Sunday 5 December 2021

Cauli Season.


From early Autumn to late Spring, we always eat soup for lunch, usually followed by some cheese, charcuterie, etc; and fruit. It doesn't need thinking about, and is quick, easy, cheap, and delicious.


How lucky we are in the UK to have wonderful vegetables on offer, and at crazy low prices.

I recently bought a 2.5 kilo bag of Potatoes for under £1, and both a Cauliflower and a Savoy Cabbage for just over 50p each. If farmers are having difficulty finding 'pickers'; it certainly doesn't show in the shops.

As long as one has a good Chicken stock from the Sunday Roast, you have all the ingredients for a weeks' really tasty, and nourishing soup for just a few £'s. A few store-cupboard herbs and spices are always on hand to enhance the flavour, if needed.

I am shocked to hear people say they can't afford to eat healthily, so they are forced to visit McThingy, or Greggs, or the Chippy.

These people don't need more money, they need re-educating. Even the preparation of food can be fun if approached correctly. It's certainly far less expensive to make healthy foods than to eat Fish-n-Chips or Burgers every night. 

58 comments:

  1. We have the saying "Learn how to cook from the poor, and how to save from the rich". I don´t know about the rich, but the time you could learn how to cook from the poor are definitely gone. The traditional dishes with cheap ingredients all require skills and time or both, and those are rare goods nowadays.
    Hilde in Germany

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    1. I was born just after WW2, when frugality was still going strong. Eating healthily (and cheaply) shouldn't be a question of wealth v poverty, but more a sensible choice. We all love to spoil ourselves occasionally, but I recently saw a young woman, with a small boy, buying dozens of supermarket ready made pizzas. It looked as if it was all they ate.

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  2. I love cauliflower :), sadly I haven't seen savoy cabbage in quite a while here, just the regular kind.
    I know too many people who always eat fast food because they simply don't know how to cook, because their parents only ever bought home take-away fast foods, and so the cycle continues.

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    1. I was amazed by how cheap these things are; they are probably twice the price in France. I am very much a meat eater, but also very happy to eat chunky vegetable soups every day for lunch.

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  3. £0.50 for cauliflower? £0.50 for a Savoy Cabbage? Where do you shop? Even if marked down because of their imminent "sell-by" date I should be so lucky. And I shop in a variety of different outlets and markets.

    Not for the first time, the England you describe is so very different from the one I live in. By Mainland Europe standards England is expensive to live in - and not just relative to income. Every which way.

    And before I forget, the other day you mentioned that all food is plastic wrapped, no loose produce, no paper bags. Not so, Cro. In fact, there is, and has been for some time, a positive drive to cut down on plastic and wrap. Again, where do you shop?

    U

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    1. Cauli Sainsbury's, Savoy M & S; both came in plastic bags. However, I did buy an Aubergine and a Courgette without packaging. It's a start.

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    2. Here a large cauliflower is at least £1.50p, a small one half that. Sainsbury are expensive up here so I'll check but expect they are around the two pound mark.

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    3. Cro in all of the supermarkets they do an offer of "veg of the week", I think it is normally 5 different veggies (never potatoes). where they are 49p in a bag. sometimes its parsnips, or the other day I saw it was satsumas in a net they were the current weeks offer of less than 40p. Sainsburys also price match certain veg items to Aldi prices. You were lucky with the cauliflower, people chop it up for fake rice! lol they are gold dust now! I think parsnips are 500g for 42p. seeing as they take 2 years to grow this is amazingly cheap. Are you making soup?

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  4. I agree with you although I would get bored with soup everyday for lunch, although I would not be bored with cheese and charcuterie. Vegetables seemed to me to be cheaper here than in England, cheaper still in Spain and Portugal and fruit in Vienna was surprisingly cheap.

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    1. We never get bored with soup. It changes daily, and is always 'interesting'. I was surprised by how cheap vegs are here, maybe it's world-wide these days.

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    2. We're the same, never bored. Today it's minestrone and tomorrows will be chicken noodle and sweetcorn. If the pot has some left after 3 days it will be frozen in portions to have for days when I "can't be bothered".

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    3. oh Eleanor, minestrone is my favourite!

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  5. As long as the veges are in season they're relatively cheap here. Cabbage especially, though I've never seen a Savoy one.

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    1. I haven't eaten Savoys for yonks. I saw this one in M & S 'on offer'. They are surprisingly good; very tender.

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  6. I would only add to your recipe a can of tomatoes and maybe lentils.

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    1. All sorts go in during the week. It's slightly different every day. Lentils and split Peas are favourites; even an occasional tin of Baked Beans have found their way in.

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  7. I suspect there must be a surplus for the cauliflower and cabbage to be so cheap. The supermarkets are good at driving down prices for the growers, which is very unfair. I have soup most days, and remember my MIL standing over the saucepan in which all the leftover vegetables had been put, with a cigarette with the ash growing longer and longer ready to fall in the pot. DILs normally grabbed an ashtray to catch though.

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    1. In my smoking days (a long time ago) I used to put a long pin or needle through the middle of the cig'. It kept the ash in place for well over an inch. People's faces were priceless.

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  8. I totally agree that its possibly to eat well and cheaply if you make the effort. However kids today seem so fussy about food. We had friends visit with their young grandson who announced he only ate apples on Tuesdays so couldn't partake of the crumble I'd made. I on the other hand was brought up to eat everything on the plate, sometimes almost the pattern.

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    1. If there's something they REALLY don't like, that's OK, otherwise I think children should simply eat what the family eats. I also think that families should always eat around a table together, whenever possible. Everyone seems to eat at different times, in front of the TV, and they all demand something different. Not a good idea.

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  9. Cauliflower blitzed with walnuts and tomato paste, baked for 30 mins makes a very tasty vegan 'ground beef'.

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    1. I love Cauliflower in every way imaginable. Roasted whole, whilst bathed in a curry sauce is very good. Good for vegans too.

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    2. oh Andi I have never heard of this! I will have to try

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  10. I love soup season. I am using the leftover sauce from last night's beef stew as the basis for today's soup.

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    1. That sounds good. My soups often start with leftovers. All that flavour has to go somewhere!

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    2. When I had family at home (4 kids plus husband)my soups always began with the jellied stock from the bottom of the Sunday roast pan. Now I buy readymade stock in one litre cartons.

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  11. I agree with you about people who say they can't afford to eat healthily. A bit of education and a bit of imagination is all that is needed. Mind you that is not to deny the necessity of food banks - currently one of Britain's most thriving service ventures.

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    1. I'm not surprised they are thriving; anything free is bound to be popular.

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  12. we still use all of the left over veg from a sunday to make the soup for the lunches of the week. Any potatoes left overs are squished with the potato masher and cabbage added for bubble and squeak with a fried egg for tea monday night!

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    1. Nothing should go to waste, and soup making is the best way to use all those leftovers.

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  13. Yesterday I bought a single red potato in Waitrose - for 75p.

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    1. I have to ask; how much did it weigh? Two kilos perhaps?

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    2. That is impressive, Tom. To raise the stakes and "never knowingly undersold" I bought a nice fat leek (ONE) yesterday (M&S) 50p. Oh to be a hunter gatherer. The joy, not least at the self checkout.

      Cro, for your benefit, just now I weighed the leek. 266g. Which amounts to roughly £2.00/kg. Fair is fair. Cheap it ain't. As an aside: Where does the notion that food has to be cheap come from? Think about all the labour you have to put into Haddocks to come away with tomato blight!

      Tom's large reds, today's price, £1.80/kg. That makes his bounty weigh in at about 600 g. Impressive for one potato. Or maybe he picked up a Sweet Potato. They can be huge!

      Anyway, I was hoping the farmer's daughter (Rachel) would weigh in on this debate. Horse's mouth and all that.

      U

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    3. Sorry, my maths is out of sync. It makes Tom's potato closer to 400 g. Still magnificent.

      U

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  14. I couldn´t agree more Cro, you can make a large pot of soup for the price of a burger. It would feed several people and be a far healthier option.

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  15. It also comes down to what you learn from your parents.
    Many generations now have had no history of cooking from scratch

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    1. My generation didn't have frozen pizzas or quiche; everything was prepared at home. If you never experience that, you miss out on all those subliminal lessons.

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  16. I'm a cauliflower lover as well. I wish I had one right now. I'm heading into the kitchen to put together some sort of vegetable soup. You've got me in the mood.

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    1. It's been a while since I've got any young lady 'in the mood', you've made my day!

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  17. I’m cooking up chicken soup as we speak ….. and bought an Ocado cauliflower for 80p and. an M&S Savoy cabbage for 85p yesterday, Tonight we are having fresh plaice on top of broccoli, asparagus and some haricot beans. I love soup, even in Summer. XXXX

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    1. We usually change to salads in Summer, although we still have salads almost every day now; but far less substantial.

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  18. All this talking about soup reminds me of the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, who almost until her death at the age of 111 years cooked a big pot of soup each Sunday to last her for the whole week. She said she wanted to have enough time for playing the piano and for teaching, not wasting it for cooking, but still have a homemade and nutricious meal every day.
    Hilde in Germany

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  19. My generation did not have ready meals in the 1960s and 1970s apart from Vesta curries and Fray Bentos meat pies. We cooked and we still do.

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    1. Forgive me Rachel, just having read your last post (Sunday): Doesn't the Spam you buy and eat qualify as "ready"? Nothing personal, my stomach turns at the very mention of it. Still, following up Tom's comment, I actually googled Spam. Not in a million years. Unless, of course, there was no choice in order to survive.

      U

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    2. My comment was flippant and yet serious. Of course there were some tinned goods that were 'ready'.

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    3. Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pies, kept us alive as students. I still have some in France. They are addictive!

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    4. I loved those Vesta curries. I must check and see if supermarkets here still have them.

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    5. I still have the occasional Fray Bentos pie. I haven't looked for Vesta in years.

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  20. Ever thought of having cauliflower florets in a salad? A nice but of crunchiness?
    Then all the stalk and leaves in a soup.

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    1. Yes, but I cook them first so that they're not TOO crunchy. I prefer the flavour after a little cooking.

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  21. Soups are great for winter meals. Add crusty bread and the meal is perfect. Cauliflower goes on sale at two for 5 dollars. Otherwise they are 3-5 dollars each. Your vegetable prices seem much lower than ours.

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    1. I think maybe I just got lucky, I noticed yesterday that they had gone up! Still, they continue to be good value.

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  22. Wow! I don't think I've ever seen a caulie that price! Probably even at the height of a glut I'd still be paying the equivalent of a pound 50? We eat a lot of cauliflower. The fave recipe is an Italian braise in oil, garlic, chilli and red wine. Delicious hot or cold for lunch. Roasting Ottolenghi-style is pretty popular here, too.

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