Meat

I am not the most organised of people. Whatever I do I tend to leave it to the last minute, partly because I enjoy the stress and pressure of a deadline, but also because I think... that's just the way I am. Post remains unopened, bills unpaid, tax unreturned. It gets done... but just at the last moment. I suppose that shows a certain arrogance that everything will wait for me.


I like to think it's an artistic streak... but I guess it's just being disorganised. 


Same with cooking. I'm not great at planning a week of menu's, shopping and then cooking to the plan. I like to just wing it and see what I fancy on any particular day, what looks good in the shop or market. 


But in an attempt to be a little more organised, and to cut the cost of shopping for every meal, we decided to order a organic meat box from Riverford Organic. http://www.riverford.co.uk/

We went for the small box, £50 and claiming to feed to adults for up to a fortnight. And this was what was in it...

• pork loin joint 1 kg
• pork + basil sausages 450g
• back bacon 250g
• turkey burgers 440g
• beef grilling steak 440g
• minced beef 450g
• lamb chops 450g
• whole chicken 1.6 kg

Have to say, it all looked very good and, although I hate seeing meat wrapped in plastic, seemed butcher fresh. 

Not sure you'd really get a fortnights worth of food out of it. Partly because the steak, sausages, burgers, mince and chicken had all to be eaten by the 7th (Monday) the lamb the day after that and the pork by the 13th. So given that the delivery arrived on the 3rd... Hmmm... that's more like 6 days of rather intensive meat eating than a fortnight.

If you knock the bacon out of the equation as purely for breakfast, you are left with 7 meals. Which for two people comes out at about £3.50 a head as a main ingredient. A little high maybe. Even if you add the bacon in as a meal, which at 7 slices of very good back bacon, it could be and manage to squeeze a second meal out of the rather small chicken, you are still looking at £2.77 per head for the main ingredient. 


Is it worth it? Yes. Yes, it is.


Sure a Waitrose home brand, ready meal lasagne for 2 is £3.29, or £1.64 a head... but a ready meal is a ready meal... good organic meat is a different thing entirely. If you are going to buy good quality organic meat you really should expect to pay a little more. 


There is too much cheap meat on sale in supermarkets and cheap meat is not good for any sense of a balanced diet. So is £2.77 a head worth it? Is £3.50 a head worth it? I think so... in fact it's a pretty damn good price. 


You can buy a whole chicken at Tesco online for £2.12. Just because you can... doesn't mean you should. 

So far we've had the Turkey Burgers (surprisingly moist - kids would love them), the bacon, the steak and the mince. All really good... the mince made a pretty stunning Cottage Pie with everything else so far being cooked off pretty simply. Today is the test... today is chicken day.