To ask about your food snob specifics.

[Writerwannabe83]

I'm eating some sandwiches and I've had to use some really shitty bread that my DH purchased and it's frankly ruining my lunch

I'm more than happy to buy own shop brands but I really do believe that some things have to be the 'real thing' and I will not buy cheaper versions to try and get a better deal.

My list includes cereal, nice bread, tea bags, Nutella and pasta sauces

What about every one else??

Ha Squizita, I'm the other way round! Only own brand yeast extract (tesco/asda), NEVER Marmite!

Yorkshire Tea (used to be PGTips until a thread on here made me try YT, and I prefer it)
Organic milk , cream and butter (when funds allow)
Organic chicken and bacon (would love suggestions as to decent ham for kids' sandwiches)
Organic apples, celery, peppers, mushrooms, potatoes and tomatoes
Napolina tinned tomatoes (only when half price)
I make my own bread (breadmaker)
Heinz ketchup (quite fancy making my own tho)
Sainsbury's French Mayonnaise
Free-range eggs
'Proper' ground coffee for the few times a year I'll have one
Heinz/Branston beans (whichever's cheapest)
Don't drink juices/squash, just water
Pukka 'detox' herbal tea

I'm trying to buy as little processed stuff as possible at the moment - and going around the supermarket in that mindset makes you realise that that maybe 80% of supermarket stock IS highly processed stuff

Real coffee, not instant. Real bacon. Irish beef unless it's Grasmere's Lincolnshire Red. Birds Eye Petit Pois (I've been in the factory, and it's like an operating theatre).

Tea omg made a massive mistake once - never to be repeated
Butter - Guernsey
Brie - Somerset
Fish - preferably from fish monger on the beach

Fuck , I've become a grown up

Oh yeah ... eggs. Must be large, free range. I'm actually a fan of Duchy Originals heritage breed eggs.

And to go with my all branded egg, marmite toast, Fortnum tea ... The milk must be Cravendale.

The weird thing is, I'm quite a thrifty shopper. I'm good at special offers, leftovers and stewing type meats/veg.

Real coffee, preferably from Kilimanjaro. President spreadable for sandwiches, french salted butter for toast and crumpets.
Wilkins and son tomato ketchup, delouis fils mayonnaise or Benedicta if we've been to France and brought plenty back.
Loose lady grey tea, dry cure bacon and higher welfare meat. Eggs from the lady down the lane whose chickens free range around the area.
Bread is preferably sour dough from waitrose or the bakery and warburtons toastie for bacon sandwiches and toast.

It's probably easier to list what I'm not snobby about.

Loose leaf tea.
Heinz ketchup and baked beans.
Wookey Hole Cheddar and Appleby's Cheshire cheese.

Bread, coffee, yoghurts, butter, squash, fruit juice, meat of any kind.

These are the things that I absolutely refuse to scrimp on.

DH and I were talking about this the other day; we realised there's not actually that much branded stuff we're bothered for.

We buy decent tea and coffee, and always buy good bread. Because we eat mostly veggie at home meat isn't really an issue.

I do insist on "proper" peanut butter though. As in, whole nut, a bit grainy, nice and thick. Oily salty supermarket crap does not do the trick.

What FinallyHere said about pasta sauce.
I just can't eat it. I'd much rather knock a sauce up myself from scratch than eat the jarred crap.

Coffee - Nescafe or fresh ground.

I'll eat beans that aren't Heinz (prefer to make my own) but I won't/can't substitute Salad cream - only Heinz will do.

Meat - where to start Absolutely no fat on any meat I eat at all.
No cheap slices stuff - I'd rather do without.
Won't eat mince of any kind.

Sausages - I will only eat walls frozen pork :) not often but now and again when I fancy and when I'm in the UK to buy them.
I live in a Country that makes a million kinds of it's own fresh deliciously smelling fresh sausage...will I eat it? NO! because it's got bits of fat in. (I piss myself off OFTEN)

Must be Nutella. Peanut butter I'll eat any brand so long as it's nutty, decent quality and not oily.

Bread - only fresh baked not already packaged.

Butter - Lurpak

Cheese has to be cheddar - here I can only get cathedral or Irish so that does. I don't see the point (nor the calories) on other yellow cheeses like Gouda, Emmental etc... I just don't taste them. Even Dh gets that now :)

Fresh fish or no fish is the motto in our house. With the exception of fish fingers for a rare sandwich.

I'm sure I've got more but that'll do.

Butter. And I awlays use it when baking.
Dry cure bacon...less water content and more meat.
Free range eggs
Fresh fish as opposed to frozen...the exception being fish fingers!
Heinz beans
Seeded bread
May think of more later!

I only buy real butter. I also won't buy value brand anything. We don't spend much elsewhere so we make sure we eat well.

Marmite.
Warburtons Seeded for my everyday bread..
Hellmans Mayo
Free range eggs
Proper Alpen! ( really can tell the difference DH, even if you put it in an Alpen box!)

Gourmet Cat food and Vet's kitchen kibble. This practically bankrupts us and means the rest of our trolley is value food (barring meat but we only eat meat once a week) The cats refuse to eat anything else and are ungrateful little sods!

When feeling a little more flush, I order The Drunken Monk cheese from the Great British Cheese Company, online. Best food that has ever passed my lips....

Meat, I am a total quality meat convert.
Decent coffee, it's bloody instant though due to kitchen being smaller than a flies bollocks.

My only real, have a dramatic episode food hate is gravy granules. If I bust my ass making a roast dinner or what have you I will damn well make my own bloody gravy.

Orange cheese, spray cheese, cheese in a tube, and cheese spread in a jar are not legitimate cheese products. One can buy tasty cheddar for $ 3.99.

Also, unsalted butter is better for everything.

Agree re: tasty cheddar although I buy Mainland Vintage Cheddar. Puhoi Valley and Whitestone are delicious too.

Very Low fat cream cheese must be Philadelphia
Ketchup must be Heinz without fail
Coffee must be Nescafe
HP Sauce must be HP, no other brand

We have proper coffee too which was Taylors of Harrogate Lazy Sunday but presently must be 'Lazy Sunday' we've adopted the local brand of Robert Harris as we live overseas and nothing else will do.
Meat - good quality supermarket meat has been ok so far. I buy the better quality minced beef though.

I have given up buying prawns here. They are horrible orange chewy things from China or Thailand. Yuck.

Salt in my salt grinder will be sea salt used for preference. Free flowing salt from a plastic tub is for cooking or sprinkling on fish and chips. Peppercorns in the pepper grinder used to M&S as they were delicious but I'm ok with the local brand.

Marmite must be Marmite. I have some supplies sent to me by my sister but it's marketed as My Mate here in identical jars and tastes identical.

Cornflakes must be Kelloggs. It's only my husband that eats them. However he was glad to get his preferred, 'Skippy' brand now we live on the bottom of the world.

I've adopted the local brand of multigrain Weetbix, so that's my cereal.

Bread must be Hovis Country Grain without fail. Unless it's Ploughman's Bakery brand Country Grains, which is what I get here !

I don't like sausages, I just don't. I don't buy or eat butter, peanut butter or mayonnaise but I understand why Hellman's is preferred.

Margarine must be ultra low fat Flora.

Diet Coke must be proper diet coke.

Frozen Peas - I'll buy the local premium brand i.e. Watties as it's the closest I can get to Heinz quality.

The Watties logo looks similar to the Heinz logo here. I think there was some sort of merger or agreement between the two companies here a few years ago.

Sanitarium Marmite ? Just don't go there.

When I said Heinz in relation to Frozen Peas I mean to say Birds Eye

Mustard must be Colmans, same brand for mint sauce.

Cranberry Sauce - Ocean Spray
Tonic water - Schweppes

I'm wary of making a false economy by trading down on any grocery item.

The only brand loyalties I can think of in our house are:

Bread - Burgen soya and linseed
Mayo - Hellman's
Ketchup - Heinz
Vanilla ice-cream - Mackie's
Granola - Quaker
Spreadable butter - Lurpak

Actually that's quite a few. And in the case of several of these, it's not that they're necessarily better quality than the competition so I wouldn't consider them snobbish choices, it's just that I like them more.

These days I mostly buy at aldi. The things I will not compromise on though are marmite, total yoghurt, whole earth peanut butter, heinz ketchup.

I also only eat rye bread from the local farmers market. No other bread at all.

My DP will happily use Stork in place of butter. I can't get my head around that.

My deep-rooted food snobbery (as a student I shopped in Waitrose rather than buy new clothes when mine were falling apart ) is being temporarily curbed by having to work on a £35 per week grocery budget for three of us. However, despite having overcome my snobbery about cheap(ish) meat, frozen and canned veg and even non-Heinz baked beans, I cannot and will not bring myself to buy crappy eggs, and mayonnaise that isn't Hellmanns is all kinds of wrong.

I have no idea why these things appear to be sticking points .

Tomato ketchup, hot chocolate and meat

My DP will happily use Stork in place of butter

Bleurgh!!
Good God! find that man some tastebuds, an intervention is definitely needed , it's your wifely duty Another :)

Water for tea. Im happy to drink my tap water but it make horrible tasting tea so I buy spring water just for my kettle - gallons of the stuff

I won't drink instant coffee. Or eat cheap meat. Especially sausages. Euuuuurgh. Just a thought of a Richmond sausage and it's unnaturally pink flaccidness makes me want to heave. If I couldn't afford happy meat, I'd become a vegetarian.