I miss Tesco. Alot. I loved shopping there. It was so nice and I knew exactly where everything was and how much it cost. Every week I used to buy a whole chicken. I'd cut it up myself and then make stock with the carcass. Once a week my wife and I would eat a bautiful soup made from the stock, a little bok choi, spice it up, some onions, etc. You could buy crusty baguettes for 35p! Wine in the store for goodness sake! The baby veg was cheap as chips.
I have even done a "virtual shop" at Tesco online because I am that sad.
I used to think the supermarkets here were fabulous. They aren't Tesco - that's all I can think. Did go to a Food Lion in North Carolina for awhile - that rocked. Loads of pork products - particularly pork scratchings/rinds!
What was YOUR supermarket and what do you miss from it? How are the supermarkets where you are now? (see - that's a worldwide question! D )
Bungle, get out more, love -you'll feel better for it. wink
When we were back in England last year I really didn't find the supermarket over there that good. There's a bigger selection of items here and, of course, I'm used to the items that I buy here now. It was odd buying Sunblest bread.
Regards
Nigel
I miss Tesco. Alot. I loved shopping there. It was so nice and I knew exactly where everything was and how much it cost. Every week I used to buy a whole chicken. I'd cut it up myself and then make stock with the carcass. Once a week my wife and I would eat a bautiful soup made from the stock, a little bok choi, spice it up, some onions, etc. You could buy crusty baguettes for 35p! Wine in the store for goodness sake! The baby veg was cheap as chips.
I have even done a "virtual shop" at Tesco online because I am that sad.
I used to think the supermarkets here were fabulous. They aren't Tesco - that's all I can think. Did go to a Food Lion in North Carolina for awhile - that rocked. Loads of pork products - particularly pork scratchings/rinds!
What was YOUR supermarket and what do you miss from it? How are the supermarkets where you are now? (see - that's a worldwide question! :D )
Concur!
Here there seems to be an abundance of nothing. Plenty of choice of nothingness.
I think it's more likely because I live out in the sticks though. Went to a few stores in Ann Arbor and Lansing and it was positively cosmopolitan compared.
Let me explain.
in my local supermarket, which is called Glen's there are approximately 50 different types of lager/pilsners, you know like bud, bud light, miller, miller light, mgd, coors, coors light. The list is endless.
They also have Guiness and Bass, as way of an alternative.
So basically my local supermarket has decreed that the abundance of choice only consists of 50 slightly varying types of the same shite.
In the next aisle of Glens is the breakfast aisle.
Coffee. more coffee than you can shake a stick at............Little Bogota it should be called, there is so much coffee. The wonders of choice has had a negative effect on me in some ways. Instead of just walking down the aisle at Tesco's and picking up my Nescafe instant, I now stand there like a gormless git, looking at all the flavours, is it decaf? Traverse City Cherry decaf? sounds nice. oooh how about Hazelnut amaretto?
This can last as long as 10 minutes.
There are 220 different brands of Cereal sold in the USA. nuff said.
However, may I be blunt here, there are no fields in Battle Creek.
I long for the simplicity of just being able to grab a bottle of Coke. Over here there is my coffee conunderum again, Do I go for Diet cherry Pepsi? or regular vanilla coke? or how about Faygo Rock and Rye?
another 15 minutes of decisions..........
Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to the muscovite days of queueing up in the snow for 2 hours for a stale loaf.........but it does seem to me that instead of speeding shopping up, the agonies of choice have just prolonged the agonies of shopping.
Asda.
It was fantastic. Lisa would look at the clothes while I rooted through all the reduced stuff for the freezer. The deli counter sold ready prepared Indian, Chinese and Tex-Mex food, and we would almost always get a rotisserie chicken to eat opn shopping night. It was still warm when we got it home and was great with some salad.
Still can't get over how our local Stop & Shop can be so big but have so little variety on sale cry
I used to love Tescos for the same reason....knowing where everything I want is and how it's cheap and easy. Every saturday I used to take my backpack down my local Tesco and get the same things.....one of which was one of their focaccias.....I'd take that baby home and grill it with cheese and tomatoes. Sit in front of "football focus" with that and a cup of coffee....fantastic. BUT then, they inexplicably changed focaccia suppliers and the new ones were pony so I stopped buying them, got sad and even filled out a customer dissatisfation slip....to which I heard nothing.
Also, why are baked beans so expensive over here? Aren't they grown here?
Strange, so far the only comments are from guys!
I guess after being here for so long I cant really remember grocery shopping back in England, all I really remember was the inconvienece
of store hours as this was before Sunday opening and the only late night,till 8pm roll was on a Friday otherwise after 5.30 pm you were screwed wink
ASDA and Tesco were my supermarkets of choice back home. Here it's Stop&Shop and BigY depending on what's on offer that week.
Manc is right about the over-abundance of choices. 97 varieties of canned tomato is not necessary...neither is 256 kinds of bread - all of which tend to be pants. Why am I faced with an alarming array of tinned peaches/pineapples/mangoes but bugger all in the way of tinned strawberries/raspberries/cherries??? Do the marketing managers have an aversion to red soft fruits??? When you do manage to get hold of one it's invariably ridiculously over-priced too. roll
I don't do fish unless it's rectangular and breadcrumbed so I have the choice of beef or chicken. Occasionally pork and never lamb as I find it very game-y and high priced.
Oh how I long for M&S food halls! Home-grown tomatoes for sale at the roadside! Proper new potatoes! Welsh lamb!
Must dash now. The delights of the grocery store await!
Nanette Newman regards......
Debs x D
Did you know that on some of the bus tours in Prague they stop outside the new Tesco there because they are so proud of it! lol
The delights of the grocery store await!
it's not Friday :D
Well I'm beginning to think living in the sticks of Maine is not so limiting after all.
Everything you all mention you can't seem to get is readily available in the local supermarket here.
Wine, spirits and beer, including a selection of imports. Canned raspberries, blackberries, cherries.
It has been so long since I shopped in a UK supermarket I barely remember. I know it was Asda and I think a Tesco's.
The biggest difference I found with supermarkets here is that they sell a whole lot more processed foods than fresh.
I used to work for Tesco so might be a bit biased - they had god-like status in my house for a while as you could get clothes, videos, fresh baked bread and all the normal supermarket stuff - plus I gave my mum my staff discount card and she was well 'appy.
I shop at Safeway or Fred Meyer (local subsidiary of Kroger) here. The range is a bit limiting but our state does permit them to sell beer and wine (no spirits though so we have to go to the State Liquor Stores for Tequilla and queue up with the riff-raff/tramps cashing in their bottle deposits) lol
Girlfriend shops at the local Co-Op - they do natural and organic foods which make a nice change sometimes.
I would like a supermarket that sold more British stuff at a semi-decent price. I should be grateful for Safeway/Albertson's really as they do sell Marmite, Robertson's jams and marmalades, Golden Syrup and Bisto gravy mix. I would really like a British baker and butcher though.
Asda.
It was fantastic. Lisa would look at the clothes while I rooted through all the reduced stuff for the freezer. The deli counter sold ready prepared Indian, Chinese and Tex-Mex food, and we would almost always get a rotisserie chicken to eat opn shopping night. It was still warm when we got it home and was great with some salad.
Love Asda. Ours wasn't as big as the one in Long Eaton or West Bridgeford so occasionally I would make a special trip down there and have lunch in the cafe.
I have to say, though, we have a new Super Stop and Shop and it is good. I know where everything is now and I can get the things I want. I don't buy fruit and veg from there as I can get it much cheaper at a meat farms place. I try and look out for their offers and they are getting better. You can now get similar offers to what we used to get back home (buy one get one free or buy 2 and get one free or a set price for buying 2 or 3 things). This wasn't something that was available when we first came here.
I do agree with the lack of variety (an can of tomatoes is a can of tomatoes) but when you look past this I have found our supermarket is getting more variety of foods in (some of this is very similar back home, though, where you would get lots of one particular type of food in lots of different brands and styles like baked beans or savoury rice). We can now get a good range of chinese and other ethnic foods. I can now get Quorn and Linda McCartney meals.
I miss Tesco. Alot.
me too bungle!
I loved Tesco, there was a huge one not far from where I lived, its even bigger now and they have staff on rollerskates so they can get round the aisles quickly, I didn't believe my friends until I saw it for myself on a visit home.
I also loved M&S food hall and every now and then would go to Waitrose which wasn't such a convenient location but they had some good stuff.
Here I've tried Shaws, A&P, Pathmark, Big Y, Stop & Shop, Mcquades and Shoprite and don't like any of them much.
Kings in NJ was okay but expensive, I like Wholefoods for some stuff but there isn't one close.
A few weeks back I finally made it to a TraderJoes but it was only a very, very small one and so wasn't as great as I was hoping. They did have some good stuff like greek yogurt etc. but in general it was disappointing, it was very disorganised and a bit grubby, some of the "less popular" items were covered with a lovely thick layer of dust.
Wish Tesco would open up over here!
What was YOUR supermarket and what do you miss from it?
I think it was Sainsbury's..
Although I'd always take a trip to Bristol and Whiteladies Road to get all my Indian/Oriental food supplies.
How are the supermarkets where you are now? (see - that's a worldwide question! :D )
Excellent.
Much better than back there too IMV. (That's a true scientific study based on the only trip back to the UK for my Dad's funeral - the only time I have been back to the UK in 14 years).
I couldn't get over how "drab" foods look.
Can get pretty much anything here. Being that they're a huge cross section of peeps from all over the world you can lay your hands on any kind of food stuffs.
Being that it is California too, vegetables are good and plenty (especially organic) and the same for meats and poultry/fish (living by the coast has that advantage too - just go down to the harbour and buy fresh tuna/albacore off the boat..)
If you're ever here (Bungle did your wife ever get to Stanford?) then there's the El Camino Real (and no not VRB's old pickup). The whole worlds food on a street.
It was pretty sad when I moved here in 1990, but with the influx of Brits/Aussies/Asians/Europeans and so forth who worked for the hi-tech companies based here, I feel that it did change what stores carried.
Andrew :)