“Even in recession, foodies hold fast” is an article written by Eric Burkett and published on the delish.com website on the 10th September 2010. It basically talks about the recent findings in various polls that suggest that for a number of categories, not just “foodies,” people who are passionate about their given interest area do not cut back particularly, nor do they feel guilty about their spending even in these hard financial times.
He goes on to suggest that people however are perhaps more careful as to how they spend their money on their hobby / interest and that other factors might impinge on what they spend. For example taking on more work due to lay-offs/redundancies and not wanting to say no to any extra work for fear that you might be next in the staff cut-backs, thus having less time to indulge your hobbies/interests.
I can relate to this, my husband and I are certainly eating out less often than previously but our spending on groceries has not decreased. I am being more careful about not just throwing away leftover food – you know the stuff you carefully pack away after the first meal and think to yourself that you will have that the next day and then don’t? After a few days of bypassing that carefully wrapped package and moving it around the fridge to get to the other items you want you end up just launching it in the bin! I am making more of an effort to plan to use up the leftovers in my weekly menu planning. Actually, let me expand on that last sentence a little more as I don’t actually physically write out a menu plan for the week ahead, more that when I buy say a whole chicken, I think to myself that we will have one meal from that as a roast plus another meal with the leftovers and maybe even boil up the carcass for stock or as a soup base. Therefore that one chicken does the two of us at least two meals and maybe even three and I may freeze the leftovers so that we don’t get bored of eating the same thing/same meat two nights running.
