Topic: CHICKENS,HUGH AND TESCO TOO

[pippy]

I feel for you EJ.  We have now come out of a phase of extreme budgeting, but still have to be careful.  There was a time when I worked out how much housekeeping I had each week and took it out in cash!  I would then go around the supermarket with a calculator and a list.  It is a hard time, but it is one where you hone your skills and you don't lose them afterwards.

Keep smiling!

[les65]

i disagree i have had 20.00 before now to feed the 6 of us, and 1 decent free range chicken £5.00 has provided 3 meals for 6 people it is affordable, it can be done, ive done it many times.
sunday roast chicken (white meat)
monday chicken and potato pie  (dark meat)
tuesday chicken stew (everything left in a pot boiled up, bones removed)

or chicken wraps, chicken burgers (homemade) fried chicken.
ok you might get fed up with chicken 3 days in a row but when your skint its food youll eat it.

[caroline7758]

Glad you enjoyed it Caroline.  Have you read her other book "A short history of Tractors in Ukranian" too?  Made me burst out laughing lots!

Yes, both great- roll on the next one!

[valmarg]

I have sent a letter to Tesco. I will never use their shop again if they let the likes of HFW dictate how I should be buying my chicken. I like bland, I like cheap, I don't give a  ~@)* about how my meat gets there.

But most of all I do not want to be told by a pratish TV chef who everybody thinks the sun shines out of his @rse.

ACE, you will be doing yourself a favour if you refuse to shop at Tesco anymore.  The meat (apart from, and including chicken) is atrocious.  It is a crying shame that so many animals have been slaughtered to produce such tough rubbish.

Whilst you may not be a fan of HF-W, his intentions are good, even if his application may be poor.

We try to source our meat/veg locally.  The less airmiles it uses, the better it tastes, and homegrown is the bestest of all/ ;D ;D

valmarg

[ACE]

I don't go there anyway. Too many people take their rugrats shopping there and they seem to run wild.

Somebody said earlier that I should be ruled by my concience over this issue, I don't have one when it comes to my food. I leave that to people that are soft in the head. Convince me that chickens really know the difference I might change my mind.

I don't suppose chickens really care about  rspca guidelines just as they don't care about us stealing their eggs to eat, instead of naturally hatching them out like other birds.

Or do they?  Now that would not do would it, feeling guilty everytime you had an egg.

[Ninnyscrops.]

Views on Halal chicken......................just to widen the debate ???

[betula]

Ace..............don't believe a word of it ::)

Downtoearth.........don't start me on that one.

In fact over the last few days I have come to a decision.............I am going to stop eating meat,the more I discover the more it sickens me

[Mrs Ava]

Okay, just going off at a tangent......do you all buy orgnanic, local, fair trade etc when buying tea, coffee, bananas, sugar and so on.

Don't shout at me, I do try to eat local, and so on, just want you to think that perhaps it isn't just animals that suffer in these debates.

[les65]

apart from things like coffee oranges etc everything is from the uk, fairtrade is a scam imo so i dont support it, the farmers have to pay to be in the fairtrade scheme its about £1500. in our money.
so the poor farmers who cannot pay, do not benefit.
i do not buy beans from india or meat from the eu or razor blades from france etc.
i have never been on holiday abroad and i dont agree with carbon offsetting (another scam), i do drive a 4x4 but my total milage last year was 1086.4 miles

[thifasmom]

Regardless of whether the chickens, etc are aware of being happy/ not i personally would not want anything looking that sickly in my body :-X.

and yes most of us may not be able to meet all the ideals re good/ great food production etc but it doesn't mean you can't work towards it and one way to do this is to ensure that we the customers are properly and honestly informed of where and how our food of choice gets to us. it is only by having this information can we honestly buy our food responsibly which will make it easier for our money to talk to the conglomerates that benefit from our spending.

[Froglegs]

Money talks - and as long as it does I won't pay the price difference for free-range chicken. 

TRUE, But don't you agree that that it should be freedom of choice. How can you make an informed decision at the supermarket if the lables don't inform you. I personally would not wish to go back to eating the 30% more fat/2 for a £5 kind of food now that I have been converted by taste. But probably most people would pay the extra 90p for the rspca standards bird wouldn't they???
 

When you are trying to make ends meet ..then NO.

[Mrs Ava]

In my opinion, I feel it is down to each and every individual to make the choices that suit them and nobody should be made to feel guilty if they buy cheap/mass produced foods. 

If money were no object, then I would only buy the best, but it is, and I do as much as I can, but sometimes the man from Barclays, he say no.

People are made to feel guilty about so much it seems to me - clothes from most shops made in sweatshops, fish and meat farmed in less than ideal circumstances, coffee coming from underpaid farmers and so on. 

[thifasmom]

i don't think making the consumer feel guilty was the aim of the show or this discussion, why should anyone feel guilty if you weren't aware of all the information. the only people who probably feel guilty are those that have the facts about something they feel isn't right then go ahead and still add to the problem. if in acquiring the information you make an informed choice to change habits or not due to whatever reason then so be it why feel guilty. my philosophy is if you have all the facts when you made your choice and that's the choice you wish to live with then live make no apologies and just live by the choice that you have made.

it might not be the right philosophy but its the one i try to live by i know we are all connected and so i would not go out of my way to get something if i think it will harm someone else but once i have made my choice i live with it i don't blame or make apologies and if that information i used to make my choice changes then i review my choices and change to suit.

gosh i haven't a clue what I'm rabbiting on about anymore :-\, just wanted to say i don't think it was anyones intention to make anyone feel guilty about their food choices. but i think the aim was to say that we are not able to make our choices honestly if we are ill informed about the facts.

[Froglegs]

If HW would like us all to eat happy chickens then he should be working towards getting the price down,not making us feel guilty because some of us cannot afford  to live his Lark rise to Candleford way of life.Called in at Tesco on my way home from work,

3 None happy Chickens for £10.00
Tesco value chicken for £1.90 each
 Free range chicken for £7-8.00 each
 Corn fed chicken for £9.00 each
 Organic chicken £12.60 each
My choice was 3 for the price of one happy chicken.

[jennym]

After having used free range chicken bought at a farmers market for around £7.50, I'd never buy another chicken from Tesco or any other supermarket.
The difference in quality was so marked - the taste was better, the volume of meat was significantly greater, it didn't shrink down after cooking because it wasn't full of water. This might sound miserly, but I'm on a low income and can get 3 sets of meals for 3 adults (i.e. 9 adult meals) out of one of the farmers market chickens. Each meal still has much more than the level of proteins etc that adults need daily.
First meal usually a roast, second meal a stew, or curry, third meal generally somthing that uses the rest up, like a good rich soup or stir fry with noodles.

[betula]

I imagine a lot of people have not even tried organic chicken.

I think if they had they would realise how much further the meat will go.

Also some people will eat any rubbish if they imagine they are saving a few pence.

It is all about educating yourself.

[Old bird]

As Betula has said it is mainly down to education. 

Ace you are not eating baby chickens when you eat eggs you know!  There are no cockerells in the battery farms - equally there are very few around many off the farms.   Chickens are mass produced on farms where "fertile" eggs are hatched.  The ones that my chickens produce do not have baby chickens in!

As with you Betula - I am now 95% vegetarian - and really I am as fit as if I were eating meat - and certainly feel healthier for it too!

Old Bird

 ;D

[thifasmom]

3 None happy Chickens for £10.00
My choice was 3 for the price of one happy chicken.

wow :o talk about value for money more fat, more water, more antibiotics, more additives and sometimes more growth hormones, yum as Tesco says everylittle bit helps :P.

for the sake of information;

http://amerrierworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/the-chicken-of-tomorrow/

[tonybloke]

 we can't afford to shop at an out of town supermarket, it costs too much to get there!!  ;D ;D ;D

[Hyacinth]

we can't afford to shop at an out of town supermarket, it costs too much to get there!!  ;D ;D ;D

Point taken, and also for many (most?) people here,  there's a level of poverty in Britain today of which many peeps may be unaware? Cooking a chuck, even a cheapo one, and making it stretch to provide a 'main' meal for three days is v. commendable BUT it presupposes an access to/ability to buy a cooker (+ resultant gas/leccy bills) + fridge & the cost & running costs of that + buying utensils + condiments + accompaniments (yer part of a 5-a-day?) + balancing all that out between feeling full and sustained for x hours as against  taking you through 24 hrs? Job-seeker's allowance is only bout £45 (ish) a week after rent+Poll Tax :P are paid & many have to furnish and live in v.v.v.basic accommodation on that even before the cost of eating & keep themselves clothed and full of optimism that Things will really Get Betta too...

It can be a hard, hard life out there and please don't under-estimate it. It's for real. :'( Poor poor sods.