The rules!

Right, let’s get down to business. This is not just a blog about avoiding supermarket food – it’s going to be a well-planned blog about avoiding supermarket food. And everything else.

To recap, I have vowed not to be a supermarket customer for the whole of 2013, and on Day 2 I’m delighted to report that my habits are already changing.

As we drove home from our new year celebrations feeling slightly delicate yesterday, my other half and I were running through our “what’s for tea?” options.

Our usual form would have been to pop into our local Co-op, which was very probably open, for some hangover-easing pizza and garlic bread, plus a loaf to make our lunches for work this week. We didn’t have the energy for anger when we realised this was no longer an option (whose idea was this stupid resolution anyway?!) but a feeling of despondency gently settled in the car.

What did we have in the house? Lots of leftover cheddar from the festive cheeseboard that our relatives were too bloated to tackle on Christmas Day evening as we farted our way through Jurassic Park. And about a dozen less-than-fresh eggs.

We spent a couple of hours in the kitchen yesterday afternoon, resulting in toad-in-the-hole for tea and a quiche to cut up and bring to work for lunch today. A pretty impressive outcome, especially in light of the fact that we’d had about three hours’ sleep between us the previous night.

So I’m feeling quite smug as I type, but pride comes before a fall so I recognise I’m going to need some rules if this resolution is going to last the year.

Firstly I need to set out what I mean when I say supermarket. Am I just talking about the huge megastores where you can buy everything but the kitchen sink (and in some cases probably the sink as well) or am I even ruling out the small Co-op convenience store round the corner from my house?

The list of UK supermarkets on Wikipedia is much larger than expected: Aldi, Asda, Budgens, The Cooperative Food, Costcutter, Eurospar, Farm Foods, Heron Foods, Iceland, Lidl, Londis, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

It’s a decent, comprehensive list so I’m going to use it as the basis for my challenge. This year I will not set foot inside any of the above.

But these days being a supermarket customer doesn’t just mean walking into a store – the bigger chains also offer petrol, home delivery, clothes and even a range of financial products including loans, credit cards and insurance.

To fully abstain from giving my custom to the supermarkets I’m also going to have to come up with new ways to fill up the car, buy cheap and cheerful work clothes (which currently come from F&F at Tesco) and even find an alternative to Sainsbury’s Saver instant access account.

So the basic rules:

RULE 1:- I will not physically set foot inside a supermarket, defined as any store run by any of the above list of companies, no matter how large or small. Not only does this rule out my local huge Tesco Extra, but it also means the smaller convenience stores – Sainsbury’s Locals, Tesco Extras and my beloved local Co-op – are out of bounds.

RULE 2:- I will not buy my diesel from any petrol station run by any of the supermarket chains.

RULE 3:- I will not use any online store or home delivery service run by any of the supermarket chains.

RULE 4:- I will not use any financial products from the supermarkets. Currently I only have one product, a Sainsbury’s savings account, so I will move the small pot of rainy day cash elsewhere and then leave that account untouched this year.

It then becomes more complicated because when it comes to my household grocery budget I am myself part of a cooperative.

My other half is a huge fan of the supermarkets and it’s not unusual for me to lose him to Tesco for a whole afternoon. Seduced by the special offers and beguiled by the bright colours, he can happily meander through the aisles and come back with twice the amount of food on his list, accompanied by stories of how much he’s saved by buying 200 tins of cat food rather than two.

Getting him to agree to boycott the supermarkets for a year is a no-go. But nor can we afford to go buying two lots of food in order for me to avoid eating supermarket-bought produce.

The compromise we have arrived at is that I will have control of the majority of our shopping budget and he will gamely tag along as I explore our local food markets and farm shops. Indeed, as a foodie and fantastic cook he’s rather looking forward to that bit. And I’m secretly hoping that as our year roles on and I discover new ways to shop he many find himself relying less on the supermarkets too.

But if he feels like going off to Tesco on a Saturday morning then that’s his prerogative. And if he’s cooking spag bol for tea with supermarket-bought pasta then it would be wasteful for me to shun it.

Same goes when eating with family or friends – my mum would no doubt throw me out of her house if I turned my nose up at supermarket-bought veg at Sunday lunch.

However, one thing I absolutely cannot do as part of this challenge is to send my loved ones to a supermarket on my behalf. That would be cheating.

So RULE 5:- I will not ask my partner, my family or my friends to go into any supermarket and make a purchase on my behalf.

That’s it I think. Yes Mr Sainsbury, I am indeed going to Try Something New Today – in fact I’m going to try something new all year.