Going Cheap

Now watching Eat Well For Less, a programme that combines two of our favourite topics: food and doing things on the cheap. No wonder it's compulsive viewing in this household.


Afterword: I'd written the above before the end of the episode in question. It seemed fairly typical of the series: a very ordinary, likeable family - mum, dad, two youngish daughters - adjusting their domestic arrangements to include more home cooking and a number of alterations to what they might routinely buy from the supermarket to feed themselves. They managed to save more than sixty quid a week with the new stuff and were eating more healthily - so all well and good. Like most of the families featured they were keen to save money, in this case for medical treatment for the mother, for her chemotherapy. Then, at the conclusion of the credits, came a picture of the mum, who'd passed away some time in the year or so after the making of the programme. It was a genuinely powerfully sad moment, and entirely unexpected. I assume the family had approved the airing of the episode as a kind of tribute to her. If so, it was a lovely one in its unaffected, touching simplicity. A reminder of the preciousness of the absolutely ordinary.