Grocery Shopping

[blue_dolphin]

On February 25, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Tere said:

Update to my grocery list with our Ludlow Food Centre adventures! It's a very well regarded farm shop selling products from a large local estate, as well as other local produce. http://www.ludlowfoodcentre.co.uk/Content.aspx?ID=1

 

Thanks for taking us along on this trip!  This looks like the sort of place where one could spend a bunch on some very lovely, high quality products.  What a wonderful resource to be able to buy things from local suppliers.

 

8 minutes ago, Tere said:

D'oh. yeah it might have been St. David's Day. 

 

I suspect this is the case.  Their website lists some specials from Welsh suppliers for the day.  

 

[Deryn]

Yes, of course. Tomorrow is St. David's Day - a day that also always makes me nostalgic. My father always used to wear a leek in his hat and a daffodil on his lapel - and we used to attend St. David's Day celebrations for many years in Toronto and Ottawa.

[rarerollingobject]

Today from the greengrocers; 2kg of strawberries because they were on sale (I'll think of what to do with them later), green onions, gai lan, cavolo nero, smoked streaky bacon, eggplants, zucchini flowers, a good chunk of fresh horseradish, fresh raw pistachios, Australian native finger limes, a handful of sugarplums and some fresh shiitakes.

 

Not shown: a half dozen oysters, and some Tasmanian brandy gravlax.

[HungryChris]

I love Bartlett pears. It has taken me far too long to understand how to deal with them properly, but this is my current method: Buy them when they are green and hard so that they are not easily bruised, Take the tag off of them as soon as you get home because it will rip the skin if taken off when ripe. Place them in a soft nest like place to ripen.

[sartoric]

This mornings haul from the local organic farmers market.

Dried porcini, pineapple, a loaf of pane di casa, fresh bamboo shoots, fresh shiitakes, corn, quinces, mangoes, royal blue  potatoes, garlic and zucchini. I'd run out of cash by the time we reached the bamboo shoots, the kindly farmer offered to give me a couple. Now I just need to figure out how to use them !

 

 

[DianaB]

I had completely forgotten about this topic so I have had the pleasure of page after page of fantastic food photography and reporting on rediscovering it today. I find it really interesting to read of, and see, foods that are everyday items in some parts of the world but rare or unobtainable elsewhere.

 

Here in North Yorkshire we can (but I don't) buy New Zealand lamb that has been transported from the other side of the world at a lower price than lamb reared locally.  However we cannot obtain fruits like yuzu or finger lime from the same part of the world as the lamb, it was great to see the latter in one of the recent posts from Australia - thanks @rarerollingobject.  I did get a half dozen fresh yuzus courtesy of a Japanese acquaintance who had been home to visit his mother who has a tree in her garden. Yuzu seems very popular in French patisserie but despite trawling every greengrocer I could find in Paris during our last trip none were found. I think my husband is glad that the Japanese guy finally allowed me to try these fruits, he seemed to have lost interest in the quest after the first hundred or so shops I had visited. :-) Still looking for my first finger lime!  We did come across Victoria pineapples for the modest price of 75€ each.  In England we just buy 'pineapple', perhaps priced by size or weight but never costing anywhere near a tenth of the Victoria variety.  Has anyone tried a Victoria pineapple? 

 

For our day to day shopping we get processed goods delivered by one of a number of supermarkets. Delivery cost is typically £1 if you pick an unpopular time slot and it would cost me five times that in petrol to drive to the same supermarket and back. Reading some of your posts it seems we are lucky to have this service in a rural location, I guess it is feasible because England is so small compared with Canada for example. We say we are 'rural' but we are only 15 miles from a decent sized town and the city of York is only 40 miles. 

 

Fresh goods come come from our local farm shop. Similar to that beautifully photographed and described by @Tere but on a smaller scale. Most of the meat is their own and the best quality I have ever enjoyed. Fruit and veg comes from neighbouring farms save things that won't grow in North Yorks.  I don't have any photos but they have a website if anyone is interested.  http://www.rootsfarmshop.co.uk

 

Alcohol and other stuff I got used to buying while living in France is bought in bulk during my visits to friends, perhaps six times a year. The supermarket there has a service called 'Drive' whereby you select your shopping on-line and they pack it up ready for collection. No delivery system there but the pre-order saves a huge amount of time. My friends ran their own restaurants for 35 years and have kept accounts with some of their wholesale suppliers. As a result I came back with a 25kg sack of French bread flour last time. Should keep the two of us going for a little while! 

 

 

 

 

[Deryn]

My daughter (who lives in Edinburgh) keeps saying I should come and live in Britain, since I was born there, and I really regard my heritage as more Welsh than anything else. Unfortunately, it is just too late for me to do that but I do drool when I read Tere and DianaB's posts - and thank you both for your descriptions of the areas around you both that supply such bountiful culinary treats.

[HungryChris]

Warning Will Robinson. Kimchi level has fallen dangerously low! Time to stop being lost in space and find your way to Cranston, R.I. to replenish your supply!

HC

 

 

 

 

 

[rotuts]

@HungryChris

 

thanks for that kimchi pic.  a store near me carries this band.

 

on sale this week !

 

Ill give it a try.

[kayb]

Love it when the farmers' market is in full swing.

 

New potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, peas. 

 

Blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, cinnamon rolls (this is a paper picnic plate full, about the size of what you'd bake in an 8-inch or 9-inch cake pan. Five bucks. Can't beat it.)

 

 And two of the biggest cabbages I've ever seen. They were a bit more than 10 pounds, together. I'm going to make sauerkraut this weekend.

 

Single disappointment was the peas. They were either too old or had been picked too long. Woody and not very good.

[HungryChris]

After watching a few episodes of Korean Food Made Simple on the Food Channel, I got hooked on gochujang and use it in ever increasing ways. A problem I have had is that it is not always labeled as gochujang, but rather hot bean paste and sometimes hot pepper paste. I have learned the hard lesson that not everything that is labeled hot bean  or hot pepper paste is gochujang. Quite often when I ask for gochujang, the store keepers are not familiar with that name and seem as confused as I am. A few days ago, I found the solution.

Amazon to the rescue.

HC

 

[Tere]

No pics because I got engrossed in putting everything away but it was our 3 or 4 monthly trip to Ludlow Food Centre today. Survived relatively unscathed - a £50 bill is cheap for a visit there!

 

We got: Cheese with no Name, a Neil's Yard goat's cheese that looks yummy, some Cornish Yarg, a hard cheese I can't remember off the top of my head, local muesli, spicy tomato ketchup made on site which knocks Heinz out of the park, Agen prunes for the fruit cake I am making for hubby tomorrow, dried cranberries for same and what we went in for: 24 sausages (6 wild boar, 6 Gloucester Old Spot, 6 Cumberland, 6 pork and apple) and 24 rashers of their unsmoked back bacon. Now all bagged up in individual breakfast portions (2 rashers, 2 sausages) in the freezer. 3 month's supply. Hurrah for ziploc bags!  

[Tere]

Rereading this thread and seeing DianaB's comments on lamb it might soothe you guys to know that lamb is a very good price for the farmer this year - over £2 a kilo on the hoof. It was almost £30 a lamb less last year so it's good to know the farmers are getting a decent price. I get a blow by blow account from my next door neighbour. We have the largest halal abattoir in Europe down the road that mostly export whole carcasses and I was expecting them to be busy in the local markets given the weak pound (they mostly export to Muslim countries and China) but apparently the price is so buoyant they aren't buying just yet! Just shows how strong the market is. Such a strange thing, the volatility, I can't understand why a lamb is £30 more this year than last year, and neither can either of the farmers who rent grasskeep from me.

[kayb]

Stopped by the International Market in Memphis on the way back from taking the kids back to their mom. I love that place, but don't go often because it's a good hour and a half from my house, so I decided to stop by. In particular, I wanted quail eggs, and I always enjoy browsing their produce.

 

An hour and $96 and 9 bags later, I left. Couldn't pass up some of the produce buys -- Key limes, $1.99 a bag; regular limes, 15 for $1.99; lemons, 5 for $1.99; dried shiitakes, $4.99 for a big package. Numerous condiments, vinegars, sauces, etc. Even a jar of cornichons, as they were a lot cheaper than I can get them at the grocery.

 

Now, where to PUT everything...

[Shelby]

Had a good time at the Asian market today.  I figured it would be busy, it being Chinese New Year week and all, but it was PACKED.  I've never seen them have two cash register lines open but they did today.  Tons of lucky decorations were put up and out for sale and a huge Happy New Year banner was hung above the front door.

 

The minute we walked in they were wheeling out stacks and stacks of bread, just out of their ovens that you would use to make banh mi sandwiches out of.  It smelled SO good.

 

They had cases and cases of pears.  I hope they are good.  I also bought a dragon fruit!!!  I know, I know @liuzhou and others have said that they just don't have much flavor , but I've always wanted to try one so I pulled the trigger.  I'm not even going to tell you how much they were...I think it would make you faint dead away.  

 

I walked through the noodle bowl isle twice trying to find Liuzhou River Snail rice noodles, but, alas, they didn't seem to have any.

 

Anyway, I got stocked up on broth, pork belly, chicken gizzards, oxtails...all kinds of good stuff

 

 

Edited February 12, 2018 by Shelby (log)

[IowaDee]

Oh my your dragon fruit  comes in a cozy.  No wonder it was expensive.  Looks like you made a wonderful haul.

Can't wait to see what you make with it.

[kayb]

Yum. I need to make an International Market run. They have good Key limes, cheap, and I'm about to be jonesing for a good Key Lime pie.

 

Meanwhile, I bought 20 pounds of flour at Aldi for $1.19 a five-pound bag, because I went to make muffins Sunday morning for Sunday school, and had NO flour except self-rising. Can't be running out of flour at this house.

 

For good measure, I bought four pounds of butter at $2.99 a pound, too. Can always freeze that.

 

[Shelby]

18 minutes ago, kayb said:

Yum. I need to make an International Market run. They have good Key limes, cheap, and I'm about to be jonesing for a good Key Lime pie.

 

Meanwhile, I bought 20 pounds of flour at Aldi for $1.19 a five-pound bag, because I went to make muffins Sunday morning for Sunday school, and had NO flour except self-rising. Can't be running out of flour at this house.

 

For good measure, I bought four pounds of butter at $2.99 a pound, too. Can always freeze that.

 

We made a stop at our very small Aldi store, too.  I hadn't been there in years and years.  I was not impressed.  Very small.  Maybe 5 isles and then a tiny meat section that had nothing.  Ronnie likes to stop there for butter and cream.  The cream at Dillons was cheaper than at Aldi.  I skipped the flour isle.  It was full of small children and grocery carts.

 

And they screwed me out of my quarter lol.

[chefmd]

I was visiting my son in NJ this weekend and met with @JoNorvelleWalker.  I hope Jo does not mind me sharing this.  We went shopping at McCaffrey's grocery store in Princeton.  What a pleasure!  I wish I could buy perishables but it would be a very long time before we got back to VA that night.  I wanted everything!  Marbled beef.  Sweet breads.  Fatty pork. Calf brains.  Shad. I wish I had someone like Jo near where I live to go to the grocery stores with.

Edited March 5, 2018 by chefmd (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

9 minutes ago, chefmd said:

I was visiting my son in NJ this weekend and met with @JoNorvelleWalker.  I hope Jo does not mind me sharing this.  We went shopping at McCaffrey's grocery store in Princeton.  What a pleasure!  I wish I could buy perishables but it would be a very long time before we got back to VA that night.  I wanted everything!  Marbled beef.  Sweet breads.  Fatty pork. Calf brains.  Shad. I wish I had someone like Jo near where I live to go to the grocery stores with.

 

 

And I just bought almost as much in Shoprite this evening...less the 16 rolls of paper towels.  Thanks again!

 

 

Edit:  Jo bought neither sweet breads nor brains.

 

Edited March 5, 2018 by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

[lindag]

11 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

 

 

Edit:  Jo bought neither sweet breads nor brains.

 

 

 

Good for you, Jo, I'm in your camp.

[chefmd]

8 minutes ago, lindag said:

 

Good for you, Jo, I'm in your camp.

Ok, I will not cook sweet breads and brains when you and @JoNorvelleWalker come to visit.  I am good with prime cuts too 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Actually had brains once, ate brains I mean.  I was served them stuffed in pasta during an eastward crossing on the Italian Line.  Would have been fine if they'd left the dish name in Italian.

 

[suzilightning]

Well, creating a list of foods I need to replace.  Because my downstairs freezer was well packed and it was averaging 44 F down there I didn't lose too much.  

So far my list looks like this:

eggs

ground bison

IQF shrimp

chopped spinach

coconut milk ice cream (this is a standard, weekly purchase)

potstickers

 

[Shelby]

Journeyed into the Asian Market again yesterday.  As always, I found some new things to try --oh and an update on the dragon fruit from a few weeks ago.  Disappointing sigh.  I knew that people say they have little flavor and boy were they right.  It had the texture of a kiwi fruit (which I love)and it tasted like the weakest flavored cucumber ever.  Oh well.   At least I can say I've tried it.  Anyway...here is yesterday's haul:

 

Someone around here ....I think....or maybe it just looked like these....or maybe I dreamed it because I can't find the post now....but I thought it was @rarerollingobject ????  had some of these the other day.  I can't wait to try....although I don't really know what I'm doing (I know it says to microwave for 2 minutes and then eat--is that really the method?).  Google hopefully will help.

 

 

Veggies.  Excellent cucumbers.  Wish I had bought a ton more.  And my first time to try baby bok choy.  I see @Anna N eat it occasionally and it always looks so good.

 

Quail, noodles, wraps and fake crab.  Yes.  I like fake crab.

 

 

Pork belly and chicken gizzards

 

More noodles, tofu, shrimp in rice wraps, miso and some strainers to replace my sad, broken ones