Grow Your Own Magazine

So Hugh has had his Tesco Chicken campaign voted out....

Too many converted vegetarians demanding cheap meat

big up to Hugh - i now only buy free range, organic chickens and the taste is second to none, in fact we have one today!!

Just a tip though - I paid over £10 for one at Tesco and then popped into M&S the over day and it was under £8 - same weight as well, how do Tesco justify it, also you are lucky to spot one on Tesco shelves, as they all sell out or they dont stock enough of them!

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Gardening - A labour of love that begins with daybreak and ends with backache!
http://clarkiesveggieblog.blogspot.com/

Never have enjoyed shopping at Tesco, so this gives me a reason not to bother anymore. Must admit, always thought M&S were a little more expensive than other stores,but food has always been up to a high standard. Will have to go and have a serious look around.

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Do it! Life's too short

I can't see Tescos et al stopping selling anything in particular unless the public stops buying it.

There was a documentary a while back showing the fat in these cheap chickens (both lots more than normal ones, and the "wrong type of fat" particularly given that folk think of white chicken meat as being "good for you". That was very enlightening.

The public can't afford to buy free range chicken ... the £1 they save pays for a scratch card

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

I expect the Tesco shareholders were well primed as to what affect (effect?) it would have on their yearly dividends if they stopped selling the cheap chickens.

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

well my M&S chicken was delicious - yum yum in my tum!!!!

even better were the carrots from my garden (my first ever).

I think i am gonna boycott tesco and their poor chucks!!!!!

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Gardening - A labour of love that begins with daybreak and ends with backache!
http://clarkiesveggieblog.blogspot.com/

here's a bit more info on the campaign: Tesco Chicken Challenge - help needed urgently!

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

face the same problem with asda re free range prices have gone up since chicken out campaign.they only in it for making money & my take on the situation is they know they make huge profits from cheap chicken~were scared the public were starting?would start to opt for free range~their answer put the price of freerange up~make sure peeps cant afford to buy~hey presto they've won their argument that demand is still there for the cheap stuff.before campaign you could buy a decent size F.R chicken for about £5 since campaign the cheapest i've seen in asda(when they've got any)is over£7 & it was tiny!they've got smart peeps working in their marketing & they know how to manipulate sales to make a product look like it either is or isn't what the public demand.
p.s sorry if thats come out waffled~I know what I mean!!

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the fates lead him who will;him who won't they drag.

Happiness is not having what you want,but wanting what you have.xx

Thanks for the link Two_Sheds, some good info on there. I've downloaded their pocket shopping guide. Unfortunately my 2 nearest supermarkets - Morrisons & Asda - don't score very well at all

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I have gone from the pot to the fire, we used to shop in Tescos, but stopped for a number of reasons, one of them was the resonse they gave to their chicken stance. Now we shop in Asda!!, they both however have the same problem with meat, not enough FREE RANGE!!, now I buy most of it through a butcher. to them.

I wouldn't make a donation to HFW, out of principal I think the best way of showing how you feel is with your feet. If you don't like their policies shop elsewhere.

I know what you mean andi&di I go to Sainsburys a lot because that is the nearest one to me, and the price hike on Free Range is phenomenal, thats on the rare occasions that they have any out. Personally I believe that they are putting hardly any out, so that peeps think they have sold out and so but the cheaper one instead, because those that are on display are so flippin expensive.
My sis recommended the Tesco Willow Farm birds that are raised to Freedon Food standards, but even they have gone beyond my price range. Himself and I have a pretty strict budget for shopping each month and its getting harder to stay within it with due to all the recent price rises.
I know I said I would never buy a cheap chook again, but I have to look at it in that I can get 2 meals and a soup out of one bird so at least I'm not wasting any of it. (still feel bloody hypocritical now though)
I'm still a long way from raising my own table birds, next year I reckon at the earliest.

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I'd rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

http://hollandsroadparadise.blogspot.com
updated 14 May 2008

If I can't afford the chickens, I just buy something else. Especially after the documentary saying that the cheap chickens have a high fat content and practically no Omega 3 compared to the ones which can excercise. We're eating a lot of the cheaper cuts of beef & lamb instead. It's amazing what you can make with a pound of mince

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

we eat a lot of rabbit now,at 1st i didn't think i'd be able to even cook it let alone eat it,but it's actually o.k~once you get passed the thought of it!!having never had a pet rabbit,but kept chooks,the children actually feel more repulsed by the idea of eating chicken! when we're lucky we often get freebies from a friends bro'inlaw,otherwise our butcher sells them(wild)for £2.50.still not tried roasting tho'~look a bit too much like a skinned cat!!

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the fates lead him who will;him who won't they drag.

Happiness is not having what you want,but wanting what you have.xx

hahaha, skinned cat, thats funny!

Your surnames not Mcgregor is it, I've lost Peter??

'orrible thing is they've always been skinned & beheaded by the time they make their way to me~so who knows maybe my mates bro inlaw is your Mr Mcgregor!!

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the fates lead him who will;him who won't they drag.

Happiness is not having what you want,but wanting what you have.xx

Can't remember the last time we bought meat from a supermarket, although we do shop at Tesco.

The beef always looks too red but perhaps that's the special lighting they use. The other meat, well when we did used to buy meat from them, it always shrunk and was therefore very expensive.

We have bought from the butchers every since and as we always buy fresh meat and in bulk, we get it at a very good price, although we do now have two large freezers.

The quality of the meat is excellent and we normally get asked by visitors where we get it. The supermarkets are fine for certain things for us but we think it's still best to build up a rapport with the local butcher.

"The beef always looks too red but perhaps that's the special lighting they use"

nah, its because it hasn't been hung for long enough, and won't therefore have as good a flavour.

Similarly most joints are too lean, and won't cook as well. You can cut the fat off after cooking, but if it isn't there in the first place you'll get a dry old joint.

Where we lived before we had a pig farmer nearby. He sold the pork that the supermarkets rejected [as having too thick an outer fat layer]. Tasted fantastic. Any anyway, how do you get crackling with 1mm of fat??

Supermarkets are for loo rolls, bottles and cans of things.

No, No Kristen supermarkets are for cookery books, barbeque equipment, clothing, tv's, music, games and puzzles for the kids, cards and flowers.

Who on earth goes there for food these days!!

We are in the process of getting a new fridge with a larger freezer. And if we stay in this country, I am hoping ot get an extra freezer for the shed by next winter too (currently looking at going to the continent, and thus having to give up the plot - boo hoo - but OH already reckons I will have pots on an apartment balcony somewhere!!).

Sorry, I digress. There are a couple of decent butchers near us, and I also (coming from the country) have access to some very good producers when we are away from home. But can rarely bring much back with us due to storage space (or lack of it). But once I have the freezer space, I will be back to buying bacon and ham pieces and dark turkey meat from a butcher in Cork city (I lived on these while in college), and large hunks of cow, sheep and pig from others local to our folks (and hopefully lots of stewing cuts too so that I can make long slow cooked stews while at work).

But the price of meat has gone ridiculous here (and the farmers are constantly giving out about having no money!), and the quality is getting worse by the month. All you can get in the supermarkets are chops, steaks, roasting joints and mince - there are no nice cuts for stewing, rarely you'll find some spare ribs, or lamb shanks, or liver, but they are rare, and the taste is getting so bland that they are all starting to taste the same.

I want old fashioned meat that tastes different (like it used to).

"No, No Kristen supermarkets are for cookery books, barbeque equipment ..."

Blimey, where do you get your loo rolls from?

"I am hoping ot get an extra freezer for the shed by next winter too"

Suggest you check that the refrigerant isn't optimised for room temperature - I believe that many now are tuned to an evaporation / condensation cycle based on indoor temperatures, and thus may not be very efficient in a cooler setting - daft as that may seem!

"But the price of meat has gone ridiculous here (and the farmers are constantly giving out about having no money!)"

Price going up doesn't always mean that the farmers are getting the difference ... thieving supermarkets and middle men took it back in the last pig price crisis (around 2000 I think), and now we have less UK pork production capacity as a result.

We buy all our meat from our fantastic butcher - his chickens are great! An average sized one will feed us (2 adults/3 children) a roast dinner and have enough leftovers for a curry for 2 adults, plus a bit left for the cat.

You really notice the difference in the amount of water that comes out of a supermarket chicken and those from the butcher - the meat on the FR ones is more dense and so goes much further. The same goes for all the meat from the butcher really - so we pay more for the meat we eat up front, but it goes further (if that makes sense) with much less waste.

The other thing you get with buying from a butcher is the advice on how to cook/prepare your chosen cut - expanding your cooking repertoire in the process.

One thing my Mum and Aunts did when I was small was to buy a whole lamb or a whole pig from the local butcher (he would prepare all the cuts for them) and then freeze it for later use. I'm seriously considering this option later on this year.

"buy a whole lamb or a whole pig"

My mother did that, and we have a few times too, but we always wind up with cuts that are not really our cup-of-tea, and with more limited time than my Mother had we struggle to make use of them, and have reverted to just buying what we need at the butcher.

A new forum called "Meat swaps" perhaps, to rival "Seed swaps" ?