AIBU TO BE SHOCKED BY THIS INCREASE?!

[Kate0902900908]

So I’ve just gotten over the fuel increase, made some changes and become more aware of the energy I’m using both at home and car.

Went to Lidl today. I buy 2 tubs of cream cheese a week, Lidl Goldessa Classic Cream Cheese 200g. It’s been 65p for as long as I can remember. Today shop assistant was sorting shelves and organising labels ect. New label £1.19. I asked if that was the price of the 65p cream cheese to which she said Yh, it’s not changed yet it’s 75p now but will be £1.19.
HOW? How? Can something almost double in price? Also when I was it 75p 😵‍💫

I noticed the other cheeses all being marked up too some by 80p-£1. Add this increase to even 1/3 of a shop and it’s going to be unmanageable!
Has anyone else noticed prices on things they buy almost doubling?
What is the plan to keep costs down?
Where do we go from Lidl’s own soft cheese 😭

Point completely received and understood. Not sure what happened with some other posters there.

This is how many people all over the world eat. Indians, Arabs, Chinese.... It would be fine for my family.

We eat Biryani as part of our staple diet but it would have way more protein in it and if it also contained vegetables there would also be more of them. More often than not though they’d be a side dish or a stand alone vegetable Biryani with another protein served alongside. Perhaps even a Dahl also with any kind of biryani.

Its not generally considered to be a dish you scrimp on.

But why are we scrutising one particular family's one particular occasion of one specific meal this way?

look - I am Indian - born and raised in India for the first 23 years of my life. I understand what an "authentic" biriyani experience is. I understand Indian cuisine inside out - for its many benefits and for its many flaws.

But food - like people - travel, cross borders and is made into each family's own unique practice.

this family ate a biriyani they cooked with some chickpeas, chicken, spinach and ate it with raita. It does not need dissection, scrutiny and critique on its protein and veg content. What this family does with their diet and time we do not know. All we know is that this family makes some form of biriyani with chickpeas some chicken and some spinach and eats it with some salad. That's just fine and doesn't need dissection.

@HauntingScream

My apologies for being critical of the meal you prepared for your family. It’s very different to what I know a Biryani to be but it was the amount of people you said it would feed 6 that I found surprising.

When I visit India for the pujas (pre covid, and soon again from this year) _ biriyani is a greasy meal with two pieces of deicious smelling chicken, served with "chicken chaap" floating with oil - absolutely yummy - from Badshaah I belive at the crossroads in south Calcutta we've frequented since I was little.

the biriyani I eat with my half Indian half white family in south east england is more NHS-ified, and BBC-fied - and that's just fine. When we travel to India Badshaah gets our custom. When we are here, we give the oil a miss, and tailor it in various ways.

So. what.

This thread - about rising costs of living has become a scrutiny of one family's one meal - just why.

@DuarPorte

We cross posted and for someone who doesn’t seem to think the meal needs dissecting you don’t half have a lot to say about it.

because it's gone on a fucking huge lot. You could keep going - and I might too. Or we could leave it here.

"Its not generally considered to be a dish you scrimp on"

Well of course not. I know it's not traditional but it was just an example of how we may need to adapt a few meals. People would eat steak a couple of times a week of it wasn't so expensive. The English also used to eat this way with stews and hotpots with a bit of meat, lots veg and potatoes or bread.
Food is getting expensive and people are struggling with fuel and energy costs too.

I can't believe a simple 'make do with the ingredients I had' meal got all this attention either. I'd feel shit if I was struggling and had to feed a family of 6 every day and got opinions like this.
Thankfully, it was meant to be for less people but I overestimated and got leftovers.
That's probably most tedious story of a meal I've ever had to relay when I was only trying to offer an opinion on how people can adapt meals as prices shoot up without, hopefully, having to resort to nutritionally poor ultra processed food.
The end

All this talk of biriyani is making me hungry. Can we please at least have some recipes, particularly the south Calcutta one?

For the authentic Kolkata biriyani (complete with layers of oil and a very specific aroma) you’ll need to visit! Particularly during the Pujas in October. The Bengali biriyani is a bit different to North Indian ones and South Indian biryanis even more so!

My version is short and quick in the UK and relies on my instant pot. Make sure you get a biriyani spice mix NOT from Tesco/siansburys brands but from Lazeez or similar from an Indian superstore. Once you’ve got that you’re largely sorted. Then - modify the fat if you wish (replace the Ghee called for in recipe on the back of the box with something else), follow the instructions on using onion and garlic, garlic and ginger paste and top up with more/less meat and more/less veg. So basically head to world foods aisle or an Indian superstore and find a carton of biriyani mix and take it from there!

This is sort of close to the Badshaah street side Puja time Kolkata biriyani I am thinking of - but what we do in UK is massively BBC-fied and nothing like this 🤣

(And for anyone knocking an Indian dish with fat in it, it was when the UK's NHS moved everyone over about 30 or 40 years ago (and the USA did) from high good fats to loads of carbs that the UK became the heaviest it ever has in its history - probably the worst thing the NHS ever did for the nation's health was demonise good fats and promote high carb diets)

This is a link to one thats very similar to the one I (and my extended family) cook. Its the one I usually give to people when they want a recipe as I’m not sure of the quantity of ingredients I use. I was taught by sight by my sister in law and I still do it all by eye depending on how much I’m cooking.

also -
I never use artificial food coloring in it. Only ever saffron.

I make it a bit more tangy by adding extra tomato purée and yoghurt. But you can also add some lemon or lime juice to the marinade. I don’t add the sugar mentioned in the recipe.
I use a whole chicken to get more flavor from the bones. In fact any meat used, and it’s usually lamb, would be on the bone.
I also add powdered zeera that I grind from a table spoon of Cumin seeds.

I don’t cook with ghee at all as don’t like the smell of it so I use oil.

Also we don’t serve the sauce separately to the rice. We serve it all in one. We par cook the rice then layer it in the pot a few times with the cooked meat and sauce so that it steams itself ready.

fauziaskitchenfun.com/recipe/rice-meals/boneless-chicken-biryani/

This version of Biryani is popular in Gulf Countries that have an East African influence as well as Kenya and Tanzania .

This is similar to what it looks like once you’ve tipped it out of the pot to serve.

No I don't eat any of those foods regularly.

Today's meals are.
Meal replacement with 600 ml water, some ice. Sometimes I skip this.
3 litres of water.
1 chicken breast, breadcrumbed with salad eg beetroot salad, onion salad etc.
Then I might nibble some grapes or nuts whilst watching love island.

This week we've had veg soup, so 10 chicken thighs for stock, carrots, cabbage, potato, leeks.
Boiled, thighs removed and used for another meal 5 thighs coated with some spices with a salad. The soup is a big pan so lasts all week.

Monday I made ragu which takes all day cooking on low heat in the oven, 100g of pasta plus tiny bit of mince. Some left over.
Yesterday I made 12 Yorkshire puddings and bit of mince left from the ragu over and 3 onions with 3 carrots.
We never spend over £50 on food shopping.
I grew up in a household with meat once a week, and unbranded or secondhand clothes. I've also had to rob the 50p meter to recycle the coins.
I slept rough for a bit in my teens.

Wife grew up under Soviet rations, she's fit and healthy, 5ft 8 size ten. No health problems.
We both agree people obviously have a different conscious reality. She was telling me a banana was exotic in her country, they didn't have biscuits in a packet. Crisps no. No lettuce.
Veg was grown on their plot, meat was killed by them, cured and stored by them. Water from a well, herbal medicine was the solution for minor ailments. Her portions when she cooks are huge because they had large individual/extended families to cater for.

Like she said, people are going to have to learn to adapt. For some that might mean buying 3 bottles of wine rather than 6, for some that might mean rations style or cold foods. For others no changes at all.

I really don't know what to do or say, all I realise is that skills and a thought process I take for granted are just non existent in others.
Now that is truly frightening.

Wife grew up under Soviet rations, she's fit and healthy, 5ft 8 size ten. No health problems.
We both agree people obviously have a different conscious reality. She was telling me a banana was exotic in her country, they didn't have biscuits in a packet. Crisps no. No lettuce.
Veg was grown on their plot, meat was killed by them, cured and stored by them. Water from a well, herbal medicine was the solution for minor ailments. Her portions when she cooks are huge because they had large individual/extended families to cater for

Thats similar to my Eastern European daughters in law. They speak about not knowing what a banana was and one told me the first time she ate a mango abroad she bit into it like an apple, skin and all.

Every year their families still slaughter animals from the family farm in the village and live on them all the year round in various forms. In fact one of the mums has a kitchen cupboard that I swear is like a tardis she can get so much out of it once she reaches in. They have been known to pack a huge freshly slaughtered turkey in a spare suitcase and bring it for our Christmas dinner when they come on a visit. That and a few large water bottles full of Grandpas homemade wine.

Mind you we ate seasonally when I was grown up and we only had oranges and Christmas. A banana was also a bit of a mystery as was chicken that was really only served on Christmas Day.

I am cry laughing at "sausage is poison" but meal replacement shakes are ok😂

Yes.

this thread has reached some levels of bonkers with some of the comments……

I'm sorry but surely that's a typo, you didn't actually spend a tenner on a watermelon?!

Indeed.
I can relate but, not to that level of subsistence. My grandparents had their own allotment in their bungalow.
It's entirely normal for those in rural communities to live like this, her grandma and her mum still live like this.
We asked about some smoked meats and they arrived not long after, one of the boys sent us a video of the smoking process that took place in a homemade tree log.😂

Why do we need to dissect that one meal to scrutinise it for the balance of veg or protein or this or that?

Because the poster held it up as an example of stretching out meat by using pulses and veg instead. And it doesn't work because there wasn't nearly enough pulses and veg in it.

You can't hand-wave-away rising prices by saying oh it's fine, you can get great nutrition from 1/3 of a chicken thigh, 1/6 a tin of chickpeas and a spoonful of spinach. Because you can't. Rising prices are a big problem.

Ah we are back to the biriyani.

Right. Yes, rising prices are a massive problem. People have largely been sharing their various strategies to cope with this, on this thread.

Some people have shared strategies which relate to buying what passes as junk food.

Others have shared other strategies - for instance stretching out occassional meals with lowered portions of meat, and higher amounts of veg. "Bulking out" so to speak.

One poster shared one bulked out meal. One single meal by itself does not represent this poster's entire diet, their week, their month or even their day. Presumably - no family's every single meal is a perfectly portioned out plate. Sometimes people are tired. Sometimes they have poorly appetites. Sometimes they dont eat their five a day. this highly flawed biriyani is one such meal - as an example of a wider strategy many of us use - to decrease meat consumption.

Sharing one exemplar of one meal as an exemplar - of reducing meat, and heightening grains - in a very imperfect (Apparently) biriyani - does not deny an entire cost of living crisis - it merely offers one poster's attempts to stretch out meat in a largely veggie biryani, salad and raita meal that appears to have satisfied her family.

It is worth sharing such a strategy, alongside others - for instance - what's been deemed to be poison sausages.

Individual tip sharing isnt a denial of wider structural disorder - such as the cost of living crisis. It's just community and camaraderie - and worth thinking, whether criticising someone's clearly imperfect one off biriyani making is useful to a person whose budget/preferences/wider diet you have no idea of.

You have more to say about the biryani than anybody, so perhaps focus on yourself and stop telling other people what to post.

Let's change fr byriany to my fave ultimate nutritious "poor people" food.
Sauerkraut.