No Supermaket Month...

I'll get straight to the point. Had our aim of No Supermarket Month been to actually not set foot in anything related to a supermarket for the whole month, it would have been an epic fail. Even with our rather relaxed "we'll get milk from our local Sainsbury's, and not be too worried if we have to grab a few other things a few times in the month" version of "no" supermarkets, it was still a bit of a fail, technically speaking.

I went to our local Sainsbury's or Co-op (where do they fall on the supermarket spectrum anyway?) quite a few times. On one particular day, I even bought  fruit and veg and bread. Almost all the fails were caused by one bout of ill health or another. Sometimes we needed easy food, sometimes we needed fast shopping before keeling over and at one point a large amount of experimenting with a certain type of product that I had recently become allergic to. So, yes, under the title, big fail.

But.

I did not drive to the supermarket at all. I did not do a mega shop at all. And I did not buy any supermarket meat or fish and very little supermarket fruit and veg.

My conclusions on the month go a like this:

• There things that is simply not worth trying to buy outside the supermarket in this day and age. You pay more for less good quality products. 
• Meat, we could really taste the difference. Our local butcher's sausages are amazing. I am sure there will be times when I grab a pack of mince from Sainsbury's for convenience but we are trying to build a regular trip to the butcher into our routine. It seems worth it.
• We sampled eggs from a range of local sources. There is a farm that we pass once a week that sells its own eggs. The butcher sells eggs. The greengrocer sells eggs. We couldn't taste the difference really. But they were all cheaper and all more local than the supermarkets so we'll be sticking with them whenever possible.
• Fruit and veg is a complex one. Our greengrocer has pretty much everything we want. It balances out at close to the cost of the supermarket, with some thing significantly cheaper and some things more expensive. The challenge thrown down by using a greengrocer is to shop in season more as then it will be a cheaper method. The butcher actually helps with this as they provide regular seasonal recipes! The one main exception to trying to use the greengrocer will be bananas. They are more expensive at the greengrocer by a significant margin and they are not fairly traded. It seems bizarre to pay more for not fairly traded goods. So they will be coming from Sainsbury's. 

So, on the face of it a fail, but rather like our "giving up TV for lent except once a week, except the Six Nations and except cbeebies", we have actually managed to not use the supermarket in a way that we can keep up. The butcher is in, the greengrocer is in, the poncy deli in the village...is mainly out! (They clearly do not like noisy children in their shop...I clearly, therefore, will not be spending much time or money with them!)

May? Presentation Month. Lord, help us!