UK - Resources for help getting food during quarantine and other supermarket related problems

Bearing in mind that sainsbury's is/was charging me a tenner for 3 months midweek deliveries (so up to to 36 but more realistically 4-6 deliveries) paying £4.50 per delivery would simply mean less orders for the same amount of shopping.

Which would equal more sick days for delivery drivers, as I live in a flat with no lifts.

Or forcing me to go out into supermarkets, much more often, as I can't carry much more than a couple of days shopping a time.

All seems very poorly thought out from my position, which probably isn't that different from a million plus other disabled people on benefits.

 

Tesco aren't taking any new customers for their delivery saver plans. I was on an anytime plan but have just swapped it to a mid-week one, that is charged at £3.99 a month or £3.49 a month if you commit for 6 months. I feel like I should keep this monthly plan whilst we have the Covid-19 situation in this country as I still fear a 2nd wave. I'm going to try Waitrose though now they have some available slots with free delivery.

 

I keep meaning to ask whether anyone has tried Sainsbury's "Chop Chop" service, I think they call it - up to 20 items delivered in one hour, it claims. It's not available everywhere.

 

My food parcel has arrived and it's 'better'.

Variations on the typical parcel I receive include;

I got wholemeal bread.

I got tinned fruit (unfortunately in syrup but it can be rinsed)

I got tinned peas (unfortunately one large tin, so really convenient for veg for a main meal for 7 days)

I got ratatouille which I've never had before, but is seemingly some form of veg stew.

Instead of any fresh veg.

I got no carrots, no onion.

I got baked beans with sausages, and 3 tins of carrot and coriander soup.

I got a tinned fray bentos pie, which normally I would moan about but I'm experimenting to see if it's possible to cook one satisfactorily in my oven (so far out of 3 pies I have not managed it, although I have got better, by switching it around to a different shelve mid cook - I suspect that they simply don't work in small fan ovens but I'll kep trying while they keep giving me pies - everyone needs a hobby, useful food would be nice but a hobby will have to do), so all sacrificial pies are currently of use.

I've been promoted on the biscuit front and am now back up to mcvities digestives, having mostly been on custard creams or some weird 'digestives' - over twice the thickness of every other digestive I've ever seen, not actually bad, just not good, odd and not digestives.

I am still hoping to be deemed worthy enough to be granted hobnob status before they stop supplying food parcels.

My fresh fruit is the ubiquitous south african apples and 5 small clementines.

My potatoes are the same ones as I've been getting for weeks, very internally damaged and lots of wastage cutting it out. It's taken 5 medium sized potatoes to make enough small cubes to add to a broth, it would normal take one or 2. These potatoes cannot be used washed and steamed, they cannot be used for chips, they can, with a large amount of wastage be used for a bad mash (as due to the damage they cannot be cut into standard sized lumps so cook unevenly), and as mentioned they can be diced (with heavy wastage) and used as thickener. At least it's removed the pressure to eat potatoes with virtually every meal to try and use them up, 2kg minus 70% wastage leaves me with a more manageable 500-600g of potatoes a week to get through.

Further evidence that absolutely no nutritionist input was involved in the planning of these food parcels was provided in the form of the clementines.

People are supposed to eat at lest 5 a day of fruit and veg.

According to this;

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/5-a-day-portion-sizes/

a portion of fruit is normally considered to be about 80g, which in terms of small clementines (or small apples) is 2-3.

Yet they supply 5 a week (the government's insistence that the week only has 5 days is very long standing, but may now be a little outdated) when what they should really supply is at least 14 of each of the 2 fruits they often supply, offset by the vegetable content supplied (1 tin of peas and 1 tin of ratatouille, obviously this is officially enough fresh veg for a week).

A back of the envelope calculation would suggest that they 'may' have supplied under half of the portions of fruit and veg they themselves recommend, with most of these being from significantly processed sources, which they advise avoiding.

Tinned tomatoes are of course a theme, but given what else they supply even I, who routinely use a lot of tomatoes in my cooking, am more than a little bemused as to what I am supposed to do with them, other than eat them straight from the tin, or blitz them and make tomato juice.

Protein is of course supplied mainly by baked beans, with one tin of tuna (in brine so great for following their recommendations on avoiding salt) and one processed into oblivion pie (containing 4% protein according it's own labeling) which I would imagine would probably not be recommended by my doctor, or virtually anyone this century, as a suitable thing to eat.

Nutrition aside, one pie (which cannot be reheated once cooked, to make more than one meal, I know this as I've tried - but that aside, the whole pie is 570 kcal, 20g of protein, so maybe 2 portions, if it could be reheated), one tin of tuna, pasta, rice, potatoes, no fresh veg - where is the 7 main meals to go with the baked beans on toast and soup that the diet mainly consists of? They surely can't intend for 5 main evening meals to be pasta cooked with a tin of tomatoes, possibly with baked beans added - I'm not 3.

These things weren't a one off rush job just to make sure people didn't starve, they've been knocking them out, in this form, for months now.

Yes - I should be doing something else, several things actually, but instead I'm pointlessly ranting.

 

My parcels are exactly like yours.

Except I graduated to hobnobs several weeks ago.

 

I managed to get my first Waitrose order today. No substitutions or missing items, so that was pleasing. Mind you, it did include 10 bars of Green and Blacks butterscotch chocolate and 10 bars of Green and Blacks milk chocolate (it was on offer with a third off, so made sense to stock up...).

It's still hard to get slots with them in my area, possibly because the nearest store is 15 miles away and it is fairly small. They don't even have a store in Taunton, the largest town in the county of Somerset.​

 

I did buy a box of 13 bars of Maya Gold off Ebay back in March, they weren't any cheaper than in the supermarket but neither Tesco nor Sainsburys were stocking this flavour. I like to use this to make a chocolate fudge for the flourless chocolate-almond cake I still haven't made for my 'birthday' (I cut it into individual portion size squares, freeze them to harden them, then coat them all over). I've been very restrained with this premium chocolate as when I checked the cupboard earlier I still have 9 of them left! Quite amazing for me, so my new stash should last me for quite a while. But I need to confess I also bought 23 bars of the German milka 'cow' bars (worked out about £1 a bar) back at the start of the pandemic, which I also love. These did get finished almost 2 months ago...(that's when I had to start re-appropriating the Green's and Black stash).

 

I've just put in an order from this organically certified company, which I've just discovered. Hopefully this will make my organic veg a little more interesting:

https://www.westcountryspice.com/

I think this must be where Riverford obtains a lot of the spices/relishes/sauces they use in their recipe boxes.

 

Ah, the joy of chocolate delivery day....

 

We may need to urgently increase the education budgets in the UK

My food parcel arrived and once I remembered that (found it in the hall where I had left it after bringing it inside) I found this ;



This is a tin of meat, it's been supplied as one anyway.

Granted it may contain the same amount of 'meat' than the steak version, but now they aren't even attempting to supply something that a person, who'd never encountered fray bentos products, might think is meat.

The category isn't called 'Pie' it's called Meat (tinned) - or something like that - my point is that cheese, not normally considered meat - the only commonality between this and the steak pie is the amount of the main named constituent on the label they both do not contain.

So either the people doing this can't read, or don't know the difference between meat and cheese - either way - their educational needs have not been met.

(At this point the idea that a fray bentos product can in any way be described as 'meat' sort of drops into insignificance in light of this. What'll I get next week - the vegan version as my weekly tin of 'meat'?)

ETA - I also didn't get any hobnobs, or even digestives, of any type, it's back to the custard creams for me.

My tin of fruit (sliced peaches in syrup) has been hit/crushed so hard that I am very surprised the ring pull opening hasn't.

Looks like I have no choice but to try and make some form of peach crumble, today, don't want to, probably not capable of it, but.....if I don't then it'll get left and forgotten and it must have damaged the inner lining so the contents will be 'questionable'

 

I've just discovered this company which produces organic artisan pasta which actually has nutritional value. So I've put in a £30 order (for the free shipping) and that will be enough pasta for my 'store cupboard' in the event online shopping becomes difficult during the winter.

https://carleschi.co.uk/about-us/

I got a few 500g bags of plain white pasta in my government food parcels but most of them contained 500g packs of bland plain white spaghetti (so now have 8 packs of this stuff). I'll be giving most of that away to the food bank now I've replaced it with decent quality pasta.

I have also accrued 23 cans of Heinz tomato soup, over 20 cans of tomatoes in various form (chopped, plum etc) and about 20 jars of the tomato based 'bolognese sauce' (made up with 80% tomato/tomato puree). I think about half the parcel contents had some form of tomato in them - just as well I don't have an allergy to them! A lot of this will go to the food bank once I organise my own 'emergency' store of items that I'd actually enjoy eating.

 

As mentioned in an earlier post I have had one delivery from Waitrose. I just got an email today stating they are offering me priority access as below:

So they picked me up without me asking them to give me priority access. That said, there doesn't seem to be many more slots than when I was non-priority! Slots in my area are still only showing 2 weeks ahead.

I wasn't overly impressed by the BB dates on some of the fresh items (much worse than Tesco), I will see if getting a mid-week delivery improves this. I wouldn't need to have a delivery more than once a fortnight maximum.

 

A belated update with an unrelated question;

My last food parcel arrived on Friday.

It contained another generous portion of meat for this week - one fray bentos cheese and onion pie.

It did not contain any potatoes, or tinned tomatoes.

From reviews on UK supermarket sites it seems that the problem of rotten/damaged potatoes has been common over the last couple of months - so maybe not bidfood choosing a supplier with dodgy stock but all suppliers having dodgy stock.

Which bodes well.

Now for the 'unrelated' bit.

Sainsbury's is still not trusted to actually deliver my shopping, as they had a habit of leaving it in the street, it being policy to not enter any buildings - or so I was told.

Tescos has more than doubled their charge for delivery - to £4.50 - which maybe great as it's now a standard charge so if you were paying more than this your costs for delivery will drop. I was paying £2 a delivery, so....

Which leaves ASDA.

Yesterday I could log into ASDA. Today I can't - everything else works on the site, just nothing that requires me to be logged in. So all I get is the top and the bottom of the page, with mostly working links, but anything where I would need to be logged in - spinning circle of 'erm...dunno...who are you again?'. A online supermarket where not only can I not see or modify my orders, but I also can't see what they have available, or anything else, other than useless help pages.

This morning it announced that they had combined my 'George' and ASDA accounts, and asked me to login to my, very old, george account. I discovered that it had a different password to my main ASDA account but dutifully followed instructions and it logged me into 'George'.

I am wondering if they are now using that password for my ASDA groceries account, and that is the cause of the problem, as as I said, different passwords.

I have tried deleting cookies for the last day, I've also tried using IE (which initially worked but then once it timed out due to inactivity is displaying similar behaviour - only completely blank pages in that now).

I have tried on my phone, which works - bt the display is tiny, and the interface more limited, so not my prefered option.

Has anyone else noticed this issue - coz if it isn't fixed sharpish then I am going to have to switch to an online supermarket grocery site that y'know..actually lets me order things, which ATM is looking like it's got to be Tesco's.

 

Have just logged into my asda account as normal @Wonko I'm using the latest version of Edge. I dont, to my recollection, have a george account though, not with my current email at any rate

 

Thank you @JemPD

It eventually timed out the spinning circle and gave me a log in dialog.

I have now established that it is not a password issue, as I tried my old george password and it rejected it.

So them merging the accounts today is probably coincidence.

(Still not sure how the accounts can be merged with different credentials, but what do I know lol))

When using my asda password instead of getting a virtually never ending spinning circle of doom I now get a 'we are experiencing a technical hiccup' page.

So looks like they may have an issue with chrome, and also IE11 (which they do say they no longer support but it did work better than chrome, for a bit)

 

I had a similar problem accessing the ASDA site a few weeks ago @Wonko and thought I'd have to stop using them which is a shame because I prefer ASDA to Tesco now. It stopped working on IE - I'd just get a blank page with the ASDA logo at the top and when I tried to log on with the internet bit of my tablet it wouldn't let me sign in - it just kept returning me to the sign in page. I had to download the ASDA app from Google Playstore on my tablet and was able to place orders fine using that. I eventually downloaded Micrososft Edge on my laptop and that works fine as well now.

 

Thank you @meg22

I've, almost literally, just managed to amend and place my order.

30 minutes ago it would let me see the order but clicking on amend 'crashed' the site - giving the 'technical hiccup' page.

10 minutes ago amend was suddenly working.

So, for now, I'm reasonably happy with my order, that's to be delivered on the 16th

Now I've just got to check it every few days to make sure that any offers are not removed and returned to normal prices, as asda don't seem to let people know when an offer expires, unlike every other supermarket anywhere ever.

(Gotta keep on top of things)

 

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/n...e-anger-after-delivery-cost-changes---what-y/