General Chat

I DONT KNOW WETHER ITS ME BUT LATLEY
SUPERMARKET VEGTABLES HAVE LOST THE TASTE EVEN THE MORE EXPENSIVE LABLED,THE CARROTS AS I SLICED I ATE SOME RAW,,NOTHING NO TASTE AND THEY WERE ORGANIC I ASKED MY FAMILY THEY SAID THE SAME.
OVEN CHIPS I KNOW COOK THE IN A TRAY WITH A SMALL DROOP OF OF OIL

I have never tasted chips as good as my mum cooked. She cut potatoes into big chunky chips and fried them in a frying pan in the dripping fat from the Sunday Roasts. She used to buy big chunks of Beef dripping from the butcher to do all the roasting and saved the dripping each week with the jelly settling at the bottom of the pudding basin. Toast with dripping and some of the jelly with salt and pepper on was yummy,the best was the toasted end crust or nobby as we called them.
Not very PC now though with all the emphasis on healthy eating.

threw my chip pan away years ago .to my childrens disgust .. they plead for me to to get another..

mmm beef dripping on crusty bread with salt and pepper yummy..

it didnt do much harm to our parents.. i reckon all these additives is as bad ..

You can't beat abit of toast and dripping for breakfast. Nowt finner. Made from the Sunday joint.
Agh but, find me a Sunday joint, either Pork or Beef that yields dripping these days. All pigs and cows are now breed for leanness, so no dripping. Lucky if you can get any cracklin' off the Pork.
Chip pan went out years ago, and have to resort to oven chips.
We were bought up on butter, margarine did not come in until later.
Surely, as Jgee says, this could not be any worst than all the addatives in food today.
Julia in Derbyshire

Been using deep fat fryers for about 35 years now. Since oven chips came out - I use those, takes less cooking. G.children used to ask for real chips when they came as their mum only cooked oven chips!

Shop bought bread is my bug bear. We make our own, time permitting, but occassionally have to buy a loaf, and or bread rolls. They taste like nothing on earth. There is actually no taste at all, to be honest. Had some bread rolls in the week for lunch from T***co, ugh, they went straight in the bin after the first mouthful. I noticed last night Hugh on Channel 4 was making Sourdough bread, so I think I will have a go at that soon.
Julia in Derbyshire

Julia, I bought some bread rolls from T*****'s this week as we were having guests for lunch. They were disgusting, and left a very salty taste in my mouth. I normally make my own bread with the aid of my breadmaker, though have made it by hand as well in the past.

I notices on Hugh's programme last night that he put the yeast into the flour with one batch of bread , instead of letting it froth up in a jug of warm water. Never seen that done before.

We never buy organic food from the supermarket, cauliflowers taste of nothing, and carrots as has been stated are very bland.

My bread rolls were just the opposite Angelsong, they were sweat.
I must have missed that bit with the first loaf, as we were following Emmerdale and switched over halfway through, only catching the Sourdough, bread. Have just looked at www.channel4.com/food, and the recipes are on there. Will have a go at that, in the week as hubby is interested in having a go. We also use a breadmaker in the main, but do the bread rolls in the oven.
Sorry Dizzi, didn't mean to hijack LOL
Julia in Derbyshire

Re Bread, I,m Lucky, insomuch that we have a lovely Bakery shop here,all baked on the premises.Real Bread not the junk from Supermarkets,Tastes Great,Get it fresh every morning except Sundays.**M**.Julia,if they tasted like "Sweat" no wonder they were,nt nice.I assume you meant Sweet.PMSL.

I'm back to drinking real milk - with cream on top!
It only costs between 8 and 10p more than homogenised stuff.
I went back to it because of something someone told my sister - that the fat globules in homogenised milk have been broken down so much they can enter the bloodstream - and cause cholesterol, whereas the natural sized fat globules just pass through the body.

Ladies..... Abandon the Supermarkets...... Support your Local Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker lol

Oh dear Merlin babes, what a fau pax on my part.LOLOL
Piers, I do support my local butcher,baker and candlestickmaker, whenever and wherever I can, but there are just somethings you have to get from the supermarket.
Always get my fresh meat from the local farm shop, deep in DH Lawrence country. You can see the beast in the fields as you drive up to the farm shop, the lambs frolicing and the pigs in their little 'nissen huts', as well as the fowl pecking around the farm-yard. All their ready made products for sale, are made on the premises by the farmer's wife and her jolly helpers. Nothing is too much trouble for them.
Must dash off, out to buy some more Aran wool. LOLOL. Back later.
Julia in Derbyshire

Julia, The "Beast in the Field" is that the Farmer? or did you see me Grazing? **M**.:o)>

Its well & good to support your local butcher, baker etc. There are 4 issues & they all have trade offs. Quality, price, shelf life & convenience.

Properly baked bread, normal full cream milk etc, although tastes better. It costs more & only last a few days before going of. The cream that sits on top of the milk that causes the pinta to go off so quickly.

Supermarket bread although not as nice, is cheaper (due to manufacturing process) & lasts up to a week. The milk because it is homogenised can last up to 11 day.

Many people cant afford the higher priced quality items, especially during a recession. Nor wish, or have the time to shop every few days.

As a man who does ALL the family cooking and food shopping I must say I would never buy supermarket produce.
I have no clue where the meat comes from in a supermarket whereas the fresh meat from my butchers has been walking around the local fields.
The fish comes fresh from the Appledore boats not frozen a month ago on a factory ship.
My greengrocer buys as much produce from local allotments and farms as she can. It is neither irradiated to preserve it or transported from halfway around the world
If I'm too lazy to make bread the local baker is baking fresh bread all day. The rubbish in the supermarket is part cooked in a factory
then frozen until needed.
Supermarket milk is often cheap nasty imported stuff, bottled here so it can be called "British", whatever that means.
Frozen oven chips? Frozen roasties? Frozen yorkies? Ready made mashed potatoes? Just don't even go there!

And as for prices.
68 pence per litre for real farm milk is cheap enough.
Bread is less than a quid for a granary.
Today I bought 4 ginormous cod fillets and a whole Huss, caught last night, for less than a tenner.
The spuds for real chips are Maris piper at £3.50 for 10 Kilos.
Tomorrow is rump steak for tea, at less than a tenner a kilo.
It does n't cost anymore to eat real fresh food if you avoid the trap of the supermarket and use the local farmers or pannier market.

That's all very well if you've GOT local bakers, butchers and fishmongers. There isn't a decent bakery within miles here, I do get it from the farm shop sometimes where it comes from Hobbs House in the Stroud area (very nice but very pricey!)

Eddie, I do not buy any of those frozen things you mention, with the exception of oven chips. If I could successfully find a way to do my own, I would do, as I do most other things that we eat. But we are not all fortunate to live near Appledore, with the boats full of fresh fish, as much as we may wish to.
I have a local milkman who delivers, so I think I do the right thing all round, especially as I have an allotment also.
Many people have to make the most of what is available to them, and if that is shopping in a supermarket, for whatever reason, then that is how it must be.
And how many more times do I have to mention that we are not all able to access a pannier market. If you had come back to other threads of this ilk, where you have said similar, you would have read what I had to say to you about that subject
Please accept this, and move on from these foodie threads where all you do is extol your own vitues of shopping/cooking/ and food in general.
Julia in Derbyshire

I WOULD LOVE HOME GROWN FOOD BUT MY GARDEN IS WAY TO TINY
BUT THIS YEAR I GREWW TOMATO'S IN A HANGING BASKET
FFOUR PLANTS THREE VARITYS OF LITTLE ONES


WE HAD OVER 700 TOMS

I WOULD LOVE A FARM SHOP BUT NONE NEAR

Winchester is a city - a city with no greengrocer, butcher, or fishmonger, and a useless Sainsb**** in the city centre, with no deli counter - and very few local products. It also has a small M&S with limited produce.

My daughter used to live in a small town about 15 miles away - Bishop's Waltham, which has a good butcher, fishmonger, baker, grocer - all independent- and a Co-op in the centre of town, with a Budgens about 100 yards out of the centre.
Every time I visited her, I'd lug bags of fresh meat and fish (for freezing) and vegetables home on the bus - and it all cost less than in a supermarket!