Asda - hang your collective heads in SHAME!

So...off we went to Asda (we have a choice of Asda or Tesco, so...well, not much choice at all really) to undertake the hellish endeavour that is the Weekly Shopping Challenge.

The Challenge

- To find a spot in the parent-and-child parking.

- If unsuccessful in this (which is usually the case), to walk through parent-and-child parking area without peering in through car windows making observations regarding lack of car-seat / style of car ('A toddler in a 2-seater Audi TT? One thinks not!') and generally getting into a foul mood before reaching the hallowed (though draughty) entrance hall of the Mecca of Consumerism.

- To head straight for the Whoops counter without looking as though we are desperate.

- To contain angry indignation when Whoops counter is, inevitably, empty bar three sad looking yoghurts and some ham that looks like the pig committed suicide in 1956.

- To procure as many reduced loaves and rolls as we can fit in our woefully small freezer without feeling the need to batter some doddering old person to death with a half-price baguette ('They are ALL 20p, love. ALL of them. And that's 20 of our new pence, y'hear?')

- To fill trolley up with nice, sensible healthy foodstuffs without looking smugly at the people with 18 children and a trolley full of additives

- To get the whole weekly shop (without the evil disposable nappies) in at under £20.00.

Thanks to the lovely Messieurs Fearnley-Whittingstall and Oliver; bare-bummed, hock-burnt and generally depressed chickens are now COMPLETELY off the menu for all three of us. Not just the fresh stuff, we're talking anything with chicken in it unless it is free-range. Same with eggs. No mayonnaise, no cakes, no quiche - unless they can prove that the chicken is free-range.

Considering the media attention and general hysteria the C4 programmes on chickens generated, I skipped happily off to the poultry section eager to see that the business brains of Walmart had bowed to public opinion and, never slow to jump on any passing bandwagon, would have rows upon rows of free-range chickens just bursting with happiness with the memory of their long(ish) and blissful lives.

How wrong I was. There were two sad packets of chicken legs. 'Ahhh' thought I. 'They must have sold out already'. So I scanned the area for where the free-range whole chickens would be, so I could check the (no doubt hugely, though trendily, inflated) prices would be. Then I looked harder. Then Richard started looking. Then even Ellis wondered why my face had gone a peculiar shade of violet, and he started looking....(though I think he just liked looking at his reflection on a piece of well-polished steak, to be fair).

Asda Hamilton do not stock whole free-range chicken. At all. Not one.

I wanted to demand an explanation from the manager. Richard convinced me that my mood was not condusive to an intelligent and well constructed ethical argument, and suggested I write a letter.

I'm afraid, dear reader, that Citizen Twiglet crumbled, and agreed.

On Saturday we are off to the Farmers' Market in Queen's Park to see what they have to offer. Originally, we were only looking to source local free-range poultry and eggs; however we will now also be pricing their fruit and vegetables. Asda have, potentially, lost the majority of our custom. All the tins and dried goods I can buy in Lidl, so a big fat (organic) raspberry to the country's second largest supermarket.

On a plus side - a few excellent advances to the frugal / sandal-wearing hippy cause......

- Have swapped the George Foreman Lean, Mean, Dust-Gathering-In-The-Cupboard-Because-It's-A-Bastard-To-Wash machine for a huge bag of really nice clothes for Ellis, courtesy of Freecycle. The lass in East Kilbride was lovely, and even threw a potty in for us. (Ellis now has a very funky item of headgear, it seems).

- The composter (now known as Davros) turned up this afternoon. He is settling in well into his new surroundings, squashed between the rusting barbeque and the fuschia bush. Richard's company are kindly donating their shredded paper to the cause, and Ellis's on-off relationship with fruit and vegetables means that plenty of green matter will be added on a regular basis.

- The shopping came in at.....(drum roll please....) £20.10. That's enough for a week, easily...and thanks to my obsessive compulsion to write detailed menus for the week, there will be very little - if nothing - to be thrown away.

Little steps, little steps.....