fresh fish … not

london 10.04am 18C sunny tuesday 2019

i had an email from steve last night telling me of belushi’s £1 burger offer and i got the voucher and will be going to the 12-1pm time slot to get it. it usually costs about £10. it should be quite nice and a chance to wander around the huge westfield shopping centre there as well. though the bar is actually right by the main street and not in the shopping centre. 

there was a bbc tv program on last night , called honest supermarket, and it says the fresh fish in supermarkets is not really fresh at all. it might be 20days old. or it might even be defrosted from frozen and sold as fresh.

the article did not mention the worm that came out of that fresh fish sample of cod. it was alive too. it really is stomach turning when i saw it. makes u wonder how safe it is to eat fish raw. i mean sometimes i buy salmon from the supermarket and eat it like sashimi, raw with wasabi. it was long ago, though because no one reduce price on salmon anymore… actually the worms might not be so bad, at least u can see it, it is the eggs that u cannot see, which is more dangerous.

just as well fresh fish is so expensive and they are so rare to be sold at reduced price (it makes me also wary now of buying reduced price fish from now on). but this is where i am saved from eating worms from raw fish, because the so called fresh salmon is so expensive i just dont buy them at all and so  i dont eat sashimi from the supermarket . haha. i guess if u are cooking them, it might not be so crucial, because everything gets killed in the cooking process doesn’t it? so maybe u can buy white fish like cod even if it is a bit past its best. after all the expert says you wont die of it, if it is cod, unlike mackerel or sardines. he even ate that fish that looked and smelled bad, though he spat it out. it seems the smell bad is not apparent until you cook it… i used to smell the fish raw before to see if it is bad, but it seems i should smell it when it is cooked… hmm, you live and learn new things. but we all season and marinate the fish in soya sauce, etc, so might that not mask the smell of bad fish? 

i remember a news story of a guy in some country overseas who eats sashimi, and got worms , so many of them it seems in his gut. i dont read of that happening here to uk people. maybe because sashimi is so expensive here no one can afford to eat it so regularly as to get worms from it. and maybe in restaurants it is so strict the rules about the salmon they buy from,  that worms and eggs never happen in the sashimi sold in restaurants or eating houses.

the expert says better to buy frozen fish, and that is what i have been doing myself. the program also talk about microplastics in bottled water…(though it is very tiny amounts), still… all the more reason to avoid bottled water and drink tap water . what is more, it did not mention the one use plastic bottles that litter the seas with all that water bottles being bought. 

 

cinema and supermarkets will be cool at least

london 11.26pm 26.6C dry (highest today36.9C 3.54pm) thursday 2018

we shall see if this is the official highest temperature of the day.

i was in my flat so escaped the worst of it. with the curtains drawn, it can be quite cool in the flat. perhaps if i had been outside i would have felt it was like an oven. i went out at about 7.30pm when it had cooled down a bit. went to the tesco and found a yogurt selling for £1 for 1kg. it is a brand i have not heard of , henna, and it is a set yogurt. it is quite nice, and a nice change from the sloshy yogurts. nice to know there is a £1 1kg yogurt to buy when i feel like having a probiotic topup. the previous promotion, of that brand lancashire farm that i had been buying is now over and have reverted to the usual price of £1.40. 

i have been seeing this mission impossible film that is being shown on tv now… the 5th in the series. yesterday they showed the 4th. it does seem quite repetitive actually, car chases seem to take up quite a lot of these films to fill up the 3hrs which they run … i think it too long really.

all these mission impossible films we are being shown  now on tv are an advert for the latest film, that is released on 25july. they are supposed to whet your appetite for more of these, but i think it made me feel overfull, and satiated with the formula.

perhaps the heat outside will encourage more people to go to the cinema, for the cold air if nothing else. we might see a spike in cinema attendance. though it does encourage me to go into the supermarkets whenever i see one near me, just to cool off. 

added 27.7.18 friday 11.21am 29.7C sunny. looks like the official highest temperature yesterday was 35.1C. 

been buying rice

london 5.52pm 10.9C cloudy. wednesday 2016

i bought a 10kg bag from tesco last night, when i went there to buy oats. they actually have this sale on for quite some time and i have not bought any because the sale goes on till  21st june and i think i have plenty of time to wait. however, yesterday i bought one. because i have only one 5kg pack at home and was afraid i might run out. added. 7.53am sunday 8.5.16. it was allready quite good bargain at £10 for 10kg, but yesterday it was further reduced to £9 for 10kg. so i bought another one. it is a kohinoor brand, and if u think there is a catch somewhere i could not see it. the expiry date is 2019.

i read recently about poor harvest due to the drought in thailand and india, which is allready raising the cost of rice, but it might all go right again if the rains comes on schedule this monsoon. thailand is releasing its stockpile of rice, but so far, price of thai rice is still quite high. perhaps a lot of the rice is spoilt, by rice weevils , so there is not as many to flood the market. 

but as luck would have it i looked this morning at who is selling cheap rice and found asda selling 5kg rice for £4. i was there on monday and did not notice it. either that or they only now put that lot up for sale at this price.

when i went there this morning i saw they have loads of that rice , some for £4 and others for £4.5o for 5kg. the brands are rather unknown, ashoka, which i found was the same brand which i got for the same price last year. so i bought 2, because that was as much as i could carry. ( i searched my blog and found this post about buying that same brand last year. it was on 18 May 2015.

later after my lunch, i went back there and brought along my trusty wheeled shopping bag and bought another 3 bags. so i am all fixed up with rice now, should last me about 7-8months this lot. 

so it looks like they are starting the sale of cheap rice . the tesco one i bought is, granted, a more expensive brand, koh-i-noor, which usually sells for £14 for 10kg. they have extra long grains. but though they look nice when cooked… the taste (or rather the no -taste, because i think rice takes on the taste of whatever dish u eat it with ) is the same as the others , as far as i can tell. some rice gives off a nice fragrance when it is cooking but it doesnot seem to linger on the rice when it is cooked. 

and a lot depands on how much water u use , too much and it gets soggy , nevermind how expensive it is in the first place, it will end up the same as cheap rice if u add too much water. really cheap rice needs a lot of water to cook. if u put in too little, it wont cook properly and if u put in enough to cook it, it becomes soft and mushy, at least that is an observation of mine with those 40p/kg basic rice that u can buy. they are very cheap, but like i said, they do get mushy.  

 some people like soft rice, and i remember as kids, we always get soft rice, because that is how my mum cooks it. ( i suspect my mom can only afford the cheap rice but i certainly love to eat it, when i was young. which kinds of confirms for me that when u are young, u dont really develop any refinement of taste, all you care about is if that assuages your hunger, if it does, it is good. haha)

it is only nowadays when i am used to basmati rice which cooks with less water and ends up with  discrete grains of rice so that it looks nice, that i am liking it that way. 

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a very fancy looking package with that koh i noor rice. but i am not influenced by the packaging.

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easy sunday

london 4.38pm 10.4C misty earlier in the day, but now clear and blue skies. sunday 2016

the govt wanted to bring in all day trading for sunday but was defeated, by the SNP of all things. haha. you might wonder why the govt is so keen on bringing this , when most of us are ok with big shops having to close early and letting convenience stores do business later on the only day they dont have to compete with the big stores. it also means we can access the reduced prices earlier in the day, like 4pm today when i went to the tesco and got reduced minced beef 750mg for 60p , reduced from £3. 

its not often i can catch that, because the stores are now wising up to it and not having so much reductions on a sunday just so there wont be too much of a fight for it. so there were not many people hanging about the reduced shelves, and no one grabbed the minced beef before i could. haha. i am making a dry curry out of some of it, and a smaller portion i shall steam it when i cook my rice.

i myself have stopped going there for the reduced price on a sunday, simply because of their policy of not having a lot of stuff out to reduce. it so happened that i went there this time to stock up on oats, i buy the basic oats, there was only one bag left and just got lucky hitting it at the time when they were putting the final reductions on the stuff not sold.

i notice the supermarkets  now spread their reductions to the other weekdays and later in the day too, just to reduce the big scramble.

i am sure the workers themselves must be happy that the govt is defeated and they can close the store at 5pm and go home and still be able to enjoy  daylight when the leave the store . and for all us bargain hunters we are glad they are closing early just so we can get our bargains earlier too. 

but online shopping has made this ruling of early closing on sunday rather disadvantageous for the stores as opposed to the online shops…that is why the govt wants to allow all stores to open late on sundays. if they dont,  it will be giving the online stores an advantage over the physical stores. in some ways the online stores are really having an unfair advantage they dont have overheads like rent, etc.

and for us bargain hunters they never have any sell by date reductions either.that is why  i think it would be a bad day if shops and stores are no more and we all have to shop online.  

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it’s very easy to cook and very quick too. smells heavenly and i just cannot resist eating it straightaway. 

daily life

london 5.07pm 7.7C sunny clear blue sky thursday 2016

its only become this nice weather a few hours ago. so we can see a nice sunset now and every thing looks lovely. i got the bus to cross the vauxhall bridge on my way to morrisons in camberwell to buy the chicken legs (5 in a pack)1.35kg they have on offer, reduced from £3.50 to £2.

and got a nice view of the setting sun and river views (its at low tide) when i re -crossed it on the way back. one lady along the route came aboard carry a large pile of the free newspapers, evening standard to put on the bus. i was right glad she did, i took one and thanked her when she came to sit next to me at the front of the bus.  but she said the bus driver dont like it, as he says people take it and throw it on the floor and litter his bus. haha.

i can understand why the bus driver might object, because it was quite a big pile, and even though i took two, one to leave in the hallway of my block for the other residents, i could see a newspaper on the ground when i left the bus. some one had dropped it on the floor. people can be bastards sometimes. haha.

i was very glad to get it though. 

i got a £5 morrisons gift voucher from the daily mail points system.  so i used that to buy 2 packs. i got change for that of £1. it is always nice to get something for free. hoho. 

earlier i went to the morrisons branch in strutton ground,(its a pedestrianised road, with pop up food stalls that cater to the lunch crowd, as well as shop restaurants, like the fish and chips place.) itis near new scotland yard offices (sold now to be torn down for luxury flats), and found the shop is gutted, with some workmen inside dismantling the shelves. they have closed it. i have heard of them closing branches, no mention of this one being one of them, but i guess it cannot be making much money, even though it was only opened about a year or so.

 and one store closed and another open. not a morrisons, but  i saw another one by sainsburys opened near me. it is below a block of luxury flats called great minster on marsham street. it is opposite the former westminster hospital, (which was converted to flats long ago).

i thought the planning application had been refused by westminster council, because some locals have objected, but it is here now, so i guess sainsburys must have reapplied with a scaled down plan and that was allowed. it is now just a local sainsburys, whilst before the plan was to take over the whole ground floor of that block.  i guess it is nice to have a sainsburys so near me. as usual someone else will lose out; the small corner store in the grosvenor estate will lose business. 

it will provide competition to the local tesco, that is hidden away in the home office block of govt building. i went in this new sainsburys to have a look and found they had reduced priced groceries, i cannot imagine they are long enough there to accummulate sell by dated groceries, so they must have reduced it as a opening ploy.

i bought a pack of 350mg mushrooms, for 45p. mushrooms are real nice in an omelette. what with all the luxury flats, and the govt offices around, it is doing roaring business. i went at lunch hour and there were queues to pay, they all look like office workers buying their lunch. we here in london are really spoilt for choice in the supermarkets that are like so close to each other. 

new year present to all users of the tube and buses today

london 12.51pm 11.6C cloudy. 2016 saturday

the oyster system is down so everyone can travel the tube and buses free. haha. great isn’t it?

most people dont work on saturday, so it is a chance to go out and about or even do some shopping and get a free ride as well.

but today  the new fares come into operation, people talk about a rise in fares,as if it is something to get bothered about,  but they dont mention that it is only 1%. people should be saying it is great… 1% rise is like no rise at all, and should be a cause for celebration and the news should be trumpetting that instead of putting on a long face… 

what they should be saying to all these commuters is … ask  yourself why u are using the tube and buses to get to work. you keep complaining the service is poor ,atrocious, and yet u continue to use it? why? get a boris bike, or even better get a free bike to use. i found 3 bikes in the recycing  bin area. so can  you. then all travel is free if u cycle. just  think of all that money u save, not to mention u will be a  hell of a lot healthier.

 i went to the library to read the saturday papers. i thought i could read yesterday’s papers too seeing it is a holiday and the library is shut on that day. but one of the regulars, a woman, told me the newspapers were not published that day.added. 4.1.15 there were two copies of every newspaper on the shelves, one of them dated 1.1.16 . so there were newspapers printed on new year day but it is only now that it has come onto the library shelves. 

on the way back i thought i shall go into the supermarkets on my way home and saw mince pies (pack of 6) being sold for 10p each pack. well, every year i know we get this glut of cheap mince pies after christmas and new year. so i guess i am fortunate to hit it on the day they reduced it wholesale. haha. 

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6 in each pack. i bought 6 packs. they can be freezed. i like them warmed first in the microwave. they go very well with tea or coffee.

these are one of the nice things about living in london. they are little things, but you will find that it is these little things that can make or break a person’s liking of where they live.

i read a blog of an expat in penang who mentioned something that the tourist office never say… hordes of young malay motocycle riders who visit penang for the new year weekend, and invade the quiet of the place and make a mess and a lot of noise and disrupt everything for the residents. it is one of the things about any tourist places … it can get swamped. visitors can and will create temporary disturbances because of the small size of the town, or place.

whereas here in london, it  is so big , it can absorb any amount of tourists and we residents can ignore them, or never notice their effect on our daily lifes. and if anything does go wrong, like the oyster system not recording the card, well then, we all get free rides . haha. 

i live in the centre of london and you would think i wont be able to move without trampling on the toes of tourists who will be blocking my way with their aimless sudden stopping to take pictures … would n’t you? but actually no, i hardly see them. ( of course they are there, but they just merge into the crowds of workers, commuters, and what have you that a big city always attract.)

bbc website is down

london 2.32pm 8.9C cloudy friday 2016

ooh, i have to remember to write 2016 instead of the habit- forming 2015.

the bbc website is down, because i went in there just now and it says this website not available.

yesterday i tried to get the bbc iplayer in the morning i think, on my tv, and it did not work. i was hoping to see the attenborough narrative of the great barrier reef.

(though when i got to see it, i find it rather dull, and not a patch on the monty hall 3part showing of the great barrier reef. that one is superb, showing not only the reef, but the rain forest that borders it and affecting it.

though to give it its due, the attenborough one is only the first part, and there are two more. so maybe later ones will be better.)

and i read a news article saying the iplayer went down. it was temporary, and now today the website itself is down. so someone is hacking the bbc. or do u think it is the server not being able to change its time to 2016 and got stuck at 2015. haha.

it shows that the internet is vulnerable to such an attack, and that might be the achilles heel of the internet.

if we get too depandant on it, like everything runs with needing to be on the internet , we are vulnerable to such attacks.

so maybe govts should pause and rethink about connecting us to everything. or make the systems have different servers or whatever, so that one attack dont stop all. or maybe i am putting too much into one such incident. after all, the bbc website may be out, but the tv bbc programs are running fine. and i can see them on tv.

i am enjoying watching tv more now that i got high definition big tv digital screen. it really is amazing the picture quality. it shows the nature programs to full advantage and they are i think the best to benefit from it.

oh, 2.49pm the bbc website is back again. so maybe it is not a hack. haha. 

added. 11.06pm someone in a comment said it might not be a hack by foreign power but just very heavy traffic so heavy that it cannot cope. the explanation is plausible, i missed the bbc attenborough  program because it clashed with the bbc 2 charlie brookers 2015 wipe, which is much funnier and which i am glad i saw in preference to the attenborough one. 

added. really strange, it is 3.31pm and the bbc website is down again. i wonder what is going on.

it is drizzling, and i was going to the supermarket to find if there are any reduced price food, i know it should not influence me, but i decided not to go to the supermarket .

the rain just made me pause and ask myself do i really want to go? and i find i am not too bothered if i get reductions or not these days. this is because there are not many of these reductions … or i dont find such reductions anymore. the times when i go and dont find the prices reduced to low enough makes me less inclined to go on the off chance of finding such reductions.

i doubt the supermarkets will miss my money. haha.

yesterday i went to the sainsburys to see if i can get reductions but the shelves were swept clean of these bargains, none in other words. and i was only able to get some basic sausages (reduced to 19p, which was exactly what i wanted for breakfast tomorrow of eggs and sausages. so it turned out good)  simply because there was one shop assistant doing the reductions of three packs and no one else hunting for bargains.

the place was crowded with people who were doing ordinary shopping. it amazes me to see so many still doing shopping, and the shelves showed empty places suggesting it has been cleaned out by shoppers. 

what?! did these people eat all they bought over the christmas so that they have to buy some more on new year eve??? or are they all shopping for booze. !!

but bargains in food are quite scarce nowadays. that is a trend i noticed.  at least when i go there, i dont see any and not as low in price as i would like. so now i am rather less inclined to go just to chance it.

i think it is a good thing, because i checked my food expense same time last year and found i bought quite a lot, and all due to these reductions that tempt me to buy them. this year i dont have these reductions and so end up not spending so much on food. 

 

 

 

cheap veg part 2

london 10.33am 14.3C cloudy wednesday 2015

i see an advert from asda in the daily mail this morning giving 39p veg, but only for brocolli, parsnips,carrots, brussels sprouts. so not as good as the tesco ones, with it’s additional offers on potatoes, cauliflower(instead of brocolli).

i read also in the financial pages that the main supermarkets have lost sales to the budget supermarkets. so that might explain why they are reducing their veg. well, here is where competition is working to the benefit of us consumers.

but i am sure nearer christmas they will recoup their profits when the prices will rise and the public start buying seriously for christmas dinner.

most of us cook and eat in for christmas as almost all the shops are closed, and what keeps open are every expensive; not to mention all public transport is shut down. so supermarket shopping for food is huge in the run up to christmas. (that is why i avoid it as last minute shoppers get manic ) but once that is over, than expect to get lots of bargains in food as they sell off unsold foods. late christmas eve is a good time to go prowling the supermarkets. haha.

if  like me, you dont celebrate christmas, this time of year can be real peaceful and blissful. once u avoid all the food buying and the gifts buying, there is no stress anymore. that leaves u to really enjoy the holiday in your own way.

 added. i just now had a look at the aldi website, and they are selling brocolli, carrots,potatoes at 29p.  so even cheaper. no wonder the main supermarkets find it hard to compete. 

‘Bloodbath in Bradford’ in wake of £792m Morrisons losses – The Star

‘Bloodbath in Bradford’ in wake of £792m Morrisons losses – The Star.

a nice change of a new broom sweeping clean sacking the management instead of the ground floor staff. usually the underlings get the mass sackings when a business loses money. i think i shall shop more often at morrisons.

When your shopping isn’t quite what it seems… | Jools Oughtibridge

When your shopping isn’t quite what it seems… | Jools Oughtibridge.

i have often noticed an e next to the weight listed in some items, and thought it was some rule concocted by the EU. haha. but this post tells me e stands for estimate. and the actual weight can vary as much as 1.5% 9%.  so it means if u see that , go and weigh it to chose the one that weighs more. or at least to not chose those that weigh less.

reading it again, i am aghast to read that for small weights it can be allowed to vary as much as 9%!!! something labelled 50g e can weigh 45g. 

this is not the E numbers u see in the ingredients list to stand for preservatives and chemicals.

added. i took a can of mandarin segments in syrup, which i have in my store cupboard, it says net weight 312g e, drained weight 175g. and it weighed 400g on my scale. but it does not make for easy comparison. as the weight of the can can add to it. i guess the drained weight would be the one to compare.

which makes me ask the question how to compare when the weight of the can is not given. in some cases we just cannot make a meaningful comparison.

 i got a cambell soup can ( cream of mushroom), and it says 395g e, and when i weigh it, it is 400g. so how much of that weight is the can? it means there is less contents than the listed weight would suggest.  it is allowed 3% variant. it can be 11.85g less. and the first item on the ingredient list is water.  so the variant weight is just the amount of water. you are buying flavoured water. yet it tastes so nice haha.

i hasten to add i dont buy them. simon buys them as he uses it to make spaghetti sauce. it is a very easy and quick way to make a white type sauce for pasta is why. haha. i confess i like it when he makes it. he buys the condensed version so he can control the consistency of the sauce.