20 February 2014

Red Sticker Mist

Y'know how murderers in TV shows always say they "didn't mean to kill him, but then I saw a red mist"? Well, I totally get it. 

I don't mean I've stabbed someone, I hasten to add. It hasn't come to that. Yet*.

I am a sucker for a sale, a reduction, a deal, an offer, and a bargain. Nothing makes me happier than saving money on something that I was planning to buy anyway. Or something I suddenly, desperately wanted once I saw it was 70% off. KERCHING!

Since recently discovering that a supermarket near my work reduces a lot of its stock at the time I finish (co-incidence? I think not!), I've spent the last few weeks manically cavorting around the aisles of said supermarket with armfuls of red-sticker-clad goods. Why I never think to pick up a basket is beyond me. It happens EVERY time! Admittedly, the majority of these items were not on my shopping list but who on earth could resist wholewheat bagels, shitake mushrooms, and two wafer-thin slices of prosciutto at 67% off?!

That may be the most upper-middle-class sentence that has ever been written.

Anyway, my point is - when I see red, I seem to go into a trance where I want to buy up ALL THE THINGS.

Thankfully, a smidgen of my sanity appears to have figured out how to fight the Sticker Demon, because I mostly grab things which are freezable. That said, we have been eating some rather interesting dinners lately...

Please be clear, I'm not apologising for my thriftiness Scrooge-osity. One of my girlfriends recently confided she knew she'd met the man of her dreams when he made a beeline for the reduced section first. One has to admire a man who says "Screw our plans for tonight's dinner - we shall feast on broccoli florets, half a pork pie, and a bucket of dodgy profiteroles!". Swoon.

What are your thoughts about reduced-price food? 

Katie xxx

* But if anyone dares get between me and the marked-down bakery shelf who knows what could happen?

12 comments:

  1. I never manage this. I shop after I drop my daughter at school and the bargains don't happen til the other end of the day.

    But a man who is into reduced food would definitely be a catch. So long as he's not one of those chaps who also forbids having the heating on when you can wear a coat in the house and only allows the lights on in one room at a time. That would get a little tiring. xxx

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    1. Speaking from experience, as I grew up in a house where heating was illegal and it was actually colder than outside for about 95% of the year, I can confirm that it gets very tiring. Half price cheesecake, on the other hand, never gets old (especially as it often doesn't last the journey home from the supermarket...) xxx

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  2. At my local coop, the bakery reducing happens around the time I walk home. Better still, the lively man who does it just has to see me hovering and then he asks what I want. Yep he knows me now. Pain au chocolat for 20p!!! X

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    1. Haha - it's an odd combination of comforting and frightening when places know your order that well, isn't it? 20p pain au chocolates are pretty bargainous :) xxx

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  3. I always check it, but if I have to battle through little old ladies waiting like lions on feeding day at the Zoo (Smelling if wee with baggy tights round their ankles) then I bypass it.

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    1. One day I will be an old lady like that. I'll paint my face like a lion to go with the baggy tights. I think the smelling-of-wee part would be a step too far though :p xxx

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  4. Ooh I have a reduced-food loving hubby, It's great actually cos we time our shopping for when the reductions happen, and then stock the freezer with cheap meat and fish. A fab way to eat lamb and steaks!!! Nom!

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    1. That's very well organised! Meat is SO expensive; I'm glad only one of us (Tom) eats it. Without buying marked-down packs and sticking them in the freezer I think I'd have to make Tom sell some of his organs on the black market to fund his steak habit xxx

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  5. We always go to Waitrose on Tuesdays because it's -reteuceday (you see how we mixed up the words reduced and tuesday? I know, we're awesome). It's extra useful now we have a freezer as it means all of our meat is super cheap but not full of water/intensively farmed like the actual cheap meat :p

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    1. I LOVE "reteuceday" - that made me actually laugh out loud :) Can we please start using it too? I'll swap you for Dolphin-nose Potatoes. I didn't know Tuesdays were an extra reduced day - I'll have to find out if ours is the same. xxx

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  6. Gosh, half our freezer is full of reduced price food (we have a Tesco half a mile from us, everything's yellow-stickered). There's even been rugby-style scrums near the reduced price shelf as all the yokels elbow each other out the way to get the best bargains.

    Nothing wrong with a bit of reduced food, methinks! :-) xxx

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    1. Sounds like you've got some very enthusiastic bargain hunters round your way! I think it would have to be something seriously delicious for me to resort to elbowing. Perhaps a chocolate pudding with an attached invitation to dinner with Benedict Cumberbatch :p xxx

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