Saturday 9 June 2012

Shelling out

Take one 500g bag of peas, priced up at £2.50. Buy them on the day they are due to go out of date, and when they are reduced to 5p.

Remove the peas from their pods. My what a lot of pods you get. You could make peapod wine out of them I suppose, but I am not into wine making, so mine will go on the compost heap.

You end up with an average size coffee mug, almost full of peas. Not a lot for £2.50 but an absolute bargain for 5p. I am amazed that anybody would pay the full price.

Then the question arises of why anybody would buy a bag of these very expensive peas, when they can get a 1kg bag of frozen peas for 99p.  Image borrowed from Tesco web site.

I reckon they are sold in the pods because people think they are getting a fresher product, it's a trick to get us to cough up more money. Commercially grown peas are harvested, transported to the factory, frozen and packed within a few hours. You can't get them much fresher than that unless you grow them yourself.

It seems to be the trend now to sell vegetables while still attached to their stalks, with the idea they stay fresh for longer. I dont want to purchase a two foot long stalk full of brussel sprouts and have to lug that home. I don't want want the tops of the carrots or beetroot taking space up in my shopping bag. Next thing you know they will be digging up whole plants roots and all complete with lumps of soil. No thank you very much.

While not wanting my vegetables peeled and chopped up for me in a plastic bag, that is being lazy, I only require the edible parts please. Oh well, back to shelling these peas, three more bags to go. Spose I can put up with it just this once being as they were so cheap. Toodle pip. 

16 comments:

  1. Am I a complete philistine or do frozen peas normally taste nicer? x

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  2. You can replant tops and get more vegetables. Besides, people eat the tops of plants, too. You are throwing away food that could be put into a smoothie, in a salad, or cooked in a soup. I eat turnip greens and not the turnip. Don't throw away edible food. Actually, by having the tops on, you can tell if the vegetable is fresh or not. Those fresh peas look like the kind we eat in the pod. Would the pod not be good for making a broth?

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  3. I bought some loose peas the other day, I just needed a handful for my soup, they were £3.30 for a Kilo! I know that frozen peas are cheaper but I don't have a freezer and they don't sell handfuls of those. As lovelygrey says, they taste nicer anyway, because they are frozen almost the moment they are out of the pod and don't have a chance to get starchy.

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  4. I love frozen peas. I have never, ever bought peas in their pods (£2.50 you say!!) As Alan Carr once said when do you save a pea for best?! I do like to grow my own and mine are coming up nicely this year. The only problem is that I never seem to have enough for a whole meal because I pick them eat them whilst I'm in the garden! They taste too nice. But at 5p MQ why bother even growing them - fab find!

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  5. No, I've never understood why people want to pay a lot more for peas in pod rather than frozen, or a tin of them.
    Must admit I love to shell them and eat then just like sweets.

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  6. Last summer my parents grew peas on their allotment, when we went to visit them/help out with DD we would just sit her next to the row of peas in her sunhat and she'd eat her way along the row quite happily. She loves popping them open perhaps I should hire her out to you lol
    x x x

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  7. I loooove eating them straight from the plant too! :D

    I would never buy these at the full price either. Frozen vegetables is usually the best way to buy fresh products, because like you said they are all sorted and frozen within a few hours.

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  8. This is one reason I keep a few laying hens :)

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  9. Like you I'm constantly on the look out for reductions on good quality food. But I can never find things as cheap as you do. Supermarkets obviously reduce things more sensibly in your neck of the woods, and therefore probably don't throw much away, which really is very good all round.

    Jean

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  10. Peapod soup MQ!
    cook in stock, with onions, garlic, any herbs you want, seasoning, whizz, strain and ta-dah !
    serve with crusty bread,croutons or a dollop of creme fraiche if you have any.

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  11. Then there's always peapod wine of course ! very potent if you can wait.

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  12. My son has bought a 2 ft. stalk of bussel sprouts before at a local vegetable stand. I buy frozen and fresh vegies depending on the price because we have a small freezer and have venison. I love summer because of the great fruits and vegies here in California. Wish I could get it as inexpensive as you.

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  13. I have to say I prefer a stalk of sprouts as they really do keep longer, and as I'm the only one that eats them here it's a benefit.
    The 5p peas were certainly worth the effort of podding - a job I used to love as a child :o)

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  14. I like sprouts off the stick, but when I buy them like that they are usually from the farm so very fresh.

    My Mum always talks about 'garden peas' if she buys podded peas. I keep telling her that they are grown in a huge field and are not so fresh as frozen. Also, when you're shelling them you eat half of them, which isn't bad as they're better raw.

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  15. If you buy sprouts on a stalk and cut a cross in the bottom of the stalk and put it in a pot of water, the sprouts will keep for much longer. I cook and eat beetroot leaves, and then eat the beetroot later. I like to buy 'dirty potatoes' and 'dirty carrots' (i.e. with some of the soil still on)from the farmers' market because they keep much longer. I don't know what they do to supermarket carrots, but they always seem watery. I wonder if they find a way of washing them so they absorb some of the water?

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  16. Carrie,
    I buy 180 lbs of sweet potatoes at a time from the farm where they grow. If I get the dirty ones, they last twice as long as the washed ones. Yes, carrots can be made to soak up water to look fresher and weigh more.

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