venta | I came in here for that special offer: a guaranteed personality

When I popped to Tesco last, I noticed several things which are intended to show the customer how seriously they are taking people's need to spend less. Many items have little flags showing them as "discount brands", the special offers seem to be on basics rather than on exciting new lines, and they have an example trolley by the door.

As you walk in, the example trolley is stacked with goods and has its till receipt blown up large and laminated. It's one of the shallow kind of trollies, and it is stacked full. I forget the exact total on the receipt, but I believe the thrifty customer is supposed to go "Wow! All that for just £50!"

This thrify customer looked at the bottom line and went "£50! For a week's shopping! You must be joking!"

Now, in fairness, I presume the trolley is intended to stay there as a dazzling incentive for some time, and thus it can't have greengrocery in it. Fruit and veg make up a fairly hefty proportion of my shopping, so it's not a fair comparison.

After my shopping trip, I have enough to feed myself for well over a week, some storecupboard basics and the household's kitchen and toilet roll requirements for the immediate future. I also have a bottle of beer as a present for my Dad, and my shopping was just over £15.

Admittedly, I had already bought some vegetables from a market stall at the weekend: I don't know about anyone else, but I'm an absolute sucker for the stalls which pile produce in bowls and offer you 'any bowl for £1'. A combination of delight at the sight of piled vegetables and a slight hint of the fairground hook-a-duck game has me purchasing bowls left, right and centre. They're often staggeringly good value if you have the capacity to use so much before it goes off. On which note, if anyone in Oxford wants some avocados, see me. I've got... quite a lot.

But even allowing for the extra shopping there and at the cheapjacks in Brent Cross, I spent less than £20. I shall eat well, and sometimes even excitingly, for a fraction of what Tesco thinks is bargain prices. I wouldn't even regard my shopping as rock-bottom; certainly I think there were things in it that I could have done without or replaced with something cheaper.

I am, of course, largely feeding just me - my meals will often stretch to include my housemates, ChrisC, or anyone else who's passing, but I don't have anything complicated like children to feed or look after. Even so... I don't understand a mindset which requires, in times of hardshop, convenience foods to become cheaper. The difference in price is the convenience and if you can't afford it, you have to live with the inconvenience of chopping up the damn vegetables yourself.

Maybe Tesco's approach should be to leave prewrapped, preprepared food prices as they are and instead print out cards with idiot-proof recipes for basic everyday dishes. I'm not sure customers would like it, but it might be much more useful. When people talk about "hardship" and mean that they have to switch to a less-luxurious brand of individually packaged chocolate biscuits, I'm inclined to say that they don't know the meaning of the word.

Please note this post was brough to you without the words "current", "financial" and "climate". That's fast becoming one of those phrases that you hear so often it's rendered meaningless. Beware the new CFCs.

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Having a freezer helps of course, but even with just cupboards I expect to have enough that in the event of civilisation grinding to a halt I can continue eating for some time. My mother's a great cook, and would consider it a grave personal failing if unexpected visitors descended and she couldn't produce a two-course meal from a standing start.

I guess having grown up with home cooking such things come relatively easily to me (which I think is rather Mr Oliver's point).

Exactly. I mean, I can make sustaining food out of just flour, tap water and a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Add a couple of cans of chickpeas, an onion and some curry paste and I could feed four people!

Ooh, what do you make ? Chapati ? I don't know how to make those, and attempts a few years ago were disastrous.

They're like pancakes, the first few are always a bit peculiar until the pan gets right. (Or at least, they are when I do them.)

*nods* Exactly.

Chapati are pretty easy but you have to make sure you knead the dough really well to break down the gluten, and let it rest for half an hour or so before rolling out. Using proper chapati flour as opposed to bread flour seems to help, though ordinary wholemeal flour does work OK.

What went wrong with yours?

It was years ago, and I suspect the main flaws were using cheap and nasty normal flour (not even bread flour) and not kneading enough. I have a better understanding of doughy stuff now than I did then, but still not great. I should have another go.

Do you have a recipe, or do you do it on a that-looks-about-right basis ?

I usually work on the basis of about 1 cup of flour to 1/2 cup of water, plus a teaspoon of vegetable oil and a little salt. Like most of my cooking it's mostly guesswork though.

You forgot the smaaaaaaaall aubergine. ;-)

But yes.

*nod* My mother's the competent-but-unenthusiastic daughter of a great cook - she cooked every day when I was a child, out of necessity, but nowadays she only cooks for grandchildren and special occasions, simply because she's fed up with it (she has a lot of dietary restrictions, which limit her choices, and she often eats dinner alone thanks to Dad's working hours, so I understand not being keen to bother with much). But similarly, I grew up able to follow a recipe, cook for pleasure, use leftovers sensibly, etc. I think 'I cannot imagine a kitchen...' is my own failure of imagination (although I've been poor - on IS and HB and living in one room with a shared kitchen - and I still cooked what I could when I could, but I had that history to start from) because I do know there are people out there without that basic knowledge of cooking, and without the ideas or ability to try learning without outside help, but I still can't really comprehend it, you know? Just like I know there are people who don't like food, but I still don't understand that, either. :)

One of the better points JO made in last week's show was that school Home Economics kitchens sit unused and empty all evening and weekend and through the holidays. Getting adults in to evening classes and summer schools would be wonderful - if it could be done.

school Home Economics kitchens sit unused and empty all evening and weekend

... and even when they're full of children, the children aren't learning anything useful. At least, I learnt very little of use in Home Ec.

I think they were very keen that it should be a "serious subject", and not "Cookery". So we did quite pointless experiments to determine the gluten content of flour, and drew pictures to parse the nutritional contents of milk. Some of which is useful to know but, on balance, probably not as useful as being able to cook basic stuff.

The teacher complained I had a flippant attitude to the subject: too flippin' right. Being used to a kitchen in which my mother can produce the contents an entire church fete cake stall in one afternoon while holding a conversation, making dinner, and shouting at the radio I thought using a double lesson to cook 8 fairy cakes was a complete waste of time.

Ah, yes, the Science part of Domestic Science. Load of rubbish. Luckily for me I was too old for that by the time it came in - we did actually cook quite a lot at my school but as 95% of the pupils came by bus from ~25 surrounding villages, we were limited to things that were not likely to be dangerously hot when transported home on a bumpy coach. There was a lot of cake and biscuits, and not so much in the way of casseroles or soup.

Making scones with

smallclanger recently reminded me of that kind of an afternoon. I miss that bit of my childhood, but not the endless peeling and coring of apples that went with it (we had the biggest single cooking apple tree in the village)... :D

a double lesson to cook 8 fairy cakes was a complete waste of time.

My first cookery lesson in school was to make an open sandwich.

Also, on your main point, I like the fact that in the middle of it all you try to get rid of an excess of avocado. I think that bears home the point well enough.

It worked very well.

narenek came round, we had tea, biscuits and a chat cos I haven't seen him in ages, and he made some avocados go away.

Fortunately I think Frances and I can take on the manic excess of peppers without help. Five giant red peppers for £1, how could anyone resist !?

I guess having grown up with home cooking such things come relatively easily to me

OTOH, I grew up with home cooking but am still uncomfortable with anything other than following a recipe (and even then it's usually very tedious so I only do it if I'm feeling like I ought to be virtuous). You can get a week's worth of a readymeal-based diet for 20 quid too, though.

PS: "times of hardshop" : best defined as Saturday around lunchtime when everybody else has decided to go to Tesco at the same time as you and brought their three young children with them.

Phew... I had to go and check I hadn't written "times of hardshop" there :)

-shop for -ship is currently my most consistent (noticed :) typo. I've certainly written "relationshop" at least 4 times in the last 7 days (which is weird, because I don't think I expect me to write "relationship" that many times a week).

Oh. Crap. I did. Now why did Firefox's search fail to find that for me when I checked ?

_Bother.

I find Tesco on Sunday afternoon an hour or so before the early Sunday closing to be worse. :)

Definitely Saturday lunchtime, in my experience :)

Interestingly, I once commented on a particularly frenzied Saturday to the checkout assistant. She said that yes, it was most heinous because it was the first Saturday of the month... ie the first after payday.

It surprised me that in our alledgedly affluent society that should still be a factor, but apparently the first post-payday weekend is always the busiest.

I came in here for that special offer: a guaranteed personality

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