What about the cats that eat the rats?
What about the cats that eat the rats?[/quote]
Theyâre taken care of by the dogs that chase the cats.
I canât remember how the horse fits in, or why the rat was supposed to eat the fly.
tsu: Yeah, I donât get where the âitâs cheaper to eat outâ myth comes from at all. It makes no sense, even for someone who is single. A single person could, if necessary, cook enough each time for several meals and then store the food in the fridge. My wife and I, plus our dog, all eat very well, yet we spend under 5,000NTD/month on food. That comes out at 167NTD/day for two people and a dog. Iâd easily spend 167NTD on 1.5 meals for myself if I ate out.
Worse yet, way back in the day when I used to work at Hess at kindergarten, we used to get a free snack of fruit or a steamed bun in the morning (donât know if there was one in the afternoon as I never worked there then), and then a free lunch. The lunches were never anything exciting â they were for little kids, after all â but they were nutritious and you could eat as much as you wanted. Yet most of my colleagues ate out or ordered takeaway every single day. I worked with a bunch of absolute heffers who ate KFC or pizza every day, plus TGI Fridayâs at least once every weekend, and paid a fortune for it too. Then they wondered why they were overweight and had no money. Muppets.
If you want to buy lots of fresh vegetables and spices and good quality meats for cooking I donât believe it is cheaper to eat in, simply because a lot of the food goes off unless you eat it quickly and you often buy more than you need.
And how much do you pay for high quality meals with fresh vegetables and good quality meats that are healthy? Unless youâre buying garbage (most of the cheap Taiwanese food) itâs cheaper to eat in. itâs not as convenient but that is a different factor.
Sure the quality is not the same but that was not the point right?
OPS (Our Passion is Salad) on Hejiang St. in Taipei sells salads in large containers for 89NT. Thatâs including meat (chicken or beef) and a baggie of dreassing of your choice. One box is plenty for an individual meal, but if you buy some wraps a single box will easily feed two (though youâll be short on meat, to be honest).
It just doesnât seem possible for me to MAKE salad like that for either one or for two at a price thatâs lower. I just canât see it. Iâd have to buy a head of lettuce, a cucumber, a tomator or two, a can of sweetcorn, a portion of meat, a little onionâŚ
The proportions of my home-made salad would be dictated by the minimum order quantities of the products I want: instead of a small amount of sliced onion I in fact have to buy a gigantic onion that will sit in my fridge for weeks (or more realistically, until it goes moldy). Depending on the time of day I choose to make my salad and hence which locations are open, I might need to buy three or four tomatoes, when in fact I only need one or two. I will never finish an entire cucumber by myself - in fact I wonât even finish half of it.
By the time Iâve gone shopping for all the stuff I need, and realized that I have left over food that will spoil, and wasted half an hour of my precious time washing and preparing the materials, I would have been much better buying the damn thing from OPS.
Itâs only one example, but itâs not the only one I can think of. Your local filthy shaola (çč) shop can give you a delicious meal of rice, cabbage, tofu, eggplant, chashao pork and chicken thigh for 70NT. Youâd never be able to prepare it for less yourself, and the last time I bought eggplant I had to get three at a time (I donât have the inclination to get up at the crack of dawn to buy vegetables from the market so I had to go to a supermarket) and of course I failed to use two of them before they went off because I only needed one for the dish I was making.
I donât deny that you CAN cook at home and eat for less than eating out, but I definitely donât think itâs easy - especially if youâre only cooking for one or two. Being crap at cooking (like I am) doesnât help. Coming home in the evening and facing an hour or whatever of preparation time and then washing up makes the proposal even less attractive, though I do believe that cooking together on the weekend is a great thing for a couple to enjoy together - even if they donât save any money.
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It depends what youâre eating and what you think your time is worth. Once upon a time, I used to eat out a lot - I mean at the breakfast shops, buffets, cheap coffee shops, and suchlike - because there were loads of very good ones just outside my front door selling things I liked. My job involves pretty intense bouts of focused work and it was great to just sit down, chill out, read a book and drink a coffee. Good way to unwind before getting back to the grind, without messing around in the kitchen. I like cooking, but not when Iâm hungry! I rarely spent more than NT$100 for a meal - it might not be cheaper, exactly, but it was worth it. Times are different - prices are higher, exchange rate is worse (for me), and there are no food shops within walking distance (Iâve moved). So now I cook more - mostly, as you say, a big pot of something good for a few days.
Spaintâs point is the important one - itâs impossible to make things like salads (which I eat quite a lot of) without having a fridge crammed with perishables - 30% of which usually ends up going rancid unless youâre good at scheduling. Wish I lived near that OPS place!
Obviously, if youâre a pizza-eating heifer (or muppet) youâre going to spend WAY more than what I did. The last time I went in one of those âwesternâ places was at the insistence of S.O. who wanted to try something different. We spent about NT1600 on couple of drinks and a few plates of greasy gunk. I canât imagine anyone wanting to eat that once a week or more, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Yeah, maybe. I just wonder how many vegetables some people eat. My wife and I rip through fruit and vegetables in quick order. We donât have stuff sitting around in the fridge for long, even for salads.
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Hahahahahahaha this topic.
Ok uk wins on groceries. Loses on pretty much everything else though. Especially public transport.
Congrats! Uk no.1 best grocery country!
Give us your feedback since you are living there now.
Other minor things beyond groceries I noticed, nice clothes and branded shoes are a bit cheaper, and some electronics are cheaper in the UK/Europe. Not much else.
I think it depends on the supermarket. Milk is definitely very cheap. Ice cream is also cheap. Eggs on the other hand are more expensive. Seafood is also really expensive considering that all the fish is sold in pieces. I also canât seem to find any fresh prawn in supermarkets. Fruits and vegetables I feel like the prices are really volatile in Taiwan so Iâm not sure. I think Starbucks is comparable but the menu is a lot more limited here. McDonaldâs is of course more expensive, but itâs still a lot cheaper in Britain compared to France. A set is like ÂŁ5 in the London and âŹ9 in Paris.
For clothes Iâm not really sure since I hate shopping. Primark is extremely cheap but itâs absolute crap. H&M I find the prices similar.
The worst is transportation and rent. I think those go without saying. Rent is somewhat understandable since itâs skewed by all the bankers, but the tube and the trains to other parts of the country are simply outrageous. Itâs multiple times more expensive than anywhere in the continent except maybe Switzerland.
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A nice car would be cheaper in UK specifically.
Now remember the GBP has devalued a shitload compared to a few years ago~
I donât drive. Besides, the gas is like twice the price here, as is the parking, and thereâs this random thing called congestion tax or something in zone 1 which is really expensive. I guess itâs to tackle the pollution in addition to congestion, but the AQI is >150 atm so I guess itâs not always working.
I just remembered something really cheap: Wetherspoons. A gin and tonic is like ÂŁ2.something in zone 2 which is crazy (though they probably use the worst alcohol since I never get drunk at one of their pubs).
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just went on the sainsburys website. 12 free range medium eggs = ÂŁ1.85 thats 74 NTD. never seen 12 eggs here for that price. eggs are cheaper in england. not sure your assessment of fish is accurate either. i used to buy salmon in england, never buy it here.
taiwan macdonalds is cheaper(not massively). but its a lot more limited.
The reason the chicken thigh cost 50nt at the wet market is because those arenât factory farmed chicken, but free range chicken. Those cost more and taste different if you noticed.
The cheap stuff you buy at carrefour is mass farmed stuff. As are the cooked chicken from restaurants. The wet market only sells free range chickens.
Also you can buy 12 eggs for around 50nt at the traditional market. Boxed stuff cost more for some reason. Also a lot of supermarkets only sell organic eggs for some reason.
Do they still sell chicken meat at wet markets? I remember a few years ago it was forbidden due to another bird flu scare.
They do. They just couldnât have live birds that they kill for you on the spot.
But if you want high quality chickens that are really only good for stewing (because the meat is much tougher and leaner) the wet market is a good place for that. Otherwise buy chicken from Carrefour. I think the ones that sell cooked chicken buys their from food suppliers because I never seen chicken leg quarters anywhere, only the deboned stuff.
Pork and beef on the other hand is cheaper at the wet market. The pork is slaughtered literally that morning so they are FRESH.
Thatâs their business model. They charge 2 quid a glass, but you need three times as much to get the same effect as from a 5 quid G&T elsewhere.