able to stomach the dishes prescribed by the government which successfully nourished a nation on a budget and kept them fighting fit, and save cash at the till? It’ll be lashings of brawn and dried egg all round.

Low cost supermarket Aldi recently claimed in a press release to journalists that customers could save a fortune over their lifetimes if they chose to do their weekly shop there. Yet it’s possible that supermarket snobbery may keep some people away from its stores. After recovering from my WW2 rations, I will spend a week living on food from Aldi, and experience first hand how its produce compares in quality and price to that of conventional supermarkets. I have yet to break the news to DJ, who once refused to eat some mozzarella I had purchased out of curiosity from a local Lidl store. Oh dear…!

And last but not least, many of you have suggested that a vegetarian diet could help save me money because meat can be so costly. On the One Show this week Cilla Black admitted that she ate very little meat as a child growing up in Liverpool, (although she still has a fondness for offal). So my final week of the challenge will be spent sampling a vegetarian diet – no more bacon sarnies, sausages or roast dinners for me! – and experiencing what the effects are, if any, on our weekly grocery bill.

Then at the end of the challenge we shall weigh up which diet or shopping strategy saved me the most on my shopping bill. It will be interesting to see what a difference, if any, changing my diet and or shopping habits will make.

Hope you can come along for the gastronomic and financial journey! As usual I’ll look forward to your comments and suggestions.

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Food for Thought

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:13:14 GMT

What a disappointing spectacle the United Nations food price conference in Rome is turning into! I naively entertained high hopes, thinking that these world leaders might actually achieve something. But so far it seems to have been upstaged by, of all people, Robert Mugabe.

Of course! Just the guy who can solve the food price crisis, with his own people in Zimbabwe starving because of his actions! Despite an EU travel ban, he has shown up to the conference with his wife Grace. And officials are busy complaining to reporters about his presence, when frankly, while I agree with them, they should be talking about what they’re doing to bring food prices down. There’s also an outcry at the presence of Iranian president Mahmoud Admadinejad, another popular chap. All of which, while fair enough, is getting in the way of the important issues.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is urging leaders to lower import tariffs and export restrictions on food and increase production. And one EU food official is arguing that the ban on feeding animal remains to pigs and chickens should be dropped. This was put in place because of the supposed link to CJD/BSE. He has a valid point in that the grain used as animal feed could be diverted to feed people. And he claims there is no scientific reason not to feed pigs and chickens animal remains. But do you really want to eat pork and poultry fed on this diet? True, our pet chickens will happily chow down on a dead frog or cat food if they get their beaks on it. But it doesn’t make up their whole diet and I’m not sure it’s something to be encouraged. Perhaps you feel differently? Let me know by leaving a comment.

Meanwhile, while we in the rich West aren't suffering as much as those in the Third World from food price hikes, a European survey out this week shows that food prices rose an average of 7.1 per cent in all 27 EU states between April 2007 and April 2008 – twice the rate of inflation. Dairy product prices soared by 14.9 per cent, while the price of cereals and bread rose by 10.7 per cent. Meat prices are also up 4.1 per cent.

So if the politicians don't come up with anything helpful, what can we do at ground level to save money on our food shop? This Japanese lady’s approach is a little extreme and obviously illegal! But here are some more practical ideas:

Plan your meals ahead. Don’t go shopping on a whim but use a list to avoid buying things you won’t eat. Freeze any leftovers or use them as a packed lunch to take to work.

To save money on meat, use half the quantity of stewing meat for example in a stew and bulk it up with vegetables. If you buy something and don’t use it, make sure you put it in the freezer before the best before date runs out.

Cook in bulk. Make a big batch of Bolognese or a chilli, for example, bulk it up with veg to stretch it out and then freeze it in portions for a cheap but nutritious home-made ready meal.

Look for reduced price items in the supermarket which you can freeze. Don’t be tempted just to buy something because it’s on special offer though – think carefully about whether you will use it.

Shop around. If you have time – and admittedly everyone has – check out local market stalls and farm shops if there are any nearby. Often their fruit and veg is cheaper than the supermarket’s. Show up to the market stalls at the end of the day when they’re packing up and selling off products cheaply.

Visit local ethnic stores. Sometimes their pulses and grains are much cheaper than the supermarkets’. The couscous for example in my local supermarket is far more expensive than packets I’ve bought in Turkish stores in Harringey.

Examine your portion sizes. Are you making too much food and throwing it away? Sometimes plate sizes can distort matters and you can end up wasting food and piling on the pounds.

I’ve bored you to death with it before, and I’ll do it again. If you’re brave enough, and you’ve got a garden or access to outside space which isn’t contaminated by pesticides think about introducing free wild foods into your diet such as dandelions or nettles. But be very careful and make sure you’re 100 per cent sure what you’re eating.

Consider becoming semi-vegetarian. Meat is expensive and vegetables are often cheap. Plus there are plenty of good cook books in the library to inspire you with tasty recipes.

del.icio.us Tags: the frugal life,frugal living,food price crisis,UN food price conference,robert mugabe,moneysaving tips,saving money on your food bill,eating cheaply,BSE

Technorati Tags: the frugal life,frugal living,food price crisis,UN food price conference,robert mugabe,moneysaving tips,saving money on your food bill,eating cheaply,BSE

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