Mumsnet Talk

Anyone else who shops in lidl notice the 3p price rise in bread this weekend? Valve loaf here risen (ha ha!) to 50p.

I remember the days when Tesco valve bread was 17p - and its not that long ago really.

Mind you I still love my lidl

My closest supermarket (as in one which doesn't require a walk through a park for 20 mins, not ideal for Feb) is a Tesco Metro. It is rubbish. They frequently run out of things, and they only stock the most expensive of ranges or the bigger sizes eg. when I wanted medium free range eggs, I could only get large or a more expensive branded version.

Also annoying: supermarkets taking out their sliced meat counters. It used to be 70p for 100g salami. Now I can only buy plastic-packed sliced salami, in smaller quantities, for about £1.25. Expensive and a waste of plastic.

Even Tescos prices have really jumped (see what I did there?). I saw lots of (non own branded) things today that were quite a bit dearer than Sainsburys.

I shop in Lidl, I find everywhere else much too expensive.

In fairness to many MN's who have massive grocery bills I think much of it is due to London and Home Counties uplift pricing. For those of us North of Watford I feel we are muck luckier! We are very comfortable but have always been thrifty!! I use Home Bargains once a month to bulk shop for household goods - their Nicky quilted toilet rolls are superb! Aldi unbeatable for fruit and veg, dishwasher tabs and washing powder without compromising quality. Then today we went into Tesco and literally stripped their reduced meat section. Large packs of extra lean steak mince, turkey mince and two fab sirloin steaks - all at half price! Chest freezer best investment ever as I always bulk buy when things are on offer. I bulk buy most things when on offer such as coke, kenco coffee etc. My shopping bills average around £100 per week but we eat extremely well and that includes wine for the weekends and most household goods. However, I don't think I would be able to shop quite so economically if I lived down south as prices most definitely higher there even for same supermarkets so do bear this in mind when criticizing other posters.

it is not worth growing potatoes carrots onions etc they are always relatively cheap but raspberries normally £2 for about 250g can be trained along a fence easily blackberries can be picked for free probably within walking distance of everyone as abundant in city waste ground too and they freeze quite well, rhubarb is worth growing and salad

tomatoes taste better but you can only effectively grow 5 sprays bunches per plant so by the time you factor grow bags etc not really cheaper but they do taste about 10 times better so do strawberries though pick your own then making jam/ freezing is probably as good

I never pay full price for anything, bulk buy madly when staples are discounted and use the freezer much more. I bought some reduced peppers yesterday, chopped them up and lobbed them in the freezer the second I got home. Have started doing that with chillies too, takes the heat out of them a bit but they are always available when I need them.

I very rarely stick to a shopping list if what I need isn't reduced, it has to be an absolute essential for that. My main shops are Aldi and Waitrose (freezer is full of reduced price free range pork from the offer last week), I was in Lidl the other day but left without buying anything when I realised I was still going to have to go to Aldi - the only things Lidl is better for is goat's cheese and chocolate raisins.

My kitchen cupboards took like those of a mad woman though, with my huge piles of spelt pasta (reduced at the Ethical Supermarket) and Belvita biscuits...

Great thread!

I read the other day that cheese can be made to last longer if you add a cube of sugar to it. It will absorb the extra moisure and thus keeps the cheese for longer. Sugar cube should be changed every day.

Growing your own veg is very expensive. You are basically growing meals for slugs and squirrels.

ICeland and"poundland>thank the lord! ,And you are skint when toilet paper is the newspaper ! esp. one picked up on the bus, i.e. Metro

I got stung for tuna as well. We only have a Tesco Metro.

Just to let OP know she's not alone!

They would never have done the same with Kosher - my family had to go to quite significant lengths to get kosher stuff - apart from limited resources within about 5 miles - that meant coming to London (80 miles). Wonders why that is. And I agree I don't need to eat Halal meat either.

A large proportion of our meat is slaughtered in France. Again there is a large proportion of abatoirs in France that are halal - there is a big EU trade in halal meat. Again, the majority of meat in schools, hospitals, public sector canteens has come via this route. It is more labour intensive

Oh great. I don't agree with Halal slaughter and am already incensed that food is not labelled as such so that I can avoid it, it's pushing the prices up as well. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Mrs Pennyapple - I totally agree. We've got one of Bob Flowerdew's books and he says if you're limited in space and time, only grow stuff that's expensive to buy - soft fruit, salad crops, fennel, aubergines, asparagus, rhubarb - or tastes much better fresh, like tomatoes.

We also grow some of our own veg, but having done it for a couple of years now, we've learned that unless you REALLY LOVE doing it, it's not worth growing stuff that's cheap to buy anyway. Someone else already mentioned buying a sack of potatoes, that costs about £7 around here, and they are far better than what we grew last year. Onions are only about £1 for five or six, so it really isn't worth the time, effort and garden space growing them ourselves. However, we like leeks and they are often £1 each or more in the supermarket (no decent grocer here). We must have saved ourselves £50 just through growing leeks this year. And I'm using more of the green part, rather than throwing it out - I hate to think of how much food I've wasted by doing that.

The rest of the groceries are difficult as we have no Aldi / Lidl etc here. I am starting to compare prices more between the two supermarkets we do have, but it's difficult when the prices change week by week.

I sent DH looking for tuna in the coop and they didn't have any today

Re: the value cheese. It's quite normal for bigger packs to be cheaper per kilo, in lots of products and within same brand etc. I guess due to different packaging to product ratio etc. It's annoying though as sometimes I feel pressured, in a way, to buy the bigger one as it is better value - but then, if you aren't going to use that amount, it's not really saving money because it might go off if it's a perishable product.

morebeta-
"In a panic, central banks printed vast amounts of money after the financial crisis to save the banks and fund the Govt deficits. This fed directly into much higher fuel and basic food commodity prices."

Why did printing money feed into higher fuel and commodity prices Beta?

Back on tina .... 4 tins of John West were £3.30 in the co-op this afternoon.

Can I just point out that yesterday in Morrisons, I noticed that their value cheese comes in 2 sizes- Bigger chunk and smaller chunk.

Ok so far, but I also noticed that bigger chunk value cheese was about 30p per kilo cheaper than smaller chunk value cheese. Why? It was the same cheese, for crying out loud!

dizzydo North End Road Market was ever thus. Put me off markets really - and that's going back to 1980

Oh and BTW large tins of tuna were £4 for four in Asda this afternoon.

Oh you didn't offend. It was just funny - and Dawn and I both know Putney and are sometimes a bit tongue in cheek about stuff that nobody else gets. Apologies.

Two Mnetters from different ends of the country with a bit of shared of history.

I forget too that not everyone lives a five minute walk from M&S, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, etc., and can hop on a tube and be in Central London in 20 minutes. .

I was thinking about this thread earlier when I was in Sainsbury's. Haven't bought tuna for ages but noticed today a small own brand was £1.39 - I'm sure just a few years ago it used to be about 80p? John West tuna 60p more expensive.

Married north end rd mkt is still there but a lot of very cheap stalls with produce that only lasts for a day or so. Fri and Saturday best time to go tho v busy then.

Sorry married. I appreciate (but sometimes forget) that not everyone lives out in the sticks with their closest shop being a branch of Mole Valley Farmers . But the flip side of that is we don't have access to cheap Indian or Chinese wholesalers, or a whole raft of supermarkets, which are also often recommended on these threads, but which I'm sure can't be too hard to find if you live in London.

I did have a look for you but the best I could come up with was the wholesale market at Covent Garden

I mention it because in market towns there is often a branch of countrywide, or mole valley or similar where sacks of potatoes can be purchased at considerably lower prices than you would pay in a supermarket. For example, a lady I work with drove from one town to another and passed said branch of Mole Valley but still bought her potatoes in Asda at much greater cost because she didn't know.

And yes, audina potatoes do keep much better in dirt because (as you probably know) they go green when exposed to light. So in order to keep British potatoes from harvest in summer to now, they are kept in the dark, and dirty.

Sorry all if I have offended.