My guilty secrets

What I bought in Tescos today and where I should have bought them...

1. Organic cider in a box (like a wine box, only cider). Not sure where you could get this: perhaps a proper wine shop.
2. Bananas, reduced for quick sale. These should have been Fairtrade but weren't. I could have got them from the market, not necessarily at reduced price. But if I hadn't bought them, probably Tescos would end up throwing them away...
3. Apples, a weird sort of green English apples that I've never seen before. They're called Greenstar, and they appeared to say they were grown in Kent. I bought them because I'm a trifle bored with coxs, and although the professor likes russets best, I'm not so very fond because they're too dry for my liking. I very much like Granny Smiths. However it irritates me that the only Granny Smiths you can get in the winter are from France (why apples from France, I ask you?). Well here are some green apples from England. I presume they ripened in the Autumn and have been waxed and kept in carbon dioxide. They may prove to be horrid. I haven't tried one yet: I'll report back. As for where else I might get them, well I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find exactly those anywhere. But the place one should buy local English fruit is the Urban Farm Shop.
   
4. White bread from the instore bakery. This I should have made at home, or failing that I should have gone to the local independent bakery baking on the premises on Norfolk Street or on Burleigh Street. But I was a bit late in the day for that.
5. Traditional chutney. This I should have made at home, or failing that I should have bought it at the Urban Farm Shop.
6. Two special treats from the Reduced for Quick Sale counter: one was some hummus and one was a kind of appetiser of mozzarella and oven-baked tomatoes. These I just wouldn't have gone anywhere to buy, because they weren't necessary.

The only reason I actually went to Tescos was to get a loaf of warm freshly baked bread in time for lunch, which I couldn't do if I made it myself. Lunch ended up a bit late, but it was yummy, and the extras I got made the day a bit more fun than it might have been.

I also earned double green clubcard points for the organic items and for the fact that I used my own shopping bag. I think Tescos should be commended for providing an incentive to encourage their customers to change their habits in both those aspects.

Lychees again

By the way, the lychees came from Madagascar. In case you'd forgotten Madagascar is a large island some way off the west of Africa, with an amazing variety of otherwise unknown species of animals.
According to the World Bank 70% of the Malagasy live on less than $1 per day so one might try to justify buying their produce on the grounds that it helps.
Unfortunately I suspect in my case quite a bit of the 99p for the lychees went to Tescos profits, and some must have paid for the transport even if that was underpriced and didn't include any carbon taxes. Quite likely there's some agent who buys the stuff for Tescos too. So how much of my 99p got to the person who grew and picked the fruit? Alas, rather little. Perhaps a penny?