Monday, 25 August 2008

All crunch and no credit

At the supermarket yesterday I decided to be a little more economical given just how much prices are rising. I was planning on making a chilli con carne, and I bought a lower-priced brand of minced beef - perhaps £1.60 lower than the stuff I normally get.

It didn't taste bad at all, but there were far too many gnarly bits of gristle in there (which reminded me why I always bought the more expensive stuff in the first place), and I had to pick one bit out which got stuck between my teeth. Later I realised that this particularly vindictive piece of gristle had managed to bring half of one of my fillings out with it as well.

So for a saving of less than two quid, I'm faced with possibly 10 or 20 (if not more) times that amount on dental work.

Bugger.



*Update Tuesday 26th Aug: tonight I will be having cheese and tomato sandwiches with houmous. More news as it happens.

14 comments:

Merkin said...

Merkin foodie wisdom.

Decide what the main ingredient is and then decide what should be the complement. With an 'e', even.
ie which is the flavour and which is the bulk.

(Peasant food - such as 'beanz'n'rice or Brazilien Feijoada or Haggis or Pierogi always varied depending on how much meat was available.)

PS one of my fave Steely Dan songs 'Pearl of the Quarter' has the immortal line 'where the settler spends his hard earned pay, red beans and rice for a quarter'

ie not a lot of meat in the chilli

Bon appetit.

DJ Kirkby said...

I HATE gristle which is why we always eat bean chili, even though we are not vegetarians. Hope you have an NHS dentist so the cost isn't too shocking.

zola a social thing said...

I can remember the excitement and the madness, when eating pea soup, to hunt for the pea.
Wonderful times.
Bit like the excitement of a Smiths Crisps bag when you never knew if there would be the little blue salt bag - or, if there was, would the salt be damp.
Great times those.

Eat gristle it is good for you.
If you have a problem get some false teeth. Easier to clean.

Anonymous said...

Ouch.

Come to Germany, dental treatment is free here (if just as painful).

Fire Byrd said...

darling you should stick to champagne and caviar like wot i do!!!
gristle... ugh enough to make me a veggie.
xx

trousers said...

True enough merk, I was rather pleased with myself for being sensible and economising and it really wasn't worth it at all.

So with that in mind - and dj's comment too, then next time it will either be veg chilli, or using veggie mince (I seem to remember there being some nice ones) or back to decent minced beef.

zola, excitement and madness indeed! - I can hardly imagine :)

ario that's useful to know - but will it be offset by the cost of airfare and Erdinger?

Was that caviar that you used in the lasagne then, fire byrd? It was certainly delicious :)

Anonymous said...

Or, following Ario's suggestion, go to Poland to have it sorted. It's not free, but it is cheap - even with the exchange rate as lousy as it is (for Brits) at the moment.

Dental tourism is fairly popular, believe it or not.

Anonymous said...

The more I think about it, the more the concept of dental tourism seems less and less surprising....

Anonymous said...

At the risk of verging on the political, I'd say that the general scarcity of NHS dentists and the extortionate cost of private ones would have helped that along its way considerably. I know for a fact that Germans also pop over for a visit to the Zahnarzt, although I'm a bit confused as to why if it's free in Germany.

Anyway,here is some evidence that this is not a leg-pull.

Anonymous said...

Of course, as I'm in the UK at the moment I could sublet my flat to anyone wishing to go to the dentist in Kraków. ;o)

trousers said...

That's pretty much it, it (like most things) is getting so expensive over here - I presume it's definitely worth it for more extensive dental work, but I don't know if I could justify going all that way just to have a tooth filled :)

I expect to see a "Dental Tour Lodgings" on your site soon!

Fire Byrd said...

Oh Gosh thanks for the breaking news.... I was worrying about what was next!

Queen Vixen said...

Very funny. Gristle - shudder! Oh I would have been heaving. In fact I am so picky about gristle that I always use quorn mince. There is NO possibility of getting anything stuck in your teeth!

trousers said...

No worries fire byrd - public service blogging at its best, no?

Hi qv, yes I reckon I'm going to have to give the quorn mind another go!