Always do the hungry shop

The past few Saturdays seem to have taken a similar pattern: I wake up and realise there's nothing particularly exciting or appetising in the house for lunch. The sensible course of action would be to pop to Tesco for the weekly 'big shop' on Saturday morning and return in time for lunch with plenty of exciting options.

I'm not all that sensible, though. What we tend to do instead is try to postpone supermarket shopping for as long as possible in the following manner:

1. I suggest going out for lunch
2. We mull over this idea and discuss where, out of our collection of regular haunts, we should go
3. We get ready and drive to one of the lunch locations
4. While we're eating a plan for the afternoon formulates, which usually includes stopping off at Waitrose/M &S/local deli for wine and food for Saturday night
5. The shopping still hasn't been done by Sunday morning, but we've indulged ourselves gastronomically for at least half of the weekend, often at considerable expense.

Now, I have nothing against this and it means we get out and about on a Saturday, while exploring, supporting and enjoying our local eating places. We're now familiar with a fair few gastropubs, cafes, restaurants and delicatessens in the Uttlesford area, which is great.

However, there's a possible deviation from this plan and it should be resisted at all costs. Sometimes, when there's not much else to do on a Saturday afternoon, we give in and do the supermarket shopping just after lunch! This is A Bad Thing* and I'm here to warn you against it - and you never thought we'd get to the point of this post, did you?!

Last Saturday we ate a two-course meal at the Cricketers' Arms in Rickling Green (a reasonably well-known local gastropub). The food there isn't bad but, on this occasion, all four of the dishes we ate seemed to be over salty and incredibly oily! This isn't intended to be a review of the pub, though: I'm merely using this example as illustration.

So, fairly full from our large lunch of oil and salt we drove to Tesco to buy everything we'd need for the following week. But, of course, when you're full (and, in this case, bilious) you don't really fancy any more food and I found myself drifting aimlessly down the aisles unable to look a decent fillet steak in the, er, face! I just couldn't bring myself to imagine what I'd want to eat during the week, let alone that evening, and found that my powers of 'food matching' were severely under par. "Do green beans go with these noodles? Oh, I can't think about eating noodles at a time like this!"

I felt as if I never wanted to eat again (yes, me!) and the result was a whole week with no sensible food in the house. I'd hardly bought any 'proper' dinners and there was nothing to eat as a snack, so my stomach was rumbling almost every evening. I'd also failed to get anything for my lunches so I ended up spending over the odds by buying my lunch in London most days.

My advice to you, therefore, is this: always shop when you're hungry! It's the only way!

* Anyone who knows me particularly well will be surprised, nay shocked, by my use of Dickensian, teacher-style capitalisation. That's how bad a thing it is! You see what it's driven me to?!