h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Of supermarkets.

I've used tem for years, probably decades, since I left home; partly then, for a lot of the time, they were the only shops I could access for day-to-day grocerys.

Likewise, W, living out for decades, in a village outside the city here, didn't have any local shops, and the only grocerys he could easily get (or get at all), were his once weekly sharing a ride with a friend, to the nearby big out of town/city supermarket.

For the past two decades I never ate any fruit.
I now eat fruit every day. I don't like fruit. I didn't like fruit. - nope. I always liked fruit, but I just didn't like the tasteless rubbish from the supermarekts. Now we're buying fresh, from local little stores, fruit, and it actually has taste, I want to eat it

Vegetables. I've always loved mushrooms, but only now, buying them from a tiny independant Turkish shop we use, nearby, and from a market stall, plus the little Indian shop nextdoor, do they, suddenly, once more, taste like mushrooms... - a mushroom risotto no longer needs excess cheese added, to give it flavour, the mushrooms flavour it, as, unlike supermarket ones, they're not previous frozen mushrooms.

onions. onions is onions, right. no. no way.... these things, are a fraction of the price of the supermarket ones (£1.50 for a 2 KG sack), and, so fresh... - even my decent kitchen knife struggles to top adn tail them, and the outer skin[s] of the onion, are tightly anealed to the onions surface.... no 'membranes' between layers of the onion, and... - they almost even make my defunct tear glands work when I chop them up... they regain texture during cooking, and flavour too....

All of which means, we buy fruit and veg either every day, or every other day; William's now learning Turkish (which has mightily impressed the young girl in the Turkish little supermarket store), and we useualy visit that shop each day after the gym, on the way home, to get fruit, and any more veg we need, plus any more Turkish cheese (which is gorgeous) and pick up their tinned stuff, beans, bolotti kidney etc, tinned tomatos (all cheaper than the big supermarket anyhow).

and... if the veg has flavour, there isn't so much need to add extra calories all the time from other ingredients...

I've come up with a gorgeous bolotti bean and basmati rice, mushroom and onion sort of pilaf which asides tasting great, having very low calories, does wonders for ones fibre intake and digestive performance

Tonight dinner was;
Pork and chorizo sausages (from local butcher; got four to use, two each; so substantial only used two sausages for both W and me, so have two left).
mushrooms (from the Indian shop nextdoor).
Garlic (nextdoor too)
Onions (Turkish store)
Bolotti beans, and a can of chopped tomatos, (Turkish store again).


one sausage each?! nah, that just does seem so* wrong... I used to regularly have 8 to myself.

I've got fresh made black pudding for breakfast, too, from the butchers (yes I got the wholegrain mustard in to go with it)

I don't think we've ever spent so little on food, but eaten so well and tastily

I'm still getting plenty of the big flat mushrooms too, for grilling, for breakfast, (they're best from the Turkish store too, although the veg stall ones in town, are good also).

I've not even made it to 1000 calories yet for today, and I've only got supper left to go

The daft thing is, using the little local shops, is actually cheaper than the big supermarket pricing I'm spending less a week now on food, for the two of us, than i used to spend, years back, just for myself...

I do sometimes wonder 'whats happened to my life, and its direction'.... as we leave the gym, and go to buy fruit! its just.... not very rock n rol, maan...

You really do seem to have jumped on the health train! I am impressed, and I wish I had local grocers with that kind of produce!

Who cares if it aint rock'n'roll if it is good and tasty

Oh... there's still a lot of rok n roll, it just doesn't seem it, when ones gone to the gym, then gone and bought fruit! all way* too healthy

its not even that the proper* fruit N veg, is better*, - its entirely differnt, mushrooms that .... are* mushrooms, and onions just amazing The decent butchers meat helps too though and so now we just use the supermarkets for what they're good at; we've no fresh fish monger in the city, unbelievable I know, but the online supermarket shopping we use, do fabulus frozen natural fish portions, so we stock up with a big online shop every now and then and full the freezers up; simualrly tins of baked beans, a few other frozen things, including ther dirt cheap but very tasty pizzas, for when we really can't be bothered to cook, etc Plus a few other tinned items and suchlike we can't really get from the little local shops annoyingly I can't buy any of my suppliments locally, so they all end up coming from Amazon along with a few bathroom tings that they just do so much cheaper (including razor blades) talking of razor blades.... my hair is going mental err, my leg hair never* used to grow this fast and my moustache its like its possesed... mind, on the plus, some of the other hair on my body seems to have been perminantly distroyed by the cemo drugs and radiotherapy, including my armpits and my head hairs grown enough to just* be back in a tail again now, though still no where near as long as it always used to be.... - not decided what to do with it yet, so for now I'm growing it, but may decide for ease of washing, with all the gym, to get it cut short at some point - Hoping I can get fit enough to survive the vascular surgery when it beocmes necessary for the aneurysm, plus, the fitness just 'cures' my oedema, and my fatigue... but... mainly... its to at the nurse who told me I'd never lose the weight I put on due to steroids I'll show her.... I've laready dropped tow dres sizes mind, if my arms and shoulders get any bigger from the weightlifting, I'll end up increasing in dress size again and now I'm back to the same sized waist I was when I was 16/17 years old

I often shop deliberately for ethnic stores.

The Chinese stores in San Francisco, consistently had the best merchandise and the best prices.

The best green-grocer I've so far found in the Coachella Valley is a Mexican place with often quite exotic merchandise.

I remember a Turkish place in San Francisco where I frequently stopped for a slice of their apple pie, delicately spiced and sprinkled with dried chives.

Apple pie sprinkled with dried chives sounds outlandish enough for me to try.

Two fat ladies on a motorcycle with sidecar once taught me to use megnut in desserts. Up until then we had only used it on cabbage and lasagna.

Oh... the Turkish little grocery store (and the slinking skuttling old lady who haunghts the shop floor) has some fabuus cakes and other sweet stuff... - all off the menu for me and my D D.I.E.T... - oddly ner really had much of a sweet tooth anyhow... its the savory things that what did for my waistline.... meat pies... sausage rolls.. quiche.... porkpies..... decent meat ...

well, thanks to a HooTooer sugesting it on twitter, today had black pudding with wholegrain mustard (on toast) for breakfast

Due to the calorie counting, this first involved the scales and some delicate knife work... - the half a black pudding we bought from the butchers was 250 G.... I wanted enough for two days for two people from that... so halfed it... almost exactly, one 120 G half and the other 130.... sliced the 120 G half into 12 pieces, weighing each.... all exactly 10 G a couple from the 13 slices of the larger piece, were 5 G over or under, but I think that's pretty good so had the 120 G in 12 slices, fried, in a tiny bit of groundnut oil, and split that slices between W and me, evengly, so even with my two pieces of toast, spread very* liberally in wholegrain mustard (not any butter or marge needed), so I still got the breakfast at practically spot on 300 KCal and tasty it was too... - first time I've had black pudding since I started the D.I.E.T thing... so... can't have had any since start of Febuary or January

There are a few Chinese supermarkets round here too; dont' tend to use them so much now, but I virtually lived of them when I was first in Cambridge, as a student, big bags of basmati cheap rice, and their rediculusly cheap noodles were so cheap for a students way of life - since migrated on to decent basmati rice, which makes a huge differnce, and the cheapest shop for the brand we get is the little independant Indian grocery store, where we get all our herbs and spices from too - not far from us, basically the next road over, through th e graveyard, parall to us, is Mill Rd, which is the bohemian bit of Cambridge, and we're lucky to be so close to that, as that is where all the decent little independant shops are... though sadly even on that road, the national chains are getting theirr foot in... I think there's a stupid Costa coffee there now, plus a mini-version of one of the big supermarket chains <doh. - by an odd fluke of chance, the site of the Costa coffee there, now, thanks to my Brothers researching our family tree, is where a great (not sure by how many greats) grandfather lived a couple hundred years ago... which woudln't seem such a fluke, cept this isn't my hometown, and I only randomly ended up here, because I went to university here... but coincidences keep happeing to me... - this house, I bought, randomly turned out to be the same house number as my Father's house, and I coincidentially moved in, on the exact same day albeit 6 years later, than the accident that left me blind

Up early today, awaiting the arrival of the new delivery of growth hormone, the new pens, that dont' require refridgeration nurse is coming to train me on them tomorrow hope the delivery gets here soon, then we can trott up to the gym for an hour

Where I live about half the population is Turkish. I have tried buying fruit and veg from the Turkish shops but found them dry and shrivelled in comparison to the stuff you get at the supermarket.

Your sense of taste is obviously heightened to compensate for you sense of sight. Eating food doesn't bring me much joy, although I still enjoy cooking.

maybe.... I love cooking too, especially cooking for W I think we're just lucky here, on Mill Road, virtually every shop on one side, for quite some way, is a differnt nationality ethnic food shop; basically they all do equally good fresh fruit and veg, so I guess one can take a pick of any of them, they mainly tend to stock about the same fruit and veg, though there is some differnce based on the nationality and that nations food/cooking habits, although mainly that is more a differnce when looking at the tins, and packets and spices and suchlike each shop sells... and tea etc - I like to think I've heightened my taste ability through years of hard work, sampling differnt real ales, and other beers - mind, as I found out, you can have too much of a sense of taste... - that was so weird during chemotherapy; my sense of taste just went mental, far too sensative; heck I actually stopped rinking coffee as I found the flavour too much! ; me? not drink coffee?! - though it was fabulus for a while, when I had the synesthesia to taste, and I was 'tasting as colour' which was... and at the same time... - my taste is I think basically back to normal now; Ive lost the over the top bit of it, which does sadly mean I can't drink some of the weaker herbal teas again now, but, then, that was how I always was before so I guess that's fair enough

hurrah.... my new growth hormone miniquick pens finally arrived (5 minutes before 12... they were due between 7.30 and 12...) more packaging to try get into the bin

unfortunately now its tipping down with rain outside, so I doubt we'll be able to get to the gym now today so... we'll have to find something else to do... for exercise...