No Waste Like Home - BBC2, Thursday 18th August, 8.30pm

A chance to meet up with friends and have a chat - a general space with the freedom to talk about anything.
User avatar
Millymollymandy
A selfsufficientish Regular
A selfsufficientish Regular
Posts: 17637
Joined: Tue May 10, 2005 6:09 am
Location: Brittany, France

Post: # 6558Post Millymollymandy »

I don't think food is cheap in France. We rarely have this buy one get one free thing - it's only vaguely started in recent months because it wasn't allowed here. Loose veg is far more expensive than prepackaged stuff which I don't understand at all.

All the British foodie items I ask people to bring over that have prices on them seem incredibly cheap compared to what we pay for similar French items here, i.e. sausages, cheese, biscuits.

No such thing as a farmers market. Only ordinary markets and they are more expensive than the supermarkets and the choice is poor and the quality of the produce is naff. On top of which there seems to be an awful lot of stalls selling nylon blouses. :cry:

We can barely do a weekly or 10 day shop spending under 100 euros for the two of us, and we hardly buy any meat, don't buy fish as can't afford it, don't buy ready meals, and at the moment don't buy ANY vegetables. Usually our supermarket bill is about 130€ which is why I go every 10 days now because I seem to spend the same every time so if we go 3 times in a month we spend less than if we go 4 times! And that's not counting the monthly Lidl shop to stock up on milk, OJ etc.

ina
A selfsufficientish Regular
A selfsufficientish Regular
Posts: 8241
Joined: Sun May 22, 2005 9:16 pm
Location: Kincardineshire, Scotland

Post: # 6560Post ina »

:lol: Thanks for clearing up my problem with the students... That makes more sense! Well, it was quite late in the evening.

Strange that food is so expensive in France. In Germany it still seems to be cheaper than here, whenever I go there for a visit. There hardly ever is occasion for me to make use of those "3 for 2" or so offers - as you say, that's mostly junkfood. And just on principle, I don't want them; just seeing that they can sell it cheaper if they want to makes me feel I'm being ripped off - as a single person I don't want to be "forced" to buy 3 if I only want one! Which is one reason why I go to Lidl for some stuff - at least I don't have the feeling that my shopping finances the shopping of others who buy more. (Does that make sense?) Often the extra stuff that gets bought is thrown out in the end, anyway; heard on the radio this morning that 11% of all food bought in the UK ends up in the bin. Alarming, I think. What a waste of resources, energy being the most important one of them...

By the way, I spend less money when I don't go shopping so often, too! Of course, if I just pop into the village to pick up the milk, I see a few things that might come in useful one of these days, and I buy them. If I ask my neighbour to pick up the milk, I just pay for the milk and eat just as well as I would otherwise have done! :lol: So having the flu has at least the advantage that I saved some money.

Ina

Post Reply