Monday, October 02, 2006

The Grocery Store


I made an actual grocery run today. In lieu of supporting Wal-Mart, I went to Waitrose, which is conveniently located for the next 3 days in the mall, at which point they will be moving to Portswood Road. Which means they will be on a different bus route, and that today they were not at full stock. While I am sorry to admit I did not walk down the condiments aisle, I did pretty much check out everything else.

Fruits and veggies: pretty much the same. I got some Braeburn apples.
Frozen food: in the sorts of cases that we keep non-frozen fridge food, such as milk. Which seems odd to me, but I think we all know that the Enlgish aren't big on 'cold'. I got three frozen entrees of an English nature. One of them is called Bubble and Squeak. I would lie if I said my decision to purchase this was not based entirely on the name. It's apparently mashed potatoes with cabbage and carrots. The entrees were about 2 pounds each, which is somewhat comparable to American stores.
Crisps: they have 'prawn cocktail' flavor. I did not get any.
Ready meals: the stuff you can grab to eat right away for lunch. Mainly sandwiches, some wraps (I got chicken caesar, which apparently includes bacon), some sushi, quite a bit of quiche, there was a pasty, and some things that I didn't quite understand but looked edible. My main point of interest was the kinds of sandwiches, including, of course 'egg and cabbage'. Mmmmmm.
Cereal/bars: no granola bars, per se, which is a big blow to me. They do however, have nutrigrain bars and cereal bars, so I should survive. The variety of boxes of cereal was limited and mainly Kelloggs.
Other misc: you have to bag your own groceries. Its a lot of pressure to have to bag the stuff flying down at you and then try and figure out what kind of coin is which and what sort of combo you can use to pay.

So that was the store. Despite the fact that it is raining like the apocalypse today, I walked south of the Bargate for the first time today to check out some more freakishly old stuff. This included more chunks of the wall, the ruins of a 14th century church that was bombed in WWII, the outside of the maritime museum which is in a 14th century woolhouse and conveniently closed on Mondays, and the above pictured Tudor House, which is of course, from Tudor times. Whenver those were. It is being restored and is closed for some time. I'll have to go back down there on a non-rainy, non-Monday sort of day to get a better look at things.

I think I shall try my Cadbury 'dairy milk with creme egg' bar now.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps "Bubble and Squeak" is what a person's digestive track does after eating the dinner.

Anglo Mango said...

Don't crush the dream!

Anonymous said...

That bagging situation sounds stressful. I bet you'll be a pro by the time you get back to the US though--you'll want to bag your own groceries here too.

Anonymous said...

Henry VIII was a Tudor.

Anonymous said...

i gotta check this more often - you are such a good blog-updater! man. reading this stuff at work maybe isn't such a good idea, it just makes me want to leave work. and go to some cute street somewhere. good photos, by the way. they have an abe lincoln statue? i alerted my coworkers to that fact.

just to reiterate, i too am against the skinny jeans. they are no good.

Anglo Mango said...

I did some more research on the Tudor house. Apparently it was built around 1490. That seems about in line with ol' Henry. And I did some people watching today and spotted some boot cut. I also saw a 60-ish woman wearing boots and a mini-skirt. Not ideal.

Anonymous said...

so... are you going to update us on bubble and squeak? it sounds like it should be the names of pet mice or something...

on a side note - why does the DOT feel they need to remind us that "Flammable materials are prohibited in I-90 tunnel" ??? I would much rather see the travel times...

Anonymous said...

who is this anonymous? what do they have to hide? what do they have against the flammable materials sign? unveil yourself anonymous!

Anonymous said...

never!!

Anonymous said...

Hi.

Anglo Mango said...

I'm sorry I have to do it, but anonymous is indeed Coco. I'm sorry Coco. The world needs to know. They only put the non-flammable signs up when they are running tests on the fire suppression system within the tunnels, and flammable things are allowed the rest of the times (like when they know the system is working).

I'm glad to see that Nikki has gotten on board.

And I have not yet had the bubble and squeak. Perhaps I will have it this evening. My other frozen dishes are shepard's pie and cottage pie, I believe.

Anonymous said...

ahh, that explains the non-flammable. Good to know. maybe this is coco, maybe this isn't....

Anonymous said...

Be carefull with the shepards pie. When in England I ordered what I assumed was a slice of shepards pie but turned out to be kidney pie. American's all over received a bad rap when I spit my dinner back onto my plate.
I tried making bubble and squeak once. It neither bubbled nor squeaked, nor did it taste very good either.