What did you cook/eat today (May 2017)?

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Last night we went to a Vietnamese night at a local taverna. Food cooked by a native Hanoi chef, but to be honest we were a little underwhelmed. Couldn't fault the cooking but very little flavour compared with Asian food we get back home. None of the fragrant ginger, lemongrass, chilli, coriander or garlic that we get at our local Thai street food stall, just fairly bland vegetable dishes. Will give it another chance though - the Hanoi chef does cookery classes on Saturdays, so signed up for one this Saturday. See what happens.
 
Tonight will be chicken. Albertsons Market has whole chickens buy one get one free this week. Regular price 1.09 a pound which brings the price down to 54.5 cents a pound.
Not sure what else yet. I know carrots and rice pudding. (Carrots were free and so was the half and half).
 
Cinisajoy said:
Tonight will be chicken. Albertsons Market has whole chickens buy one get one free this week. Regular price 1.09 a pound which brings the price down to 54.5 cents a pound.
Not sure what else yet. I know carrots and rice pudding. (Carrots were free and so was the half and half).
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Have you considered why they are so cheap?
 
epicuric said:
Have you considered why they are so cheap?
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Because they are on sale. Nothing more, nothing less.
Do you not have sales in the UK?
Let me explain US marketing. Every Wednesday, the grocery stores put different foods on sale as a lure to get you in their store. Last week, at one store was 25% off all beef. This week, it is cheap chickens.
So no, there is nothing wrong or old about the chickens. It is no more than bait to get us in the store.

Though that leads me to a question. I know you have Waitrose and Asda, but do you have any other grocery stores?
Here we have Walmart which I think is your Waitrose, HEB (Texas and I think part of New Mexico store), Lowes (an independent grocery store associated with affiliated foods), Albertsons Market and a Market Street(a United store), El Rancho (another independent chain associated with affiliated foods but caters to the Mexican population) and one other small Mexican grocery store.
Note: Walmart and HEB have almost the same prices.

This might fit better in food prices.
 
epicuric said:
Last night we went to a Vietnamese night at a local taverna. Food cooked by a native Hanoi chef, but to be honest we were a little underwhelmed. Couldn't fault the cooking but very little flavour compared with Asian food we get back home. None of the fragrant ginger, lemongrass, chilli, coriander or garlic that we get at our local Thai street food stall, just fairly bland vegetable dishes. Will give it another chance though - the Hanoi chef does cookery classes on Saturdays, so signed up for one this Saturday. See what happens.
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That will be interesting! You can ask him about the ginger etc.
 
Cinisajoy said:
Because they are on sale. Nothing more, nothing less.
Do you not have sales in the UK?
Let me explain US marketing. Every Wednesday, the grocery stores put different foods on sale as a lure to get you in their store. Last week, at one store was 25% off all beef. This week, it is cheap chickens.
So no, there is nothing wrong or old about the chickens. It is no more than bait to get us in the store.

Though that leads me to a question. I know you have Waitrose and Asda, but do you have any other grocery stores?
Here we have Walmart which I think is your Waitrose, HEB (Texas and I think part of New Mexico store), Lowes (an independent grocery store associated with affiliated foods), Albertsons Market and a Market Street(a United store), El Rancho (another independent chain associated with affiliated foods but caters to the Mexican population) and one other small Mexican grocery store.
Note: Walmart and HEB have almost the same prices.

This might fit better in food prices.
Click to expand...
We have a very competitive supermarket situation. At the bottom we have the German Lidl, Aldi and Asda (Walmart), the middle ground is occupied by Tesco, Sainsbury, Co-op, mainstream top end is Waitrose, Marks & Spencer plus lower volume like Selfridges.

My point was about the provenance of a chicken that costs around $2 (hope I've got my sums right here). Even in our cheapest stores, a chicken would cost around £4, and would be battery reared and pumped full of water to bulk up its weight. A decent outdoor reared bird would be around £12. In reality, the more expensive bird is better value - more meat on it to start with, and less bulk lost in cooking because it's not full of water. And it had a happier life,
 
Cinisajoy said:
Because they are on sale. Nothing more, nothing less.
Do you not have sales in the UK?
Let me explain US marketing. Every Wednesday, the grocery stores put different foods on sale as a lure to get you in their store. Last week, at one store was 25% off all beef. This week, it is cheap chickens.
So no, there is nothing wrong or old about the chickens. It is no more than bait to get us in the store.

Though that leads me to a question. I know you have Waitrose and Asda, but do you have any other grocery stores?
Here we have Walmart which I think is your Waitrose, HEB (Texas and I think part of New Mexico store), Lowes (an independent grocery store associated with affiliated foods), Albertsons Market and a Market Street(a United store), El Rancho (another independent chain associated with affiliated foods but caters to the Mexican population) and one other small Mexican grocery store.
Note: Walmart and HEB have almost the same prices.

This might fit better in food prices.
Click to expand...

Quite a lot. The big ones are Tesco's, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose - all of these have on-line home delivery services as well.
Then there are the discounters Lidl and Aldi who have gained immense ground in the last few years. There are also smaller supermarkets such as the Co-op, Iceland, Budgens...
 
epicuric said:
. Even in our cheapest stores, a chicken would cost around £4, and would be battery reared and pumped full of water to bulk up its weight.
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Depends what you mean by 'battery'. Chickens bred for meat are not kept in cages but in open plan (albeit crowded) sheds.
 
epicuric said:
We have a very competitive supermarket situation. At the bottom we have the German Lidl, Aldi and Asda (Walmart), the middle ground is occupied by Tesco, Sainsbury, Co-op, mainstream top end is Waitrose, Marks & Spencer plus lower volume like Selfridges.

My point was about the provenance of a chicken that costs around $2 (hope I've got my sums right here). Even in our cheapest stores, a chicken would cost around £4, and would be battery reared and pumped full of water to bulk up its weight. A decent outdoor reared bird would be around £12. In reality, the more expensive bird is better value - more meat on it to start with, and less bulk lost in cooking because it's not full of water. And it had a happier life,
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This particular chicken is from Pilgrims. It is 100% natural with no water added. It weighs almost 5 lbs. It would have cost over $5 if not on sale. On sale it cost $2.50.
Now as I understand it from reading numerous posts here, it seems that on many things the UK is higher on their prices than the US counterparts and yes I am taking into account the measurement difference and the exchange difference.
I am not going to argue on the in reality part of your post because on some things you are right and on others, you are paying for nothing more than a name or a word.
 
Making baked chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, carrots, rice pudding and biscuits (southern US not UK)
 
MypinchofItaly said:
mmmm..I'm not so sure about that.
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It is the case in the UK and Australia at the very minimum.

This is an Australian link (the caps is their emphasis).

Most commercial meat chicken farms are intensive, highly mechanised operations that occupy relatively small areas compared with other forms of farming.

Commercial broilers are run on litter (e.g. rice hulls, wood shavings) floors in large poultry sheds. THEY ARE NOT KEPT IN CAGES in all of the production systems used in the industry. The main production systems are generally referred to as conventional, free-range and organic.
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and
Shedding

Meat chickens are farmed in large open poultry houses, usually refered to as ‘sheds’, ‘houses’ or barns, but sometines as ‘units’. Shed sizes vary, but a typical new shed is 150 meters long and 15 meters wide and holds about 40,000 adult chickens. The larger sheds can contain up to 60,000 broiler chickens. There are often three - ten sheds on the one farm. A typical new farm would house approximately 320,000 chickens, with eight sheds holding approximately 40,000 chickens/each.
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If you work these figures out, 150x15 is 2,250m sq. housing upto 40,000 chickens. That's 40,000/2,250 which is 17.778 chickens per square meter. However I will say if you read the whole article you will find that chickens are culled 4 times during the life cycle in a shed so there are never 17 fully grown broiler chickens in a square meter at anytime. Not that that makes the conditions any better. They are culled up to 4 times within the 2 months maximum or 8-9 weeks that the oldest of them lives for)
The first harvest might occur as early as 30-35 days and the last at 55-60 days.
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.
Most of America, Canada, and continental Europe will have similar conditions and ages for broiler chickens.
 
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My evening meal last night was a 'freezer meal'. I was out for the day and we had eaten the last of the mushroom soup the day before, so it was a bale to the freezer. So we had the following
lightly curried cauliflower stalk soup (this is literally made from the stalks of the leaves of cauliflowers which I collect. The chickens I have will only eat so many stalks a day but much more leaf, so I collect them up and add them to stock and make a soup from them and other than a slight green tinge, it tastes and looks like cauliflower floret soup) sprinkled with sumac roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, served with homemade Bulghar Wheat Koftas, roasted Cauliflower florets and brown rice & polenta cakes.

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morning glory said:
You collect up the cauliflower stalks put out for the chickens and make them into soup?
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yep... I can get the cauliflower leaves free from my supermarket. The girls eat the greens and some of the stalks from those leaves (dividing them into greens and stalks for simplicity). I also add in the stalk from the actual cauliflower floret itself when we buy them. So the soup is the stalks from the leaves and the stalks from the head of cauliflower I have at home but mostly from the stalks from the eaves. It is no different to using the stalk of a broccoli either. In fact most of the nutrients in both cauliflower and broccoli can be found in the stalks/stems not the actual flower buds (which is what they both are).
 
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