Schlepping to Shopping

WOOD GREEN, LONDON
One of the things I was most excited about before coming was grocery shopping. Normally I don't care for the barrage of decisions I am forced to make about which of the ten varieties of whole-wheat tortilla to get. I feel obliged to compare the prices on every option I have, spending minutes dividing in my head as my mom whizzes through the produce section. However, I see grocery shopping in a foreign country as a window in to that country's culture.

Our first shopping expedition was on Friday, the day after we arrived. Our first stop was Lidl. It was a warehouse-like building with the food around the edges and bins of random things in the middle. There were some good deals, which improved its rating in my view, but Mom wasn't a big fan. Next we went to Tesco Express. It was more like a mini-Safeway. It was rather small, so it didn't make it to the top of Mom's list either. There's also an open-air market with good produce for good deals. It's very high on both our lists. A few days later we went to Sainsbury's. It was much larger, and had a bigger produce section. It topped the charts with Mom, and I like it too.

Here are some observations I've made about British supermarkets in general:

• There are loads of sweets. Everything from candy bars to trifles to cookies and puddings. However, there are only a few freezer-door-fulls of ice-cream. All the goodies (especially the puddings) look delicious, and they more than make up for the lack of ice-cream.
• They don't sell big containers of milk. The largest we can get is about a half-gallon, but we probably couldn't walk home with a gallon anyway. They also don't sell fat-free milk, only 1%. This may be because they take things more literally than we do, or maybe the .01 stops it from being blue.
• The shopping carts are tiny. Most people (including ourselves) use baskets. There isn't room for carts outside the store, so it makes sense. Most people also have to carry their groceries home, so they probably couldn't walk with the amount of food that can fit in an American-size cart.
• There is an abundance of meat pies. I've seen Cornish pasties, sausage rolls (mini and regular), mince pies (these technically don't have meat), and pork pies (mini and regular).
  
• You have to pack your own bags. This sometimes holds up the line a bit, but people often bring their own bags. It helps to have a shopping buddy to pay while you bag.

I'm looking forward to investigating more stores and trying all the delicacies they have to offer!

Lily