To purchase a small cabbage at the grocers?

[Pancakeflipper]

Went to our grocers today.
I love my grocers. I go twice a week. Usually with DS2.

Saw a small white cabbage. Join your hands together and make a circle - it's just a little bigger than that.

Added this cabbage to my other goods. Thought it would be good for my self catering long weekend away with my 2 children. Thinking salad / stew. Weather dependent.

The lovely shop assistant added weighed it and put it in my bag.

Then a man stood several people behind me said in a loud voice that small cabbages were reserved for old people who live alone and I had to buy a larger cabbage.

So is there a unwritten or written rule I have missed that states what size veg you can buy depending on your position within society?

And if so can you please link me the rules so I don't fuck up in the grocers again cos it was very embarrassing for us all.

OP you should have grabbed a large cabbage and said, well, I am a single mother but if you can take me home let's have this large one together.....Do you like coleslaw?

well then, fine, OAPs can keep their baby cabbages!

but I never want to see them buying multi packs and extra large sized anything ever again! those things are for families only. geddit?

What about the half cabbages you get in Tesco? Do I need ID for those, too?

Love this. Love Think 71.

Can we extend the remit of it though? My mother insists on buying tins of Irish stew - and as if that's not enough, she buys the budget range (and stockpiles them, obviously). She's not actually short of money at all but can't see why paying 45pence for a meat-based main meal might not be a good idea. All fine but why does she feed it to me and the DCs when we go round? Could we say that budget tinned meat products can only be eaten by the over 71s? If so, I'll happily concede on the small cabbages point.

some people are so entitled - What possessed you OP, this is worse than mole murder

Ha ha ha ha ha

I protest.As an elderly person I want a medium sized cabbage so we can have some today with our liver and onions and mash and some tomorrow as bubble and squeak [with little crispy bacon bits in it.Two OAP's can get two or even three [think stuffed cabbage leaves aka dolmades] main meals out of a medium cabbage.

This is brilliant.

It annoys me that I can't buy potatoes in small enough quantities. New potatoes or baking potatoes are available singly or in small packs, but white potatoes have to be bought in large bags. I think the elderly have the upper hand on the potato front. As they eat potatoes for every meal, shunning recent foreign imports like pasta and rice, a large bag of potatoes can be eaten before going off. For our house, where we eat about 4 potatoes once a fortnight, big bags are utterly unsuitable. Supermarkets are clearly not thinking of families like ours when packaging potatoes.

apparently, greengrocers will soon be issued with a measuring template - it's a big piece of plastic with a medium sized round hole in it rather like the post office use to measure parcels.....

curly kale is reserved for Kevin Keegan. And Leo Sayer.

Jolly - you need to hijack the elderly as they come out of the shop with their sack of potatoes (which are just the right size to fit very nicely into a tartan wheeled shopper by coincidence) and grab their attention by waving a tempting small cabbage in either hand. Roll them across the pavement and while the elderly one eagerly scuttles off after the forbidden fruit vegetable you can discreetly nick 4 Maris Pipers, King Edwards or Marfonas or whatever white potato they've got while their back is turned. They'll never notice they've gone and even if they do, the prize of 2 small cabbages will make up for it! Win-win for all concerned!

Ahahahaa! It happened to me once: oh what shame you're not buying the big squash and leaving the little one for me, poor single person cooking for one, etc.

Thing is, this bloke was actually my colleague and neighbour. He knew I lived alone and was an expat. Just which member of my family did he imagine was going to pop by for dinner?

I was explaining to youngest DD (22) on phone about ageism in vegetables. Pretty sure she will be adding to the Strange Things Your Parents Did?Do thread soon. Although no one in their right mind would challenge her over a cabbage

and at the butternut squash for the perimenopausal.

We are a family abut I'm r only one who eats cabbage - what to do, what to do? I'm all of a quiver....

you have started something now,evermore small cabbage will be known as nana cabbage.Wonder if they will knit cabbages now.

Red or White ?

are baby sweetcorn reserved for babies?

I have been adding cabbage to every meal this week and there is still loads left. thank you Abel and Cole. I would NEVER have bought a single one this season were it not for your surprise substitutions

We used to go to the veg market and would often buy one chilli, or the smallest amount possible of ginger (just enough for one curry). The shop assistant would say 'That's not worth weighing' and give it to us free. We liked that shop

Do the elderly get free small cabbages? Maybe they should get cabbage allowance. It would have to be means tested though. You can't get it if you've got an allotment.

Get frozen cabbage from Tesco, sounds safer.

I think it's discrimination - Parliament should introduce a Cabbage Ageism Law

Where are the generational lines on oranges/satsumas/mandarins?