Living Well on a Reduced Income by Cestrian Pimpernel - HTML preview

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Short dated food

Local green grocers and butchers are normally no good. They know when their produce is un-saleable and don’t sell it. Supermarkets are better because everything has a best before date even if the food is fine. The retail day ends ant 10PM even if the supermarket closes later. Items usually get reduced throughout the day until dramatic reductions two hours from closing or 10PM whichever is the sooner. I live on short dated food and see the same faces every day. The days following a public holidays, when people are living off the leftovers, are good. Inclement weather deters the others, so when the going gets tough the tough get going. Almost every day there are some baking potatoes and some sort of salad. If you have the time it is fine. The only products I pay full price for are: Sugar, milk, tea, coffee, cooking oil, vinegar and toiletries.

As a veteran of short dated food I can tell you what they are in my local supermarkets:

Baking potatoes

Parsnips

Prepared salads

Spring onions

Chopped vegetables

Cheeses

Coleslaw and other dips

Chestnuts

Cucumbers

Fish and shellfish

Various fruit

Herbs (that are usually well past their best)

Mushrooms

Meat and fish if you are lucky.

Your local supermarkets will obviously vary.

When you can regularly buy 4 baking potatoes reduced from £1 to 10 pence it is difficult to motivate yourself to grow them yourself.