Essen und trinken

[finella_c]

On a budgeting kick, I decided to take a look at what I spend on household food and drink. I wanted to see how my diet might vary, if at all, over a fixed period (two months in early-late spring). And I was curious to learn: just how omnivorous am I? I mean, I have my own ideas about that, but I knew my actual behaviour might be different.

I decided

Comments

[alexwinolj]

Impressive!

If it were me, I'd need a separate section for chocolate :-)

I miss Braeburn apples...

[finella_c]

They are tasty :-) I definitely prefer apples that are tasty but not too sweet. Pink Lady, Royal Gala etc. don't float my boat at all... What kinds of apples could you buy at your local supermarket?

[alexwinolj]

We do see a lot of Pink Lady and Royal Gala here, also Fuji. Granny Smiths are always available, but extremely variable in quality. The other kind I miss is the Cox's Orange Pippin.

[finella_c]

Cox's Orange Pippin: yes, it has the best name, although I'm not sure I've ever eaten one :-)

Or the Ribston (or Ribstone) Pippin? Hero of one of the saddest, shortest poems:

"I said to Heart, How goes it? Heart replied:
'Right as a Ribston Pippin!' But it lied."

I looked at the Cambridge Apple Day list and didn't recognise most of the varieties (which also had some great evocative names: Egremont Russet, Blenheim Orange, Peasgood Nonsuch). Supermarkets! Humph.

[davidcook]

Neat !
I seem to remember doing something like that for myself, ages ago, but the resulting basket would have held mostly meat, potatoes, chocolate, and Coke.

Actually, not a lot's changed since then :-)

[finella_c]

Heheheh. DC, you could be the perfect candidate for a standing delivery order from Sainsbury's. :-)

[sopraltotude]

Wow, you certainly went to a lot of trouble

[finella_c]

Yeah, I hear you on the spreadsheeting front. It was time to Take Control.

Doing this exercise *definitely* made me realise how expensive takeaway food is!! Looking at costs in pie chart form, as I did here, is kind of misleading in terms of analysing my actual diet (in the sense that the pie chart above tells me a bit about costs, but not at all about "volume" or "purchasing power", ie. what I actually bought for the money). So in this particular month, I spent one third of my total budget on fruit and veg, and ten percent on takeaway. What you can't tell from the diagram alone is that 20 quid (ish) doesn't actually buy you a lot of pizza :-)