in praise of a supermarket

epicuric

epicuric

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Shropshire, UK
It's not often that I sing the praises of a supermarket, but when it comes to cheese and wine, Tesco seem to have really upped their game recently. Whilst stocking up on some last minute provisions for the holiday weekend I came across these beauties:
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The Saint Felicien is an unpasteurised cows milk dauphinois cheese that is almost pourable at room temperature. I can't remember such unctious creaminess, somewhere between a brie and a vacherin. Heavenly.

The Faugeres, according to the label is "a bold red with jammy black fruit flavours with herbal and spicy notes". All I can say is that it's rather good, and at £8 a bottle is incredibly good value. Furthermore, Tesco are currently running a 25% off promotion when you buy 6 or more bottles, so reduced to £6 a bottle it's a real steal.

On the other hand, my local Tesco seems to be following rather disturbing trend of reducing the size of its wine aisles. I first noticed this at a nearby Sainsbury store a few weeks ago, where the wine aisles had been reduced from 4 to 2. Tesco has seen fit to install a new "community room", where mothers can sit in comfort mopping up dribble and other essential ankle biter maintenance tasks. To accommodate this they have laid waste to a big chunk of wine aisle, such that the French selection is now down to just one bay each for red and white. Best stock up on the excellent Faugeres before the wine aisle goes completely to make room for a tattoo parlour, vaping shop or some other scourge of modern life.
 
I agree - the world has moved on and the days of 'cardboard' bread and 'take it or leave it' tinned goods is long gone. As for 'child friendly' areas etc it is simply part of the modern way - you produce it and then everybody else has to look after it.
 
We are incredibly lucky in the UK to have such an enormous choice of food and alcohol from all over the world in our supermarkets. I entered a cooking challenge for Swedish food recently and ideally needed to source the famous Swedish cheese, Vasterbottensost and Chanterelle mushrooms for the recipe. I was sceptical about finding the cheese in particular and thought I would have to substitute Cheddar - but courtesy of Ocado (on-line supermarket) I found some. It is also stocked in Waitrose supermarket. I also obtained light spelt flour for the pastry.

Having said this there are a few things which we don't seem to get here yet - Korean ingredients for example (although there are some available).

I wonder if we will continue to be so blessed post Brexit?
 
morning glory said:
We are incredibly lucky in the UK to have such an enormous choice of food and alcohol from all over the world in our supermarkets.
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Yes you are. I have probably said before that 16 years ago we were lucky if we could find any potatoes for sale in the market. Of course we had a tremendous variety of twigs and leaves but I had no idea what they were or what to do with them.
 
sidevalve said:
I agree - the world has moved on and the days of 'cardboard' bread and 'take it or leave it' tinned goods is long gone. As for 'child friendly' areas etc it is simply part of the modern way - you produce it and then everybody else has to look after it.
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You are obviously not in the US. Cardboard bread has its own aisle unless it is a really long aisle then it only takes up half with the rest being dominated by tortillas. I would say the bread takes up at least 5 meters of floor space and then it is double stacked on 5 shelves. Hamburger and hot dog buns have about a meter by 5 shelves.
As far as tinned goods, they have an entire aisle. Except there are more shelves.
 
morning glory said:
I wonder if we will continue to be so blessed post Brexit?
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Why not ? We are opting out of a political system not building a 50ft wall - trade will continue just as it always has done and did long before the EU was ever thought of. Further there is a huge amount of the world that is actually not in the EU.
 
sidevalve said:
Why not ? We are opting out of a political system not building a 50ft wall - trade will continue just as it always has done and did long before the EU was ever thought of. Further there is a huge amount of the world that is actually not in the EU.
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Yes I know - but it depends on what trade deals we negotiate - places like France may place whopping tariffs on us importing their cheese and wine for example which may mean we see a lot less of it on our shelves. Its really an unknown situation at the moment. I can't recall seeing much French cheese on the shelves pre joining the Common Market - but then there wasn't much of anything interesting on the shelves back then!
 
I don't suppose I will be able to obtain cheaper cheeses either way?
 
morning glory said:
Yes I know - but it depends on what trade deals we negotiate - places like France may place whopping tariffs on us importing their cheese and wine for example which may mean we see a lot less of it on our shelves. Its really an unknown situation at the moment. I can't recall seeing much French cheese on the shelves pre joining the Common Market - but then there wasn't much of anything interesting on the shelves back then!
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I really can't see that happening, more likely the other way round, if at all. But, do you think I should get stuck into the French cheese and wine whilst I can, just in case?
 
epicuric said:
I really can't see that happening, more likely the other way round, if at all. But, do you think I should get stuck into the French cheese and wine whilst I can, just in case?
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When my kids were around 4 and 6 we went on holiday to La Rochelle. We drove there and on the return trip kept stopping at supermarkets to check out the wine. By the time we reached Calais the boot was full and the kid's heads were almost touching the roof lining with all the wine bottles they were sitting on.
 
During that holiday, in the mornings we would send the kids to the boulangerie to buy bread (no crossing roads involved). They bought it but they never returned with any.
 
Yorky said:
During that holiday, in the mornings we would send the kids to the boulangerie to buy bread (no crossing roads involved). They bought it but they never returned with any.
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The sort of stuff great holiday memories are made of! I have similar ones from around 1998/9 - my boys were 8 & 10, queuing outside the village boulangerie in La Tania first thing in the morning to buy pain au chocolat for breakfast, and those pastries with almond paste inside. The good old days at an age when any quantity of food and drink could be consumed with impunity!
 
morning glory said:
Yes I know - but it depends on what trade deals we negotiate - places like France may place whopping tariffs on us importing their cheese and wine for example which may mean we see a lot less of it on our shelves. Its really an unknown situation at the moment. I can't recall seeing much French cheese on the shelves pre joining the Common Market - but then there wasn't much of anything interesting on the shelves back then!
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Unknown - yes but it is not a one way situation. We export to France as they export to us, also several EU countries have already stated that they would be quite happy to continue trading with Britain. When we joined the 'common market' we were led to believe that there would be a huge decrease in prices of such things as wine - this did not happen. The common market we joined was a trading agreement between a small number of European countries now we have been drawn into a huge political and bureaucratic monster with almost 30 member states each demanding a 'slice of the action'. There are huge slices of the world that are not in the EU - wine can be sourced from California and Australia for example. If the French want a trade war so be it but I suspect a lot of other european countries will not.
One last point - we NEVER joined the EU as it is now - it has created it self around us
 
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