When we arrived home on Wednesday night our "airport car service" kindly left us with a bag of groceries, and another family delivered a hot dinner to our door. However, by Thursday morning it was time to stock up. Mom, Abby, and I drove first to Trader Joe's. We picked up a red cart outside that was twice as big as any of the ones in London, and didn't require the customary pound to unlock the chain. In the produce section we had to painstakingly pick out our apples and avocados, something we haven't done in four months (see the previous "pound-a-bowl" post about produce on the Wood Green High Road). We wandered through the rest of the store, debating whether or not to buy a guacamole kit and sampling the rosemary crackers (tasters are a definite upside of American supermarkets). When we arrived at the check out the cashier thanked me for packing the bags, which is mandatory at all British stores.
I think what most shocked me about our shopping trip was the price. It took a while to convert back into dollars (at first I wast trying to multiply everything by 1.5 as if it was in pounds), but the final bill was much higher than anything we had spent in a market in London. I think the reason is that all the supermarkets in England have really inexpensive store brands. We stuck to those, and although the products were not gourmet, they were affordable. Trader Joe's brand is the same price as regular brands, so everything turns out to be more expensive. Safeway is better because it has Safeway Select, and some good deals if you have a Safeway card, but I was still surprised.
I don't miss lugging bags of heavy groceries several times a week back to our house, but it would be nice if Trader Joe's lowered its prices a bit.
