Aldi & Co to the rescue?

The weather remains unbelievable and so another day spent digging holes, moving holes, filling holes etc etc. No time to photograph.

So desperate to find a blip went for this. Daughter Kate in Ireland called last night before I had the chance ,,,, as always. Kate is a meat vegetarian but hubby and children aren't and she has no problem cooking for them. Similarly she has become a 100% meat feeder of her cats & dogs. No more dried or canned food, only raw meat & poultry, bones and all. She said it's a bit weird as a vegetarian sorting through the local butchers cut offs for the best bits!

Then we got on to poultry - she has a few of her own hens for eggs and has even taken in a few "rescue" ex- battery hens, granny having to knit them jumpers. She has the dilemma of buying cheap chicken wings at Aldi & Co where she would normally not want to buy from a supermarket and thereby support the price war.

As we talked I looked through the local supermarket's pamphlet  (national chain but I don't think outside Germany) for next week. As it happens, when the UK is holding a minutes silence on Wednesday, much of mainland Europe will be celebrating the start of carnival at 11:11am and or celebrating St Martins Day (commonly called Martini or Martinstag) with a roast goose. Lots of other traditions linked to this day - perhaps more on Wednesday.

Anyway in this pamphlet were oven ready frozen goose costing 13.40 Euros (3.19/kg) Thats about £2.30 - try buying one of the "better" brand dog or cat foods for that price.

I was determined to slaughter our geese but frankly I'm now not sure. Assuming I had bought them as 1-3 week old chicks, they would have cost about 9.00 Euros each. Assuming I didn't invest in a fence, didn't feed them (even for the first few weeks at least until they can eat grass), didn't pay anything for water, straw, building, council ground tax, worm treatment, had no transport costs picking them up nor when taking them to the slaughterhouse to be "oven prepared" at a acost of about 10.00 Euros each, I have then made a loss of around 6.00 Euros. How on earth is it possible???? Even if as suspected they are from mass rearing farms in Poland, alone the cost of freezing, packaging and transport.

Luckily there are a number of people prepared to pay the extra for a "normal" free range goose which is about 15.00 Euros/kg. Aldi had fresh goose on offer today at 4.29 Euros/kg, a tick better, but their frozen goose is also 3.19/kg.

So the dilemma continues .... if all else fails I suspect they may end up in the christmas parcel addressed to Ireland!

PS The labelling with "Gut Langenhof" is a cynical marketing trick used by all supermarkets. In German "Gut" not only means good but also manor as in estate/property, suggesting the birds come from a rather smart farmyard rather than from a mass industrial production unit without windows. They all do it, covering the packaging with pictures of charming timber framed farm buildings to ensure we feel we are buying a bit of countryside with our meat. Yes and I do too ..... but less and less....