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Saturday, 7 April 2012

Random coffee thoughts


I'm the first getting up today so I make the coffee. As I measure out the grounds, I ponder how to continue drinking nice ground coffee as cheaply as we have for the last 2 months. Our corner shop sells ground coffee in half-pound packets with quite a hefty mark-up but in early February, I discovered that he was selling the Tchibo Family Classic half price. Asda retails the Tchibo for £7.40 a kilo. Corner shop man normally wants £8 a kilo. But because they were just past the Best Before date, he sold them for £4 a kilo, or £1 per 250g packet. I knew that the Tchibo was a perfectly serviceable everyday percolator brand so when I saw THIS, I bought all he had, 3 kilos in all. So since February this year, we've been drinking lovely coffee slightly out of date. Bargain!

He's now got the half-pound Maxwell Ground Coffee on for half price, but at the slightly higher price of £4.80 a kilo. Need to try the Maxwell to see whether we could live on it. We once made a massive mistake with the Sainsbury's Basics Ground Coffee – it was vile. No idea what they've used for this, coffee sack lint mixed with dried dandelion root probably.

By the way, have you noticed the Great Coffee Packaging Swindle? Most supermarkets now sell coffee in 227g and 454g bags. It's a way of disguising rising prices. Nice try, boys and girls, but my basic numeracy is still good enough to spot that one.

Off now to check out a local flooring shop – we're still casting around for some nice vinyl flooring for our renovated bathroom. 

If someone ever asks me that old job interview chestnut “Where do you see yourself in five years' time?”, I would have to answer “Farming my own smallholding somewhere near a popular Sustrans cycle path, making all manner of things, some edible, some quaffable, some for use, some just to look at, and some to read”. Given land prices in this country, and the control-freaky nuttiness of European “food safety” legislation, which, I suspect, is designed precisely to keep small-scale independent producers from ever becoming competitive against the food giants, it will probably remain just a vision.

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