Budget carried over from previous days: 38p
Content of pantry before shopping:
- Perishable:
No coffee
2 portions (approx. 260 grams) of liver
1 portion of pork fillet (frozen)
a leftover of cabbage
3.5 chillies
1 onion
1 small bottle school milk (frozen)
garlic (about 5 cloves left?)
- Non-perishable:
Most of 750 grams of salt
Flour
Rice
mixed herbs
lemon thyme
some ginger
full bag of oats
Budget available for day 8: £ 1.38
Budget used: £ 1.27
Budget left: £ 0.11
Budget available for day 9: £ 1.11
Today went a bit different than I thought it would be, in the sense that I ended up dropping by at the supermarket after work and got a can of mushy peas at 12p (update: accounted for in “Groceries – Day 07”). Subsequently, during my evening shop, I spent the pound I had available and most of the budget saved on previous days, leaving me with only 5p of savings. Reason for this was no interesting discounts today. Well, apart for this one:
You’re seeing it right – that’s a 1.154 kilo piece of pork spam for 50p. With still 3 or 4 days good shelf life left in it (and considerably more if frozen) – perfectly safe to eat. And it probably would have sorted out any protein issues for well, pretty much the rest of the month. I didn’t bring it. Why not?
A few reasons. Reason one – variation. Although probably some variation would be possible, I was worried I’d limit myself too much. Reason two – sodium nitrite. Let’s try not to eat too much of that stuff. Reason three – someone else needed it more than I do, I’m sure.
So what I ended up bringing home were some good, unadulterated, non-discounted groceries.
Which I immediately started processing, forgetting I hadn’t taken a picture yet. That’s why there’s only half a carrot on the picture, and why the potatoes are backwards. But at least my 400 grams of fruit and veg is once again taken care of.
These days buying preserved meats are not as bad as 10-20 years ago. Usually sodium nitrite is not the only preservative that is used to preserve the meat and meat products. To reduce formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines (formed in overcooked meats), ascorbic acid (or other inhibitors) are added as well. But… taking all above into consideration, the reason no: 2 is still good enough reason for me to avoid such products….
I’m impressed… Are you a food scientist or something?
Not really, but….. I always liked the chemistry lessons :). I guess such information is widely available anyway. The reason I know this because one day I tried to teach my kids to buy healthy things from TESCO and struggled to explain why it is not enough to add just one preservative instead of a number of them, so I had to improve my knowledge. And also, it is very interesting to know how the industry is trying to re-invent some things, for example, the Nestlé recently announced that their last of 79 products to become free of artificial ingredients. This means “Smarties” could be again on my shopping list 😉
Smart kids to be asking such a question. Be careful with the Smarties, they might ask how they get the sugar coat on without melting the chocolate!