Cooking Crimes - In Defence of Reduced Price Food

We've had a bumper few weeks in the reduced price section of our local Mr T's (other supermarkets are available...) so my next 'Cooking Crime' is going to be exactly that!

 

I know there's a certain section of society who wouldn't dream of buying anything 'cheap' but personally, we can't see anything wrong with it at all and often manage to cram heaps of things into the corners of our freezer.
 

 

At our local shop, it seems to be around 5.30-6pm and then again about 9pm that everything gets heavily reduced. We've got a little 'reduced price footpath' around the store taking in the rotisserie counter first, followed by the fruit and veg bit, then it's on to the chilled shelves and finally the bread and cakes section.

 

I reckon about 75% of our loaves of bread are always reduced ones plus anything in a packet (like sausage rolls) gets chopped into bizesize pieces and decanted into boxes to be stored in the freezer. They can then be taken out over the next few months and used as snacks in our lunchboxes.

 

 

My criteria when searching out the cheap stuff is:

- is it something we like?
- will we actually get round to using it?

- how reduced is it? (you'll often find stuff like £2.00 down to £1.80 - usually not worth it)

- and the most important one, can it be frozen?

 

For the last question, I use my own judgement rather than what's actually written on the packet - we've found that you can freeze most vegtables and fresh fruit (things like berries, great for smoothies), all sorts of snack food like sausage rolls and pork pies, cooked meats, sandwich fillers, uncooked meat, ready meals, pastries and cakes (including ones with fresh cream in - even though the box says no, we've always frozen them and they taste fine), double cream, milk, every type of bread you can think of and even boxes of sandwiches (we keep cheap ones spare in the freezer for when we get back from a holiday or steam rally late at night and can't be bothered making a lunch for work).

 

And the best bargains of course, are always the cakes!

What about you? Are you a fan of the little yellow label?

 

PS. I'm also claiming this as my BEDM Day 22 post - the theme for today is 'Out of the Comfort Zone' and the one thing that's definitely out of my comfort zone is not following instructions or doing things properly, so for me to ignore the prompt and not do a BEDM post just feels a bit weird!