Things I didn't buy today

Not a lot really (helped mainly by continuing to spend lots on my project at work). It's interesting to see what's happening around me though. I live in a relatively poor town (I chose to be able to cycle to work over having access to a good social structure: possibly a bad idea), and have watched the locals spending like crazy over the last couple of years; if I'd been blogging here then, there probably would have been a rant sometime about how much the local banks were prepared to lend. And now it's coming home to roost big time: the pubs are almost empty, it's easy to get a taxi because they're all waiting at the station with very few fares each evening (2 in 4 hours for the driver I talked to this week); none of this is happening in the less-poor town nearby. And then there's the supermarkets. The short-dated shelf (what I call the 'dead and dying' shelf and Hwsgo called 'God told me to eat') up to now has been an interesting source of short-dated raw ingredients at stupidly small prices: great if you just want to grab some quails eggs for that evening. Not any more. The shelves are almost empty, the stock there is low-to-mid price and there are always people hovering, waiting for new things to go near them.

The trolleys, however, are still full. Not mine though: this virtue in spending seems to be creeping into the rest of my life too. Tonight, I spent just over £10 on my week's shopping, half of which was to replace my flatmate's shelf in a recent freezer defrosting unhappiness. Not £10 because I bought cheap things, but because I've finally organised my food cupboards. I'm now dealing with the things that have been loitering in these cupboards because I'd rather buy something else than eat them: anything I really don't want to eat has left the cupboards and I'm cooking my way through the rest. So I currently have a freezer full of self-cooked one-person ready meals (courtesy of the defrosting), a shelf full of basic lunch ingredients and a big box of cereal: that's dinner, lunch and breakfast sorted for every day for over a week. I still have ingredients in the cupboards, so today's shop was for things to supplement that: chorizo to add to the white beans, cream and onions, cheese and tomato soup for those evenings when I really can't be bothered to cook (which goes with leaving work at 9pm) and peas because I just happen to like peas and they add vitamins to the ready meals. So that's another set of ready-cooked meals and snacks. Nothing less, nothing more (and certainly none of the tempting ice-cream, even with a £1-off offer). And it feels surprisingly good.

Oh, and I now know the price of fish. Just over £2 for smoked mackerel, £4 for lumps of fish (haddock etc), £10 for the good stuff. Which is quite a bit more than it used to be. I played the £2 game tonight - see how much fresh meat I can buy for around £2 - and the answer now is surprisingly little; quite a difference from playing the same game last year. I do have a small problem with the newspaper though. It's not food or transport, but it is important to know what's happening in the world sometimes. Maybe if I chewed a corner I could re-classify it as food? No, I think the Guardian is too important to put on the banned list, so July 2008 is now a no-buy (except food, travel and newspapers) month. Not magazines though: I went past the girl magazine rack and suddenly realised that the main reason I buy them is to look for interesting clothes and shoes to buy. Duh.