On The Breadline

It's a brave man who accuses Bill Blunt of being a skinflint. I don't mind splashing a bit of cash when it's warranted. At the same time, in Austerity Britain it pays to keep an eye on prices. 

I've blogged previously about my love of bread-making - and in particular my use of a particular organic flour produced by Doves Farm. When I first mentioned this, I highlighted how I could buy 1.5kg bags of their wholemeal flour for just 60p, in Sainsbury's.  That was in January 2008.

A little later (March 2008) I noted how the price had all but doubled, to £1.19 for a bag.

It's been a year or so since I made a loaf, and I wanted to return to the fray.  Imagine my horror to discover that Sainsbury's now charge £1.99 for the same 1.5kg.  That's an increase of 350% in less than five years.

I'm not so witless as to think that prices stand still - but inflation has been running at an all time low for the last few years. I'm sure some of the increase is due to increasing demand for wheat, at a time when harvests haven't always been great.  Nevertheless, I suspect someone's making a killing somewhere along the line.

Back in The Saddle on The Twelfth Day of Christmas

Young Justin was on the blower to me today. He could hardly contain his excitement, having spent the evening analysing my stats, courtesy of Statcounter.

'Pa! Pa! Pa!' he exclaimed. 'Seems like you've got your audience back!'

I can't pretend I wasn't pleased. Over the last six months, my blog has been dying a slow death, the victim of infrequent postings and the ramblings of a mind which (I don't mind confessing) has been frequently addled by a cheaper whisky than the one I was used to in my days at the top of my profession.

The weekly reports from Justin have made for depressing reading. The glory days when my simple blog could pull in thousands of readers a month have long gone - Bill Blunt was a busted flush! Quite how grim the situation had become can be glimpsed from this graph, which shows the readers who've visited Bill since I made my debut on the internet in 2006...


My theory that there was an audience out there desperate to Read It Like It Is about Sainsburys bargains, Wetherspoons pubs and cheap Ryanair flights to Europe had clearly not held up to scrutiny. If this blog was a listed company, the vultures of the administrators would be circling overhead even as you read these lines.

But no! According to Justin, old Bill's still got a bit of life in him, so those vultures can just pitch themselves off in the direction of another victim.

It's all down to the turn of the year, apparently. My simple, humble New Year Wishes posting drew an unprecedented number of visitors. Every picture tells a story...



Justin furnished me with the full data and, as you can see, a steady stream of visitors (mainly from the Indian subcontinent, it has to be said) found me by Googling 'New Year Wishes'.



There's a lesson in there, somewhere and, once I've worked it, out I'll be back on course to make this blog the first port of call for anyone looking to pick up a cheap ready-meal at their local Sainsburys after a pint or two in a nearby Wetherspoons.

In the meantime - नया साल Wishes to all my readers in Mumbai, or elsewhere.

Going Nuts

A man in retirement has time on his hands. That's a truism, if ever there was one. Nevertheless, even though it's many years since I hung up my quill, I like to think my quiet, measured voice still resonates in the corridors of power.

Or, in this case, in the aisles of my local Sainsbury's. My subject today is Nuts - or, more precisely, I'm about to let you into one of Bill's ways of saving 33% on the price Sainsbury's would like you to pay for their Pine Nuts.

Pine Nuts, as any decent Italian worth his garlic, basil leaves, parmesan cheese and olive oil will tell you, are an essential ingredient in the classic Ligurian recipe for pesto. As a devotee of pesto, you will understand if I pay more than an ordinate amount of attention to the price of pine nuts. You can't make an omelette without eggs, and you can't make pesto without pine nuts (unless you buy one of those commercial brands that seems to think it's acceptable to substitute peanuts for the real thing).

On a recent foraging trip, I noticed that Sainsbury's appeared to have re-packaged their Pine Nuts, and that the price had increased by 50p per hundred grams. Have a look at this:



As you can see, they're promoting the product as a 'snacking' nut. You'll find it near the fruit and veg, and will be invited to pay £1.99 for 100grams.





That's all very well, but if you take the trouble to walk ten yards and find the 'cooking ingredients' section, you'll find the humbler version of the Sainsbury's Pine Nut still available for just £1.45 for 100grams.



If this was Bologna, housewives would be taking to the streets in protest. And I, for one, wouldn't blame them.

Endorse and Be Damned!

Older readers of my blog (by which I don't necessarily mean the more geriatric amongst you) will recall how I have sometimes pointed those who drop by here in the direction of a good bargain.

I've never been one to needlessly fritter away money on expensive food and beverages - not so long as there are expensive wines, women and other such diversions to soak up my cash. 'Look after the pennies, and you'll have more to spend on the finer things in life' is a motto that has guided me down the years.

So, when I endorse a product, it's not because I expect recompense. It's because I recognise its intrinsic worth. That's why I was so keen, just recently, to flag up one or two purchases I had made at my local branch of Sainsburys.

I've already written about how my decision to highlight the good value of Dove's Farm Organic Wholemeal Flour came back to bite me, here.

Now, I find that just weeks after pointing readers in the direction of Sainsburys Basics Ground Coffee, the company has chosen to up the price by over 25% Previously available for just 79p, this week I had to pay £1.06 for the same product.

It's the curse of Bill Blunt, and it spells, I'm afraid, the end of any further product endorsement by me. No sooner do I seem to find a bargain than the greedy supermarket barons rush to capitalise on my celebrity recommendation. Well, it won't happen again. I'll be keeping my counsel in the future.

It's a brave man that accuses Bill Blunt of chagrin, but it seems my readiness to spill the beans (so to speak) on cheap coffee has unwittingly led me to have to pay an extra £20 per annum on the stuff. There's something wrong here, surely!

Peace, Bread, Land

Having eulogised of late about the reasonable price being charged by Sainsbury’s for Dove’s Farm Organic Wholemeal Flour, it came as something of a shock when I went to stock up on supplies this evening.

After months perfecting my artisan bread-making techniques, I’d grown accustomed to paying just 60p for 1.5kg of the stuff, pleased to be able to make a decent loaf of bread for little more than 25p a go. I was hardly prepared, therefore, for the price-hike that faced me tonight. The same product has all but doubled in price, and now retails at £1.19 for a 1.5kg bag.

That’s why I’ve dusted the flour off my Bill Blunt Blast accolade, to award it to whoever it was at Sainsbury’s who has sanctioned this crippling price increase. Did they give a moment’s thought to the poor pensioner, eking out their pittance of an income, when they authorised this calamitous price rise? I doubt it.

If I were Gordon Brown, I’d be sleeping a little more uneasily in my bed tonight (and it’s worth stressing that no earthquakes are anticipated). His Government has failed to deliver peace in Iraq, and now the price of home-made bread has doubled. As for land, that’s a subject we might want to studiously avoid, lest we re-awaken Bolshevik instincts in the British population.

I’ll be writing to Sainsbury’s about this outrageous matter, I can tell you. Anyone tempted to add their voice to my campaign can do so by e-mailing their Customer Services people, here.

Back to Basics

I’ve learned the hard way in life that there are two things you should never criticize about a man: his choice of woman and his preferred coffee machine.

Just as there are men who swear by the virtues of the blonde over the brunette, so too there are those who will argue late into the night on the relative merits of their particular model of Gaggia.

There’s no doubt about it, the Italian’s produce a seductive and ultimately sexy range of espresso makers - most of which, when teamed up with that other Italian marvel, Lavazza coffee, are guaranteed to satisfy the caffeine urges of any red-blooded male.

But I want to introduce you to another (perhaps little-known) brand: Ufesa. Many moons ago, I purchased one of these on the recommendation of a couple of coffee grinders who ply their trade in an industrial unit in a backstreet of Birkenhead. At £45 it was cheap enough – but was it too cheap to produce the pressure to guarantee the crema so characteristic of a good espresso, I wondered? They argued not.

I took the risk and, since that day, have never looked back. Day in, day out, for the last seven years, my plucky little Ufesa has doled out perfect shots of coffee. It’s a wolf of a machine in Spanish clothing. The only casualty across those years has been the unfathomable loss of the nozzle that sits on the end of the frother. Periodic expeditions around the kitchen have failed to unearth it, so I can only assume it fell off and got taken out in the trash sometime.

My latest discovery, however, is also worthy of sharing. My consumption of coffee is gargantuan, and threatened to be ruinously expensive. At around £2 for 250g, Lavazza can soon become a luxury that can be ill-afforded when licking the financial wounds of a divorce. I decided, therefore, to take another risk, when in Sainsbury’s the other week. Like most supermarkets, they have a range of products for what they probably think of as the riff-raff among their customers. What in Tesco is Value, and in Asda is Smart Price, in Sainsbury’s is Basics. When I saw they’d introduced a Basics Ground Coffee, I was up to try it.

At 79p for 250g, I wasn’t expecting much. What a surprise, then, to discover that it was more than a match for Lavazza.

Well done, Sainsbury’s. And well done that reader who, after spotting this post, dashes out to try it. You’ll thank me for it.

Sex & Shopping

I’ve discovered that I’m a bit of a tart, when it comes to supermarkets. I know some people return, time and again, to the same, familiar shop to buy their weekly groceries. I always left the shopping to Mrs Blunt but have, since our divorce, had to learn the art of foraging for food amongst the aisles.

I won’t pretend it came naturally to me. My first attempt at buying fresh fruit came unstuck when I realised I hadn’t the faintest notion of what constituted a kilogram. Two kilos of nectarines sounds like a reasonable enough proposition, until you discover that’s about twenty of the little blighters – far more than any sane man would want to consume in a week. But mostly, I’ve taken to the grocery shop like a duck to water.

I find that I am as at ease in Morrison’s as I am in Sainsbury’s, as relaxed in Aldi as I am in Asda. I can get quite chipper at the thought of popping in to squeeze melons in my local Iceland. No one could accuse me of monogamy in my dealings with the major food retailers. I like to ‘put myself about a bit’, and have even been spotted in Netto, now and again.

Yet there’s one place that always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s all that pseudo-patriotic red, white and blue … but I’ve never yet been seduced by Tesco. They just don’t do it for me. I know that the retail analysts will tell us that one pound in every eight spent in the UK finds its way into the hands of the Tesco family, but they’d be lucky if they got a tenner a year from me. They’re obviously doing something right as they steamroller their new shops across the country. A lot of folk clearly like what they do. Not Bill Blunt, though. The remorseless Tesco-fication of Britain leaves me cold. Their pioneering ‘out of town’ supermarkets almost spelled the death knell of Britain’s corner shop. What few are left will easily be seen off by the Tesco Metro’s that are springing up everywhere. Every time I hear that phrase ‘Every little helps’, I can’t help feeling just a little queasy.

Though I have forsworn setting foot in Tesco, there are still (thankfully) plenty of other retail giants offering the opportunity to saunter down the dairy aisle, coyly smiling at the rather attractive female choosing which brand of low-fat cottage cheese to buy, while I ruminate over yoghurts. Supermarkets are now the place of choice for the single, unattached male bent on picking up women, it seems. They perform the same social function as the dance hall or the coffee bar once did, in my youth. And a glance in the basket of any woman will give you an instant appraisal of the type of person she is.

My top tip, for any man who finds himself checking out ladies at the check-outs, is to look for a well-balanced basket. Plenty of fresh fruit, veg and all that stuff. A bottle of red wine, perhaps. Fight shy of the bottle of gin types: you can’t know for sure it’s not a daily habit.