Last week's shopping trip for the Value Range Experiment, lots of fruit needed.
Everything was from Asda this time - 6 items were from their Just Essential cheapest range.
9 Crumpets 80p
Can of peaches 34p
Willow "butter" £1.50
2 Pints Milk £1.30
Coffee 83p
Can of Pineapple Pieces 49p
2 Tins plum tomatoes @ 28p = 56p
Grapes }
6 Apples } On Offer at 2 items for £2
7 Small Pears £1.29
Total £9.11
Brought Forward from last week £51.22 + £9.11p = £60.33 (With most items for the rest of the month now in the freezer.)
(Average quoted at £130 -140 for one persons groceries)
Day 15 main meal. Using the first quarter of the minced pork - a Value Range brand from Asda.
Oh dear!
It looks OK - BUT the pork mince, (which I mixed with a sautéd chopped onion and some dried herbs and then formed into small 4 sausage shapes and cooked along side roasting some small potatoes) was just So. Very. Bad.
Left with a really nasty taste in the mouth, there is no way I going to eat the other 3 portions. Please don't suggest 99 ways to make it better! it's just too vile.
Thank goodness the potatoes, cabbage and carrots and the small Yorkshire puddings were edible.
I shall have to rethink plans for 3 meals now - bother!
Back Tomorrow
Sue
Were the crumpets a treat?
ReplyDeleteI'm using the crumpets for a meal which isn't the main meal
DeleteBlimey, sounds horrible.
ReplyDeleteIt was!
DeleteWhat a shame. I'm bursting to suggest what you could do with the rest but I won't - there's no point risking throwing good food after bad, as my Nanna used to say. xx
ReplyDeleteMuch too nasty to use again
DeleteInstead of buying 2 pints of milk for £1.30 why not buy 4 pints for £1.65 and freeze half?
ReplyDeleteI buy 2 pints of whole milk and use half and half with water to get 4 pints of skimmed for £1.30 - as you would know if you had ever read my frugal month notes
DeleteI would agree with Sally here. You are not getting 4 pints of skimmed. Skimmed has only the fat reduced. By diluting with water you have halved the nutrition of your milk. It is still 2 pints of nutrition and 2 pints of water. To each his own but I hate to see diluted milk served to children as if it were equal to skim or 2 % as children need full nutrition milk in addition to the fat of milk.
DeleteI'm not stupid and would never give it to children so this is not applicable
DeleteI suspect all the vegetables were much healthier than the pork mince anyway. Shame you haven't got a dog or cat to finish it off.
ReplyDeleteI think even a lab would have turned it's nose up!
DeleteI wonder what sort of a life an animal has to live so that we can eat pork mince which tastes vile. Maybe best to keep meat as a treat. Top-quality free range produce to be eaten only now and again.
ReplyDeleteThis was just bought for the experiment of trying Value Range brands. Normally I eat very little meat, perhaps only a few times a month - and only buy sausages that are locally produced.
DeleteI just wonder what on earth has been done to the poor pig to make its meat taste so vile. Living conditions, feed, supplements, slaughter methods?
ReplyDeleteI agree that, when it comes to fresh meat, Value Ranges may not be the way to go.
It was more than likely the sweepings from the floor, all waste is put into cheap mince, and not the raising of the pig or its fault.
DeleteThat's the first and last Value Range meat I've bought!
DeleteOh dear-I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with the pork but some things are just too bad to eat! Catriona
ReplyDeleteThis certainly was.
DeletePackaged meat can consist of old pigs and cows. Chicken nuggets can be made of any part of the bird.
ReplyDeleteI think the pig that this pork came from was geriatric!
DeleteOne poor result in the midst of all your other successes is pretty good going. I wonder if the pork mince was part of a poor batch?
ReplyDeleteIt was cheap so I wasn't completely surprised
DeleteOh no, that really has left a nasty taste in the mouth. I would only have bought the pears and with the remainder of the money you spent I would buy a round of Baron Bigod and enjoy juicy pear and cheese for lunch or supper every day for a week and save some of the cheese for melting over roast root veg. I picked lambs lettuce from the greenhouse yesterday to have with cold roast chicken and jacket potatoes. I made gooseberry cobbler for pudding using the final bag of homegrown red gooseberries from the freezer as the oven was on for baking the potatoes. The small chicken which had already served three roast dinners and will make four rounds of chicken mayo sandwiches was from the local butcher who supplies the village shop and the jacket potatoes were from a 12kg paper sack costing £5 from the Sidlesham seaside farm. We’re on our fourth sack this winter and I hope we have enough to last until the end of April. I planted in the ground 10 Charlotte potatoes on Sunday for eating from midsummer onwards. Eating locally, seasonally and well does not have to cost the earth. What will you do with the rest of the pork mince and has this experience put you off continuing with the experiment? Sarah in Sussex
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the mince has gone in the bin and I'll carry on with the experiment for the rest of the month.
DeleteMaybe it wasn't even pig - a few years ago I seem to remember meat production places passing off other animals like horse as beef or something. My friend sells machinery to these meat production plants all over the UK and he has some horror stories to tell - if I wasn't already vegetarian I would be after hearing about what goes on in them!
ReplyDeleteBetter luck with your other try outs.
It was pork but lots of water too I think
DeleteYuk, that mince sounds horrendous. I'm glad I don't buy any at all after reading some comments above! I only use quorn mince.
ReplyDeleteI shall never buy it again - that's for sure
DeleteI am a little curious. Our Aldi has a policy that they guarantee that you will be satisfied or you can return it. Mean should NEVER leave a bad taste in your mouth. I'd be questioning why, and contacting the store. At the worst, they should know. At the best, you'd receive a refund. I've only had to do this 2 or 3 times, but both times they've been very good.
ReplyDeleteIt would cost me more to take it back (to Asda) than the cost of the meat! And it had been in the freezer as well - not sure any store would refund just because it was cheap and nasty
DeleteSo discouraging to prepare it and have it taste so bad.
ReplyDeleteCathy
Yes, very annoying .At least the veg were edible .
DeleteI was going to suggest giving it to a neighbours dog, but with onions added that's a big no no. I'm guessing it will be imported meat. What a shame, still you never have to buy it again ... thank goodness.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine any dog wanting to eat it either!
DeleteI think that meat needs to be dumped. Well, it's the only fail out of all your buys, so that's pretty good.
ReplyDeleteYes -it's gone in the bin!
DeleteThe mince pork must have gone bad. Did it smell off when you opened the package? Lately, our meat processing plants have been in trouble and under scrutiny. I recently bought a ham (butt end) and when I opened the packaging it smelled terrible. I returned it to the store.
ReplyDeleteNo it hadn't gone off - it looked fine but was just cheap and nasty.
DeleteI’ m going to add my opinion. Though I suppose it’s what most have said already. 1. I would not freeze minced meat, beef or pork 2. Less meat but better quality. I don’t eat much ‘proper’ meat. Eat mostly good quality chicken. 3. I buy very similar products to you but always buy ‘top’ quality tinned tomatoes. The difference is immeasurable and because the flavor is richer goes further. 4. Having said the above, I love your challenge and find it both interesting and thought provoking
ReplyDeleteWhen we raised our own pork and lamb we frequently kept it frozen for a whole year without any degradation. It's the start quality that makes the difference, Have you ever raised your own meat?
DeleteCan I add something please? Even good quality meat is going to degrade when it has gone through a process, in this case mincing. I would say don’t ever freeze any minced meat.
ReplyDeleteI have frequently in the past frozen minced beef - but always a much better quality than the cheap stuff.
DeleteI regularly freeze minced meat and have no issues with it. Sounds terrible Sue, bin was the best place for it.
ReplyDeleteI certainly would never buy this again and advise the whole world to avoid it!
DeleteYuck. I freeze ground pork, beef and turkey all the time (I think that's the same as "mince"?) and its fine; sounds like a bad batch! I hope you had something to take the bad taste away (a small Scotch, perhaps?).
ReplyDeletececi
Yes we call it minced and you call it ground - English is a funny language!
DeleteYuck, I hate when something tastes terrible and I have planned meals around it.
ReplyDeleteI am loving your experiment.
God bless.
It was wasted money which is something I didn't want to happen
DeleteIt would be worth letting Asda know that the meat was not edible, Sue, to get your refund and to bring their attention to such a poor product. It would be a disaster to someone who had nothing else to eat, to have something inedible.
ReplyDeleteWe are keeping to a £30 a week budget for March using Asda own label ingredients, buying the cheaper loose vegetables and the Just Essentials range fruit and veg. I feel a bit of a fraud because I have a well stocked pantry, and lots of small portions of meat and fish in the freezer saved when they were on special offer or yellow-stickered, and we try to use stores up in Lent to save wasting anything. We have weekly portions of cheese and butter frozen as we are using the quantities of WW2 rations. Our three hens are laying well.
Your plan sounds interesting - I'm not using things that I've frozen beforehand only what I buy during the month. In April I'll be eating all the things from the freezer.
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