Archive for February, 2006

I recently discussed the notion of price discrimination, where the same product is sold to different people at difference prices, with the aim of extracting the maximum profit for the seller.

Another form of price discrimination can be found in many supermarkets. It’s price discrimination by variation of packaging.

For example, at Sainsburys at the moment, Granny Smith apples are £1.05 per kilogram loose. Or, you can buy them in a pack of seven for £1.05.

I weighed some of the packs, and they were around 800 or 900 grams. It’s clear that you get a better deal buying the loose apples and having them weighed at the checkout – plus you can pick and choose the better quality apples. The shopper in a hurry, picking up the prepacked bag in haste, doesn’t realise (and may not care) that they are paying more.

The same thing applies to other fresh foods, such as broccoli. It is consistently cheaper bought loose from the boxes, than pre-wrapped.

Strictly speaking, these differently-packed products are not absolutely identical. They may come from different batches, different distribution centres, or even different countries. But from the consumer’s point of view there’s unlikely to be any practical difference.

So remember – if price is important, the loose produce is probably the better bet. If convenience is important, go for the pre-pack, but realise that you may be paying a premium for it.

(photo by Linda Huber)

Twice a year or thereabouts, the Continental Market sets up in the pedestrianised part of the city. About twenty stalls sell a wide range of delicious foods, plus toiletries and crafts. Best of all is surely the mobile bakery which turns out fabulous food.

I always look for the stalls that sell French jams, which are always luscious and packed with delicious fruit. Why, in comparison, are most English jams pretty much like jellified flavoured sugar?

There is a fascinating range of jams available, including apple jam (with or without calvados liqueur). It’s £3 per jar, and worth every penny, but I can usually persuade them to sell me four jars for £10 or £11.

You can possibly see from the photo that the jam jar is really beaten around. The lid is stained and full of dents. This whole batch was like that. But inside … beautiful!

When you’re out-and-about, the available fast food can often be really dismal. But at many orienteering events, and other outdoor functions, Wilf’s mobile catering offers fast food that’s really different.

There are pasta bowls, vegetarian chilli bowls with optional cheese and pita bread, baked potatoes with various toppings, tomato-rich pizzas and more.

Even the kids are keen on this food.

A wide range of home-made cakes is available too, and you can buy things like Mars Bars and fizzy drinks if you really want to.

Most of the food is reasonably-priced, although I suspect they’re doing alright on the pasta bowls at £3 which seem to include pasta, some kind of white sauce, mushroom and sweetcorn plus cheese.

By comparison, a chilli bowl with cheese is £2.50 and I would have thought it uses more expensive ingredients and uses more labour.

Now, if only they would use tongs to dispense the grated cheese instead of their fingers…

A loss leader is a product sold for less than its cost. This pricing strategy aims to lure customers to the store, with the hope that they will buy other more-profitable products.

I suspect that these Sainsbury’s Basics Sliced Peaches are a loss leader, at nine pence per 411gram tin.

I can’t imagine that the peaches can be grown, harvested, canned and transported to the supermarket for nine pence, even before considering the supermarket’s own overheads.

Anyway, they taste fine and seem to me to be as good quality as any other tinned peaches, so I’ve bought plenty of cans to stock up. Unlike some stores, Sainsbury doesn’t seem to put maximum-quantity limits on their promotions.

From December to March our local shops stock asian pear, which is imported from China.

It’s shaped like a plump pear, but doesn’t taste quite as sweet. It’s more crisp than a pear, though not as crisp as an apple or even a nashi (which some people also call the asian pear). It’s most refreshing.

It’s firm when ripe, and doesn’t bruise as easily as a pear. The ones I’ve bought have always been ready to eat, but they keep for around three weeks. They don’t seem to ripen off the tree.

The cost ranges from 50 pence each at the supermarket, down to 12 pence each at the asian food store.

Just peel, quarter, then cut out the core and the layer of harder flesh around the core. For maximum flavour chomp into small pieces with your front teeth as you feed it into your mouth. It can also be cooked in any recipe that uses pears.

Although it’s uncommon for children to bounce off a round trampoline, the consequences can be very serious, so we decided to get a netting enclosure for our trampoline.

The same design of trampoline is sold under various brand names, which gave us a large choice of supplier for the enclosure. Prices ranged from £100 to £300 for what appeared to me to be very similar enclosures, so we shopped at the lower end of the price range.

The one we purchased was marketed as being for a Dragon brand trampoline, which provided some mirth when the packing slip arrived, describing the contents as “Cage for 14 foot Dragon”!

It took an hour or two to assemble, which was straightforward except that one of the U-bolts had a faulty thread and was unusable. That kind of quality control failure really shouldn’t happen nowadays.

The finished item seems to do the job nicely.

One consequence of having an enclosure is that the children feel safer and I guess are less worried about falling off. Therefore, they bounce less carefully, and as a result of this have already bounced into the net a few times.

Kids nowadays often do not get enough exercise, so we bought a trampoline to give more opportunities for healthy play.

A few years ago, trampolines were much more expensive, so when toys’r'us advertised a 14 foot (4.25 metre) diameter round trampoline for £150 we decided to go for it.

It came as two heavy packages that could only just fit in a large car with all the seats folded away, and took a few hours to assemble.

The amount of use it has received has exceeded our expectations. Even in winter the kids will often spend an hour jumping around. They both have trampolining lessons at the local leisure centre, so of course they want to do all their tricks and we have to be quite strict about what is or is not allowed.

It’s a heavy beast, and I like to move it around a bit every few weeks in summer to give the grass under it a chance to recover (because the black mat blocks much of the light). I can just manage to drag it across the grass with a great deal of effort.

The construction seems solid, and has given us no problems to date. The mat can be removed to stop people from using it when we’re away, but it takes about an hour to remove the mat and surround, and another hour to replace them when we get back.

The mat is not as springy as the one on the trampoline at the leisure centre, but it’s adequate, and the “euroActive” logo in the middle of the mat helps accurate jumping.

Now if I could just find a way to stop the children squealing so loudly with excitement when they’re on it…

Like many others, I’ve been watching the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. It’s always amazing to see what feats humans are capable of when they are so focused on what they want to be good at.

The concentration, determination, muscular control, co-ordination, strength, and agility – sometimes supplemented by daring and audacity – make this a remarkable spectacle.

Of course there’s big money involved all the way, despite the reputation of the olympics as being for amateurs. The equipment, the coaching, the travel, the clothing, the accommodation, the facilities – it all adds up.

Not everyone has the opportunities that are available to these athletes, but that needn’t stop them from achieving outstandingly in their own niche.

One such niche is urban gymnastics, where daredevil teenagers choreograph death-defying manoeuvres in the setting of what appears to be an urban ghetto. With incomplete or decaying buildings as their props they scale walls, chimney gaps, leap onto tiny ledges, catapult themselves from one rooftop to the next, then jump to the ground in a multi-drop cascade of precision landings onto awkward walls.

It’s every bit as compelling to watch as the Olympic moguls. One can only admire the daring of these athletes, marvel at the hard work it must have taken to perfect their routines, reflect on how fortunate they are to remain injury-free (indeed, to remain alive!) and gasp at how they can tackle moves that you and I would assume are beyond human ability.

This kind of urban gymnastics, where one moves across obstacles almost as if they didn’t exist, is known as Parkour, and it’s not just sport – it’s an artform.

Watch this video and tell me you weren’t spellbound…

Want to see some more Parkour? It this was on television, it would no doubt include the catchphrase “don’t try this at home, folks!”.

Salt, sugar and oil are often added to supermarket muesli, although they shouldn’t be needed if the muesli contains high-quality, fresh ingredients with a high proportion of fruit, nuts and seeds.

For many years, I’ve been buying Traidcraft Fruit and Nut muesli, which is mostly oats of course, and contains 36% fruit and nuts. The nut pieces don’t seem to be as large and crunchy as they were when I started buying this muesli ten years ago, but it still makes a much tastier breakfast than the average mass-market store muesli.

The only problem is that it’s a hassle to get. For a while, I bought it mail-order from Traidcraft. Then, for a while it was stocked by my local Oxfam charity shop. Now, I get it from St Thomas’s church store, which is hardly ever open when I’m around. So when I do buy it, I buy up to ten packets at once – every pack that is on the shelf.

It’s £2 for a 500g pack. Other varieties are also available, but some of them (like Traidcraft Tropical muesli) do have added honey and oil.

When you’re next at the supermarket, have a look at the ingredients list for peanut butter. Chances are you’ll see peanuts, salt, emulsifier, sugar or honey, palm oil and maybe more.

Why do we need all these ingredients? When I was a lad, the local health food store would pour a bag of peanuts into a grinder, and collect the peanut butter in a jar underneath. All that is needed for peanut butter is squashed peanuts!

It turns out that you can still get peanut butter whose only ingredient is peanuts. It’s from Meridian and I get it from the Single Step Co-op in Penny Street Lancaster at £3.47 for a large 1kg tub.

Without all the extras, it tastes great! Without the emulsifiers, some of the oil can separate from the solids after a while, but it’s not a big deal. A quick stir blends everything together again, but I don’t even bother with that. I just plunge the knife in deeply so that I get some of the solids and some of the oil with each dig.