When I decided to join Liz from Margot and Barbara in her month without supermarket challenge I was under no illusion that it could turn out to be harder than I had initially anticipated, would I be able to resist Waitrose tempting me with flyers through the door?
My reasons for taking part are quite simple really, it’s not just about wanting to feed my family the best possible ingredients it’s also about supporting my local stores, supporting independent retailers, finding out where my produce has come from and taking time to choose what I want rather than just throwing something in my shopping basket because I’ve used it before.
After talking to my family about the challenge Mini Gourmand asked if I would also be boycotting online stores, it would obviously be cheating if I did an Ocado shop as it defeats the point of the challenge but I don’t think there is anything wrong with ordering a veg box online, buying Asian ingredients from an independent online store or ordering welsh cheese from a family website in wales.
I’m lucky because I live in an area that has an excellent butcher, a greengrocer and some great farmers markets so it’s not hard to get your hands on great produce. I order my bottles of milk, orange juice and yoghurt from my milkman 3 times a week which supports both himself and the local dairy, this is something I started doing a couple of months ago as I think it’s important to keep our milkmen in a job some of them have been doing for years.
I can get locally baked fresh bread from the deli section in my butchers if I need to but I’ve decided that when I have time I will bake my own (my breadmaker has recently gone pop so I’m making it by hand at the moment) I would love to find a great place to order my flour from so if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
There are so many vegetable box schemes and I’m struggling to find one to suit us, I can’t eat certain vegetables so a scheme that doesn’t take allergies into consideration can’t be used by us, do you have any favourite companies that allow amendments to be made? Companies that can provide both fruit and vegetable boxes would be preferred but I’m happy to purchase separately if needed.
Coventry is only a ten minute drive away and there is an abundance of international food stores featuring Chinese, Thai, Indian, African and Polish produce which is really handy for the type of meals that I cook, it’s also a good excuse to visit one of my favourite Afghan restaurants!
Shopping locally does take up a lot of my time, sourcing products, writing recipes and meal planning take me over 5 times as long as meal planning whilst browsing Ocado or wandering round waitrose, I’m lucky at the moment because I’ve taken maternity leave from university so although I do work from home I can pick and choose my hours which mean I’m not limited to when I shop, I do think this challenge would be very difficult for me if I worked full or even part time in an establishment.
I spend a couple hours on Thursday writing recipes and deciding on ingredients that I will need to purchase for the week, on Friday I purchase 3 days worth of meat from the butcher and 3 days worth of fruit and veg from the green grocer, I pop back into town on a Monday and Wednesday for any extras I need.
Today marks 13 days since the start of the challenge and although I had to pop to Sainsbury’s at the beginning of the moth for a blog post I only spent the giftcard I was provided with and none of my own money so I don’t think this counts. I’ve had 13 days of supermarket free eating and it’s been really easy so far, meal planning definitely helps with wastage, I’ve hardly had to throw away any food or packaging compared to the usual piles of binbags I would get through when shopping at a supermarket.
I really do hope to continue this challenge past November so if you have any tried and tested retailers that I can add to my selection I would love to hear about them.
Madame Gourmand 