The Winter of Discontent #2 Food, energy, transport, jobs, housing etc

[smellsofbiscuits]

Thats not fair- my partner is a farmer and the animals are well looked after and are killed in the most humane way possible for food. Farmers are human and killing animals for absolutely no reason is upsetting.

Sorry to hear that but I can't get my head round caring for animals yet happily shipping them off to get gassed to death or shot in the head.

I think they do care.

Think about your daily work - if you would work hard on something and it would then just be binned wouldn't you mind either?

Why dont you think farmers dont care about their animals? Because they are being killed to be eaten? They can still care about them and want them to live as good as possible and for their lives to have had a purpose

On a tangent but one of the highest rates of suicide amongst degree educated professionals is amongst vets. It's connected to treating animals in pain, difficulty communicating with patients and a large number of your patients being euthanasised.

Same works in abbatoirs too, I believe. Based on relatives who work in one, there's a strict rotation to make sure individuals don't spend too much time in the killing section. This is in Canada though, I'm not sure if there's similar guidance in the UK.

 

[hollowcrown]

I was talking about whether farmers cared about killing animals for no reason. Eating meat or not is a completely different conversation

Raising an animal and having that animal be killed for no reason will obviously be hard on farmers. At least if it's being killed for meat it actually had a meaning to its life. I can see why killing an animal for no reason would be distressful to farmers.

 

[FenellaTheWitch]

Thats not fair- my partner is a farmer and the animals are well looked after and are killed in the most humane way possible for food. Farmers are human and killing animals for absolutely no reason is upsetting.

There was a pig farmer on the radio the other day also explaining that once the pugs get to a certain age and size they also start fighting with each other which causes the pigs further distress.

 

[Yel]

No wonder the old people these days have lived so long.

Not sure if it's true but you often hear that reduced calories or some kind of intermittent fasting is good for longevity and the national diet was at peak health during the war. Of course it wasn't warm and fuzzy as it was a war and people were foraging for food to survive.

They do think life expectancy peaked during the war generation and is now going down with the baby boomers.

I remember eating acorns…We didn’t have sweets, we didn’t have all sorts of things….so we used jam jars and collected acorns. And I remember — we were town people, city dwellers so we didn’t have fields around, but we had the odd oak tree and we collected acorns in our mothers jam jars and we used to eat them, probably secretly — I don’t suppose our parents realised we were doing it . They were quite nice, I mean they are a listed poison but we ate them by the jamjarful - the odd one would be bitter, and you’d spit that out and that probably had more poison I would imagine, but we ate them freely. And another thing….we used to make our own sandwiches from hawthorn leaves, and we’d put the little berries in the middle. I can remember doing that.

BBC - WW2 People's War - Eating acorns, and jam tarts

One day he had to take a boat around from Cardiff — he was a navigator, trained — took a boat ...

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Penguin86]

I am fucked.
Normally when I'm struggling I just by tinned food but today something I would normally pay under 30p for is now nearly £1

 

[NeverEnough]

The pig won't be grateful to be eaten, but at least his live served a purpose compared to it being killed and discarded.

Ok

Ameglian Major Cow

The Ameglian Major Cow (also referred to as the Dish of the Day) was one example of a race of artificially created, sentient creatures which were bred to want to be eaten. It appeared in the television adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the second novel, The Restaurant at the...

hitchhikers.fandom.com

I am fucked.
Normally when I'm struggling I just by tinned food but today something I would normally pay under 30p for is now nearly £1

Wow that’s a 300% increase. What was it specifically?

 

[Tatooine_legend1]

Not sure if it's true but you often hear that reduced calories or some kind of intermittent fasting is good for longevity and the national diet was at peak health during the war. Of course it wasn't warm and fuzzy as it was a war and people were foraging for food to survive.

They do think life expectancy peaked during the war generation and is now going down with the baby boomers.

BBC - WW2 People's War - Eating acorns, and jam tarts

One day he had to take a boat around from Cardiff — he was a navigator, trained — took a boat ...

www.bbc.co.uk

Yeah without a doubt people will be sicker at a younger age due to the food these days. There is so much junk food around now, it's ridiculous.

 

[Reverend]

I think this is M&S.......

 

[eSsExBiRd]

I think this is M&S.......

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“there”

 

[Jc456]

“there”

Cuntry

 

[whathastheworldcometo]

My friend just told me that she bought a gigantic amount of coffee and condensed milk as she expects that the prices will go up.

She lives quite a frugal life, but she always has her freshly brewed coffee in the morning and I guess she wants to be clever.

She doesn't have a car, works from home, doesn't buy fresh flowers etc so apart from fruit and veg, gas and electricity she shouldn't be very affected.

 

[whoops!]

Just to add, I struggled to do our weekly shop for less than £140 this week. That's to feed 2 x adults, 1 x pre-schooler and 1 infant still on a box of formula roughly once a week. Oh and one dog too but she's small which helps in its own way. We do not eat meat but soya/oat milk is about £1.50-80 a liter which can eat into our shopping bill.

Our meal plan included cooking from scratch at least 2-3 times. It's half term here so had to buy extra snacks for the kids. But even getting our basics came in at £100. I do do online shopping as I can see how much our shop is as I go. If I did it at a store then I'd probably spend more

Shortages/subsistutes this week for us included:

Baby food pouches (again)
Frozen veg
Nappies
Sharing bags of crisps
Garlic bread

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@fireflies Can I make a tentative suggestion to invest in a slow cooker? I'll be batch cooking some recipes for the whole family using mine. It keeps energy costs low and it means you can leave it to cook away whilst you get on with other things.

Have you had a look at making your own oat milk? A friend makes there’s. It’s literally just oats and water, works out cheaper in the long run plus you can easily store big bags of oats.

 

[grumpy_curry]

Have you had a look at making your own oat milk? A friend makes there’s. It’s literally just oats and water, works out cheaper in the long run plus you can easily store big bags of oats.

It's pretty slimy though. If you can get some enzyme tablets or amylase from a brewer you'll get better results.

 

[Yel]

My friend just told me that she bought a gigantic amount of coffee

Doesn't coffee not last that long, especially once it's been roasted?

I find it quite stressful having full cupboards. I like to once or twice a year run everything down. Then stock it right back up and get stressed by it all

 

[rainbowlemon]

My friend just told me that she bought a gigantic amount of coffee and condensed milk as she expects that the prices will go up.

She lives quite a frugal life, but she always has her freshly brewed coffee in the morning and I guess she wants to be clever.

She doesn't have a car, works from home, doesn't buy fresh flowers etc so apart from fruit and veg, gas and electricity she shouldn't be very affected.

Coffee prices will go up following bad harvests in Brazil.

 

[whathastheworldcometo]

Coffee prices will go up following bad harvests in Brazil.

But we can just grow our own!
(Isn't this what the "Leave" voters said?)

 

[Thank(space)you]

Doesn't coffee not last that long, especially once it's been roasted?

I find it quite stressful having full cupboards. I like to once or twice a year run everything down. Then stock it right back up and get stressed by it all

Out of interest, why does it stress you out?

 

[Instashamous]

Doesn't coffee not last that long, especially once it's been roasted?

Yeah- it tends to start really tasting ‘stale’ around 4 weeks post roast. Keeping it sealed and out of sunlight helps. You can freeze it

 

[whathastheworldcometo]

Doesn't coffee not last that long, especially once it's been roasted?

I find it quite stressful having full cupboards. I like to once or twice a year run everything down. Then stock it right back up and get stressed by it all

No, as it is sealed and if you keep it in a cool space (or the fridge) it is fine to keep.

My parents also always buy ten packs at once and they don't notice a difference.

Once you open a pack you should use it pretty swiftly or freeze it.

 

[grumpy_curry]

I'd also rather have stale coffee beans than no coffee at all.