what fish should we be eating?

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Yeah, if you're going to eat a 'luxury' food you might as well at least shell out (ahem) a little extra and get something that actually tastes nice.

Budget luxury foods - not one of our better food fads right now.

That's food-as-aspirational-lifestyle-choice for you, though, isn't it?

We've been over this before a few times, but the psychoeconomics of food are a more complicated than 'how can I get the nicest tasting stuff for my budget.'

Basics mineral water is pretty stupid, though.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
That's food-as-aspirational-lifestyle-choice for you, though, isn't it?

We've been over this before a few times, but the psychoeconomics of food are a more complicated than 'how can I get the nicest tasting stuff for my budget.'

Basics mineral water is pretty stupid, though.

Sure, agreed. But I shudder to imagine what Sainsbury's Basics Spanish White Wine tastes like - and it's £2.50, I mean for an extra 50p you'd just buy a couple of decent bottles of beer or cider, wouldn't you? How 'aspirational' are you feeling by buying plonk with that nasty white and red lable? The bottle water one is just entirely beyond me. Possibly useful if you're stocking up for a zombie apocalypse scenario...

smoked salmon offcuts are a good idea though, for chucking into pasta, fritatta etc

Good point, duly noted. Supermarket cheapo bacon is generally alright too, it's just in little odd bits.
 

massrock

Well-known member
A lot of the time what the budget ranges reveal is the premium charged for the regular stuff. Sometimes they are even better products, quite often with fewer dodgy additives. I quite approve actually. If someone feels like a cunt checking out a whole basket full of basics stuff that's their problem.
 

massrock

Well-known member
Also it's allowed supermarkets to sell bags of misshapen or unusually sized vegetables that are actually perfectly good but would otherwise presumably have gone to waste.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Good point, duly noted. Supermarket cheapo bacon is generally alright too, it's just in little odd bits.

Yeah i get the wierd bacon from Sainsos, chop it up into sectiond and freeze in individual bags then any time you need lardons they are to hand and cost about 10p a bag! Not as fatty as proper lardons which are all from the belly but still good.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You're not, you're buying cheap wine. And the beer or cider would have to be at least 11% to get you equivalently pissed.

Well if you just want to get wankered I think a 2l bottle of White Lightning is still the way to go. It's at least more honest than Basics Spanish White Wine.

A lot of the time what the budget ranges reveal is the premium charged for the regular stuff. Sometimes they are even better products, quite often with fewer dodgy additives. I quite approve actually. If someone feels like a cunt checking out a whole basket full of basics stuff that's their problem.

Sure, I'm basically perma-skint and I buy cheapo stuff all the time - spuds, carrots (when I can't be arsed to go to a proper greengrocer's), washing powder, toothpaste, bog roll - basic things. Then I'll very occasionally go to Neal's Yard or Royal Mile Whiskies. I'm a kind of cheapskate gourmet, I guess.
 

mms

sometimes
herring are about the only fish around the uk coast in abundance so everyone eat rollmops.
 

STN

sou'wester
I'm sure I started a whole other thread for things worth buying in budget form...
 

massrock

Well-known member
Well if you just want to get wankered I think a 2l bottle of White Lightning is still the way to go. It's at least more honest than Basics Spanish White Wine.
Yeah maybe, it feels a bit teenage though and basics white wine is still quite honest I think, I mean who would you be kidding? You should be able to find regular cheap plonk for about £3.00 anyway. That is one thing that makes the UK culturally backward in relation to the rest of W.Europe in that basic wine in Spain / France / Italy can still be very enjoyable.

Yeah sorry, OT and I recall the thread about supermarket basics. I will just say that the quality of Saynsbo's basics bog roll has actually dropped below the level of acceptability.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
these people from portugal was telling me there is an annual SEA FOOD FESTIVAL where they live. i salivate a lot every time i think about it.
 

mos dan

fact music
I made a Thai green curry with cuttlefish a while ago, it was LUSH.

Edit: before anyone asks, I had to do most of the work - turns out cuttlefish are shit at making curries.

late but nonetheless MASSIVE applause.

so i take it you all missed this then:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/gallery/2009/sep/30/george-monbiot-crayfish

free, sustainable crayfish that you catch yourself??? ZOMG. a friend and i will definitely be trying this - if anyone else has a go pls report back. the wheel bit looks a tad complicated but it would be so so worth it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah maybe, it feels a bit teenage though and basics white wine is still quite honest I think, I mean who would you be kidding? You should be able to find regular cheap plonk for about £3.00 anyway. That is one thing that makes the UK culturally backward in relation to the rest of W.Europe in that basic wine in Spain / France / Italy can still be very enjoyable.

Well you can actually get a drinkable bottle of wine in France for a couple of euros - a sight more drinkable than what £2.50 would buy you in a UK supermarket (though I'm surmising here - maybe I'll pick one up next time I go to Sainsbury - though I can't promise I won't look round first to make sure no-one who knows me is in the shop). Even with the crashing pound, wine and in fact most kinds of booze are significantly cheaper in the wine-producing countries you named than they are in Britain, where alcohol is a Social Evil and a Scourge Of Our Times and therefore has to be taxxxed to at least ameliorate the spiritual, if not hepatological, sin of drinking. Not that a hell of a lot of people in this country don't drink themselves half to death every weekend, of course.

More booze taxes on the way if the Tories get in, and probably even if they don't. Though from what I've heard it would affect mainly the really strong/cheap lagers, ciders and alcopops, which is certainly better than an indiscriminate hike. In fact I'd be happy with a rise in the price of off-licence beer as long as there was also a drop in (or at a least freeze on) the duty paid by licenced bars, I mean pubs are shutting down left right and centre, two within a short walk of my house in just the last couple of weeks. :( They weren't pubs that I went to, but they were someone's local, you know? To say nothing of someone's livelihood.

I can guarantee someone somewhere will see a tax hike on WKD as terribly elitist and anti-working class...

Edit: bugger, we're meant to be talking about fish, aren't we? If mackerel is still plentiful and not full of mercury and Nazis then that's groovy by me. Smoked mackerel with black peppercorns is the shizzle.

Edit edit: the Londoners among us will no doubt be aware of the advertising blitz the Times is splashing out on at the moment, centering mainly around the idea that they're, like, totally with-it and hip to everything that's new and current and An Issue. The ad for their new science/medicine/nature mag says "The world's seafood will run out by 2041". That doesn't make me want to read the Times, it just makes really sad.
 
Last edited:

massrock

Well-known member
Yeah I was trying to find a wine thread to reply to you on. Tesco used to do a nice little South American red for £2.50, good with FISH. Also the crappy pound of course not helping with the price of Euro wine.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah sorry, that sentence about the pound looks like nonsense the way I put it - I meant a E2 bottle of drinkable French wine in a French shop is still dirt cheap, whether that E2 is equivalent to £1.50 like it was a couple of years ago or £1.80 like it is now. I mean it's irrelevant unless you're a British tourist in France, anyway. Or an ex-pat with income or savings in £.

Sorry, off-topic again.
 
Top