Leading food writers are advising the British people to take advantage of the recession, be thrifty and get a whole lot more out of mealtimes.
In a time of rising food costs and financial lock down, British families are fed up of expensive, low nutrition convenience foods - and says Joanna Blythman, author of Bad Food Britain - are re-embracing a good old fashioned home cooked meal.
At the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, Ms Blythman spoke about the realisation of families that overpriced Microwave meals at £4 each just did not make economic sense.
One of her top tips was to avoid “protein chunks” such as chicken breast and opt for inexpensive cuts of meat instead. Ms Blythman said,
“Shin of beef, oxtail, lamb shank, breast of lamb, shoulder of lamb are cheaper than the prime cuts.We’ve become fixated with these prime cuts…and they are really expensive and they’re actually not very tasty, so I think we should go back to using the things that are cheap and available and using them in a creative kind of way.”
She went on to say another great money saving idea was to make your own soup with simple cheap vegetables and a bit of spice rather than paying through the nose for ever rising tins of soup - nothing beats a steaming bowl of home made soup on a winter’s day to warm you up.
Ms Blythman suggests we avoid unscrupulous supermarkets with their high profit margins, rising fuel costs and insane packaging “like the plague” and instead go back to grass roots - farm shops and local grocers where there is no shame in a bit of friendly haggling!
The food writer Rose Prince agreed, saying,
“At farm shops you can get very good deals, because obviously they’re not having to pay for the overheads of transporting the goods, so what you will get is very good value for money.”
Mrs Price also points out, that there is a silver lining to that grey credit crunch cloud as it “might be quite good for the progress of better eating in this country. I think there’ll be a moment where people will look again at what they’re choosing to eat and perhaps no longer wishing to spend money on convenience foods …and finally people might think ’if I cook that myself I might actually be able to save a little bit.’ So I think there are positive outcomes.”
Both writers also advised that we eat seasonal - that means strawberries in the summer and pumpkins in the autumn as if food is readily available it will always be cheaper. Mrs Prince said,
“Buy during a glut, because you will get good quality and a good market price for it. Seasonality is very important.”
The ladies also recommended we turn our back on meat and food of the land and get our protein fix from pulses which are cheaper and long life.
Yes, food prices are increasing, but people in Britain are also more wasteful than ever before. Ms Blythman says we need to get back to that wartime mentality - not rationing as such but planning ahead and economising. Last night’s dinner for lunch and freeze what is leftover! She finishes,
“We could potentially be more like the sort of nation we were during the Second World War, where they were worried about food, there were blockades, it wasn’t so easy to get hold of food, and we really had to focus on growing things ourselves, cooking things, making a lot out of a little.
“I think most people can knock about 50 per cent off food bills by just cooking. And I think that is a much, much healthier way to eat.”
So come on people, lets get out that tupperware and don those freezer bags/sandwich bags/cling film/foil!!!
