campaign for free range chicken!!!!!!! Please.

[fordfiesta]

Please check out www.chickenout.tv or watch Hugh's chicken run tonight at 2100 channel 4.
you can sign up for his campaign on the above address.... sorry dont know how to do the link.
If you have been watching the program you will know how important it is!
thank you.

IQ. Chilli with mince = onions, 1 tin kidney beans, tin toms, mince?. Chilli without meat = same, but 2 tins beans? Got to be cheaper?

Even a really cheap chicken is a lot dearer than a couple (4 if you like) of tins of pulses surely?

icequeen honestly, and truthfully, put enough beans and lentils in and I absolutely promise they would. really.

lamb is possibly "the" most expensive meat available at our butchers!!!! I buy lamb about once a month.

Tinned tuna ?

No fruit, veg etc ??

meat once a month is a really admirable target.

you're obviously not buying neck.

Nope - Sainsburys 6 pint bottle is £1.96 cheap and £2.28 for 6 pint organic.

Thats 32p for 6 pints. 3 x 6 pints is 96p.

nutcracker...before you combust with vitriol....fish is meat imo. you asked what meat was included.

We never have lamb tbh. Dd1 asked last week if we could have lamb and mint sauce. I said no sorry, it costs too much.

80p...isn't it??

2 tins of kidney beans, onions, tin toms would NOT satisfy my DS's and DH, tbh I doubt even 4 would - I would have to SERIOUSLY bulk it out with loads of other stuff.

So how many tins of beans = 1 chicken?

here does this work?

Sophable why are you being so arsey ??? I haven't been arsey with you so what makes you think I am about to combust ??

I was genuinally interested in how you fed everyone for £12 a week and what you brought. Now though I couldn't care less because you are not interested in discussing this, you are just out to make others feel stupid and bad for not living like you.

well, to give you an idea:

i made a veg chilli with 3 cans tinned toms.
about 10 onions (medium to small ones, they are pita to peel)
mushrooms...loads.
cumin, garlic, salt (lots of salt i'm afraid)
100g rice

and frankly we are rolling around like weebles we are so full.

that's 3 of us.

According to this the Co-op has reasonably high standards for its indoor bred chicken. A good compromise if you can't afford free range? They often have bogof offers on fresh chicken.

nutcracker. i'm sorry.

i just don't get people trying to argue that you can't go freerange because there isn't a lot of money.

there really really are many many families that live ethically on not very much money and pulses are a lot of what that is about.

I think one of the problems with all of this is that the supermarkets see the free range and organic brands as premium brands so their profit margin is much higher (certainly the case with milk)
if they chose to accept the same profit level for both FR & organic food as they do for standard production then it would become affordable for many more families (though sadly still not all families)

I've mixed pearl barley/lentils in with casseroles/meat dishes to make it stretch further and to kid DH about his meat content

To be able to feed a family on v low budget you need, imo, to be able to cook, and preferably from a range of cooking styles where meat-free cooking is common - e.g India, Far East, Middle east etc, and you need to have done it for long enough for your children to have got used to it. It's a whole differnt lifestyle, an it takes time, skill and a completely different mindset and appraoch.

When I was a kid chicken (of any kind) was a real lluxury. More expensive than beef, lamb or fish. You couldn't, as a rule, buy pre-packed portions of breast or leg or whetever from the co-Op, you bought a whole bird from a butcher, once a month if you were lucky. Other meat was scraggy lamb (still v v cheap), cheap pork, etc - but all in much smaller quantities than I serve now. My parents ween't poor - but we still ate much less meat than we do now.

Thanks Veni - value kidney beans are 14p a tin, which means you can get 17 tins plus change for the price of a £2.50 chicken. thats got to be more meals than the chicken, surely Ice Queen?

You need to give growing children protein and iron and if you haven't got much money, then your kids' welfare has to come before your ethics.

pearl barley is fabulous, makes things creamy.

blu, the whole big point irony of this is that eating less (not no) meat is much better for you, and your kids.

Thats fair enough Sophable, but if I want meat in my diet, which I do, then it's not possible for me.

I could however look into having more pulse based meals, so allowing any meat I buy to be free range, and I will do that, but I can't say that I will now only buy free range because it will just depend on my budget etc for that week.

I think it is very unfair to assume that people on a low income, wouldn't like to be able to buy free range though and that they don't agree with it.

Jangly that is a great site - thanks for the link

but I use a chicken (when I buy a whole one - which isn't often) for 4 meals......so doesn't really count.

As an example of what would satisfy my lot the other night I cooked 500g of mince, with 3 chopped peppers, about 6 closed cup mushrooms, 2 tins of kidney beans, onion, 2 tins of toms and various herbs and spices - served it on wholemeal pasta - with green beans and carrots on the side. DH ate that at 10pm and then had a plate of crackers with cheese, some biscuits and a large piece of christmas cake at 12.

Tonight DH has 3 large chicken thighs, green beans, carrots and wholemeal rice - he's just about to go and eat - and will almost certainly "top-up" before bed at around midnight. I don't cook small quantities of rice either - I use a mug full to the top of uncooked rice for the 4 of us.