Is anyone else annoyed with Ocado ditching Waitrose?

[lockdowndreamer]

Ocado what are you up to?? Ditching Waitrose for M&S? Is this really happening? Not a fan of M&S at all in the food department, always feel like they are trying too hard. Their food looks and taste like plastic and wrapped in a lot more plastic.

I will be setting up my account with Waitrose online right away. Such a hassle though moving as I have it all sorted on the Ocado website for speed shopping, with all my favs, shopping lists etc. and the Ocado service is amazing!

Hey Ocado, if you are reading this, can you set up a cloud service for us migrating customers so we can do a backup of all our favourites before moving to Waitrose? You know, like when moving from Android to iPhone..

Is anyone else annoyed at the situation?

@Xiaoxiong sounds amazing. Are you in London? Can you share some links to the sources for fish and fresh stuff you found if not too much trouble?

In the before-times I commuted into London daily - I know of loads of sources in London that won't deliver to me as I'm not inside the M25 I found most of these sources in the weeks that Ocado went into meltdown, and kept using them even after Ocado recovered - as a result the Ocado bill has stayed mostly the same, even as we went from eating 10 family meals a week at home to 21!

One discovery has been that our local small deli, that I usually just thought of doing things like jam and fancy pasta, can order and deliver all sorts of things next day if I ring - I never realised they could do that so it's definitely worth asking if you have a deli near you. It's not the cheapest but I want to support him.

We also discovered that a local wholesale butcher that usually just does catering and restaurants will deliver anything to households if we call M/W/F. We've been getting meat and trays of 30 eggs from them for £3 all the way through lockdown. Our local farm shop has also stayed open throughout but you have to queue and we just cant' with WFH and the DCs homeschooling - if it doesn't deliver I don't have time!

In terms of online, here's what we've had luck with that seem to deliver anywhere:

• Fish: www.peskyfish.co.uk/ Log on Mon-Thurs at 8am to see what's been landed that day, it's delivered to you within 24 hours. SUPER fresh (you'll wonder why fish has never tasted so good before!) and worth every penny, all the profit goes straight to the fisherman as there is no wholesaler in between. They used to supply restaurants only, and had to pivot to supply consumers. Downside- it really is whatever has been landed, so if the winds are wrong or there's bad weather and the boats haven't been able to go out there might not be much choice. It's made us much more adventurous!

• Also good, and more predictable as it's not based on the weather: www.wingofstmawes.co.uk/

• Fresh fruit & veg: www.riverford.co.uk/ has been brilliant, they stopped accepting new customers for a bit at the end of March as they were overwhelmed but never missed a single delivery for us and now they are back to normal. I've heard very good things about Farmdrop and Oddbox in London, and Wonky Veg in Leicester, though neither of them deliver to us - it's worth checking if there is something in your local area.

• I also just noticed the Fine Cheese Co are partnering with a local greengrocer to do a family-sized fruit & veg box delivered anywhere on the UK mainland: www.finecheese.co.uk/top-of-the-crops-the-family-fruit-and-veg-box

• I got extras I wanted for curries from here: www.redrickshaw.com/collections/fresh-fruit-vegetable-herbs

• Dairy box with eggs and bread - before I figured out how to make sourdough myself, we had one of these and it was brilliant: www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/products/dairy-box

• Now I know what I'm doing with bread (bought a 16kg bag of bread flour from eBay of all places!) I'm just buying cheese from the Fine Cheese Co and also from The Cheese Geek which I found through this list: www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/food-drink/subscription-boxes/best-cheese-subscription-box-gifts-london-uk-monthly-rated-a9536066.html

• For other ingredients, I've used Red Rickshaw (linked above), Wing Yip (www.wingyip.com/), Sous Chef (www.souschef.co.uk/) and Honey & Co (shop.honeyandco.co.uk/)

Also - this is a derail, I should probably just invite you over to the Frugal Foodie thread in Chat - but a note on how to meal plan with a veg box which I know sometimes is hard. Most of them give you at least a few days' notice of what's coming - Riverford generally tell me on Monday what's coming on Thursday, and I also have an Ocado shop booked every Thursday which can be edited until 11pm on Tuesday night.

So Monday night I sit down with the list of what's coming, look in the fridge for what needs using up, open up my account on Eat Your Books which allows you to google all your cookbooks, and plan what the week ahead's dinners should be. Anything extra I need, I either order it from the relevant website, or add to the Ocado shop. I plan a couple of "flex" meals to use stuff up, and veggie meals that can either stay veggie meals if I don't manage get something on Pesky Fish, or turn into fish & veg if I do.

I mainly plan just dinners, and lunches are then leftovers, or a variation on bread/cheese/salad/fruit, maybe with something alongside that can be made in advance like smoked mackerel or ardennes pate.

It helps to have a couple of recipes up your sleeve to use up extras before they go off, like soup, quiche, quesadillas, or savoury clafoutis - as such, I always make sure I have eggs, yoghurt, cheese, flour and cream on hand to make one of these to clear the veg drawer as and when needed. Another good one is migas or savoury bread pudding (strata) to use up stale bread, or use to stuff a chicken and stretch it further.

So glad you asked this lockdowndreamer. And thank you so much Xiaoxiong. This is so fantastically helpful.

Please can you help? Does anybody get organic that is not a veg box?

@20mum

Please can you help? Does anybody get organic that is not a veg box?

I use a local farm that set up a veg box from small farms. Very few of them are officially organic, but most are through their farming practices. I did it to reduce airmiles, time to travel and to support local business in my county. I started this last year - they were overwhelmed when lock down started but it has settled down a bit now. I would prefer not to have a set box. You might find similar local to you.

@xiao thank you really helpful

Apparently it's the weather

britishgrowers.org/cauliflowers-cabbage-shortage-due-to-weather/#:~:text=Cauliflower%2C%20sprouts%2C%20white%20and%20red,due%20to%20extreme%20weather%20conditions.&text=Crops%20can%20withstand%20a%20reasonable,to%20a%20shortage%20of%20supply.

Thank you spongedog. The borderline between organic and not officially is an odd area, isn't it? Trouble is, really, you would need to know a lot about the supplier before you chose, in the unlikely event you have any choice.

Obviously your neighbour might keep a few hens in the orchard, and you would prize any of her surplus, not officially organic. On the other side, if you read Guy on the Riverford site, you come across such horrors as his observation about a French farmer, officially organic, who uses large amounts of diesel to power a machine whose sole purpose is destruction of all natural life in soil. (It injects steam)

I'm uncertain about the successful Naked range (pig products), making virtue of their u.s.p. of not adding nitite and nitrate, said to be carcinogenic. Meanwhile, back in the organic ham or bacon products, those additives are still being gaily added. There must be other technically permitted things that would not please the customers paying the organic premium .

The thing is, if chemicals are avoided on health grounds, and ecological grounds, and moral grounds, then looking for the organic label is as near as possible to a shortcut.

A Jewish family complicates their shopping by avoiding anything Israeli (They have reasons.) But they noted Waitrose (and of course M n S) has nothing but Israeli dates. Having some idea who to contact, they asked if the Waitrose buyer could look elsewhere, at least for part of the organic stock. Waitrose simply removed country of origin from one type, and re-labelled the other as produce of U.K. !!! (We had a bit of warm weather, but not enough to make us a date producing nation!) My guess is, they lied by technicality, by importing as before from Israel, then putting them through a de-stoning machine and repacking them, which is one form of a common trick in all industries to dodge round the country of origin rules.

@Xiaoxiong my isigny sainte mere butter has arrived. How is it best served?

Lemon this is very un-French but I like to eat it in the shape of a small butter cliff - a bit like the white cliffs of Dover - on top of some freshly baked sourdough straight out of the oven. If I could get it into my mouth I'd probably make it a life-size cliff. I hope you like it!

[quote LemonDrizzles]@Xiaoxiong my isigny sainte mere butter has arrived. How is it best served?[/quote]
Spread as thickly as possible and never shared......

@Xiaoxiong thanks, may try this tonight. Also, thanks for all the helpful links and tips on meal prep.

I remember in the early days of lockdown where I felt like I had just one chance to update my order, I made long written shopping lists, planned out meals, plus my DC2 was 2 months old. I've haven't made much from scratch for that reason but now looking at doing more from scratch, your tips are very helpful!!

I pay for a standard annual smart pass, around £100 for the year but had threatened to leave in February. We are too lucky to have stuck that out. But this works out so much less than if you pay £7/week/52 weeks (£360...)