BS: The price of potatoes

Subject: BS: The price of potatoes
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 04:44 AM

While shopping yesterday I bought some new potatoes to go with the schnitzel I was cooking for my Sunday lunch. My first thought was to buy loose potatoes, but comparing the cost with prepacked they were more than double the price, so I ended up buying many times more than I needed - half of which I would probably end up throwing away, also having to throw away the unrecyclable polythene bag.

What is the logic behind buying far more than you need costing more than buying as much as is needed? I also miss having local greengrocers who would wrap the vegetables skillfully in newspaper!!

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 05:20 AM

I wonder whether you were comparing like for like? I think there can be quite a variation in price between varieties, eg. looking at the Tesco site, "whites" at 52p/g and "finest reds" at £1.15/kg

On greengrocers, I used to like Hughes in Llandudno. Always a good selection of veg in top condition there. I don't know if they are still going but they changed to just wholesale supplying hotels, etc. in my time in the area.

Cheapest way we used to buy spuds was by the sack and there was even a farmer who played in a session we used to go to who was willing to supply - collect a sack from his car after the event. Of course we as household had more demand for spuds then.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 05:21 AM

52p/g

per kg of course...

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 05:48 AM

We're lucky enough to have two greengrocers in the village - one in the High Street - so we can buy loose and put stuff in brown paper bags. The only spuds we have to buy pre-wrapped are the lovely Alfred Bartletts - but we buy a pack of four and cook enough for two meals.

Try this for size:

1. Get a baking dish and pour 50ml of wine into it. Add 15-20 black, pitted olives, a sliced leek, 2 halved and peeled cloves of garlic, and a quartered lemon.

2. Parboil 4 quartered Alfred Bartlett potatoes while you:

3. Fry 7-8 chicken thighs in olive oil - salted, peppered and sprinkled liberally with tarragon - skin side down in a sautée pan, until golden - then lightly turn and brown.

4. Add the potatoes to the baking dish.

5. Add the chicken thighs and the juice from the sautée pan to the baking dish, so that the thighs sit on the bed of potatoes.

6. Add more tarragon and bake in the oven, Mark 6, for 45 minutes.

For two people, this does twice. We put the hot pan on the table and serve ourselves on to our plates. What's left - usually about half - becomes a pie filling later, under a suet crust for another meal.

So - you can buy more than you need for one meal, and use the leftovers for another.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Mo the caller
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 06:26 AM

Potatoes will keep (raw) for months in a cool dark place. I would never throw them away. Though I do wish I hadn't bought a second bag of old spuds then I could justify digging the new.
Other things that are cheaper to buy 'two for..', well the cheese keeps in the fridge and I eat loads, 2x4pints of milk has to be decanted and frozen.
There has been a campaign against food waste and thinking about it I can't remember seeing any of those stupid 2 melons for... etc in Tesco recently. That used to annoy me - some fruit is great when ripe, useless before or after.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 06:45 AM

Cheese (or at least some types like cheddar) will freeze but you loose the texture. Our regular main weekly shop these days is a Tesco delivery and, yes, we freeze the milk, actually in the 4 pint plastic bottles. They bulge a bit but I've not had one burst.

Bread is another I find freezes well although after a difficult period at home, I'm trying to do a loaf at a time from the bread maker (well mostly, tesco cheese rolls are popular here...)

We find Tesco fruit and veg variable. Some is fine but pre packed sprouting broccoli only fit for a soup or stew comes to my recent memory. And a pack of apricots. They took over a week to ripen and even when soft were sort of bland and dry rather than sweet and juicy. I stewed them and put the in a jelly.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 08:13 AM

Sainsbury's Multiseed small loaves freeze very well indeed - 95p well spent for a store baked small loaf. They will slice it thick or medium, although if medium, I toast 2 slices together. Any supermarket white bread has absolutely no taste at all to me!

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 08:39 AM

My dad used to grow all our spuds and veg in the back garden.
He loved gardening - I was too preoccupied with school / college / girls / guitars
to ever learn those skills from him...

Anyway, me and the wife's own small Victorian backyard is concreted over...

Supermarket spuds last forever in the bottom of the fridge,
No food gets wasted in our house.
Most meals contain some form of leftovers.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Raggytash
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 09:08 AM

Will, try adding a slice of Chorizo over each chicken thigh, it really adds a bit of Zing to the finished dish.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 09:41 AM

pfr, My mum was the main gardener here, particularly in her retirement, but in her 80s and arthritic has slowed down a lot. It's been a long wile since we would have considered any main crop spuds but we would usually have a tasty sample of something like Carlotte or Anya.

Things including my fathers 60 days in hospital (started with a fall and a partial hip replacement but something unrelated happened and so on including difficulties with is mobility on discharge), my mother cutting her hand on a tinned tomato lid and developing quite a severe (wound up in hospital on a drip) infection and a couple of my own problems sort of conspired against us getting much done this year.

Still I did get some tomatoes, aubergines and some cucumber and marrow planted, we aim for some leeks and sprouts and there is always next year...

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: CupOfTea
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 10:21 AM

I had always thought of potatoes as mild, benign, starchy, blank slates for adorning with tastier bits, until I forgot about a bag of them in a cupboard. I had stashed a partial bag, in its open mesh bag, in a lower cabinet, resting in the aluminum lid of a wok stored there. Had little need of the lid for stir fry, so forgot about it until one white, alien looking, vine forced its way out of the top of the cabinet door.

I realized I'd some long neglected taters sprouting. What I did NOT expect was, upon opening the door, the wok lid had been turned into a lace- like remnant - unusable & potatoes inedible.

Now I tend to buy only what I have immediate plans for, in places where single veggies are an option.

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 10:37 AM

Spuds are natures best invention ever.. chips.. mash.. roasties..

ok.. calmed down a bit...
but at least in the top 10 of nature's bounty...

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 11:35 AM

Just get a very large baking tray, big enough to spread everything out. Two chicken thighs per person, skin on, bone in. Scrub spuds and cut into half-inch chunks. Salad spuds are best. Cut an onion or two into big chunks. Spread it all out and coat everything with olive oil and season. Hot oven (200 degrees) for 45 minutes. Half way through, break a whole head of garlic into cloves, skin on, and mix with the rest. Optional extra, cut a couple of red peppers into big chunks and add with the garlic. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley if you have any.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 01:37 PM

Here in "Famous Potatoes" Idaho (it says so on the vehicle license plates) we have to pay the same price for them even though they're grown just outside of town as we would in, say, Los Angeles.

Except for the farmers' market! Good potatoes and everything at decent prices.

From an experience many, many, many years ago: cockroaches will eat their way into a potato and die there. Be careful where you store them.

Subject: RE: BS: The price of potatoes
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Jun 17 - 02:04 PM

"cockroaches will eat their way into a potato and die there"

...extra nutritious protein...???