Voyeurism and Food Porn Part one - Fruit and Vegetable Section

The following post is from my own observations and is not connected with any form of remuneration scheme just very much my own opinion.

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Very tongue in cheek but voyeurism all the same.  I am specifically talking food porn here and food shopping.  If I have a weakness it is that I like good food.  My waistline proves that although I am a good one and a half stones lighter than I was since leaving work.  However, my jeans are doing their level best to end up round my ankles at every opportunity still with the button and the zip done up.  I right royally nearly lost them on my way home last night.  Fortunately I had an overlapping coat on to hide my blushes.  Anyway I digress.  I was talking food porn!

After meeting my friend today  Friday lunchtime (we went to Waitrose and had a good bowl of soup each we both had a Moroccan Mediterranean style bean soup that was delicious and it was served with pitta bread).  We right royally put the world to rights as we always do and then I went off into Waitrose so that she could get back to work.  Sometimes lunchtimes are far too short.

I had no pennies to spend but I did have a good look around.  I am planning on starting to re-stock the pantry again (whether this be turning fresh ingredients into useful preserves and products for my pantry shelf myself), and so I wanted to make practical choices when it comes to the top up which gave need to a requirement that I needed to know exactly what they did and did not do. I like to see what is available and I therefore spent a good couple of hours in there eyeing up the produce and making myself a mental list of the sort of things I want to have in-house and that I think represent good value for money.

I started off in the fresh veg and fruit section.  I like Waitrose fresh produce although I do not always like the price but generally speaking it is very good value for money.  Today for instance there was a bag of about eight pears for about £1.60 and they were not Conference pears.  There were also the Seville Oranges, forced rhubarb which I am a fan of but at £3.50 per pack a little expensive today.  I am determined one day to have my own rhubarb patches.  One for general use one year and the other to be forced and then alternated the following just like my grandparents used to do.  

Forced rhubarb you can bottle in syrup and it is delicious.  The only problem is that the rhubarb does not hold its colour so well and fades if it is exposed to sunlight.  There is a simple way around this and one that the Victorian's I understand employed.  That is to wrap the clear jars with some brown paper so that the light cannot get in.  When I did it I used some sellotape as well.  It also makes very good homemade rhubarb gin, rhubarb cordial, bottled rhubarb for fools and custards and crumbles.

There is always a range of exotic fruits to hand in Waitrose and sometimes I buy these and sometimes I do not.  We like our fresh fruit like raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, passion fruit, seedless grapes of any variety etc. etc.  

However I use our veg shop extensively and buy a lot of my basics from there  - often I get more for my money and if I am bottling, canning or making jams etc. I can get my items in bulk from them at a cheaper price and often get stuff reduced because I am buying in bulk.  However I do buy some of the speciality items.  I think stores like Waitrose have their place but I think you have to be very selective about what you actually do buy.

Just recently a very good friend introduced us to some Green tomatoes (from Waitrose) which are called Marmonde, expensive, green but utterly delicious.  My friend told me that they stocked them and indeed bought us our first quota of them to try.  We both loved them.  These are green tomatoes like no other.  My friend had only managed to buy them three times in the last year.  I have seen them a few more times than that but each time I have gone to buy them they have run out so its a case of nab em if you see them.  However they really are delicious.

There is a very good mushroom section here as well.  They do a mixed tub of unusual mushrooms which I tend to buy in the run up to Christmas and preserve the mushrooms in oil so that other half can have them as an antipasti in the run up to Christmas. As they are a volatile preserve I always store these in the fridge. At the moment they are about £2.50 a tub.  They also do very good sized field mushrooms that are ideal for stuffing or chopping up and frying them or using them in home made mushroom soup.  We buy the standard tubs of ordinary mushrooms usually for fry ups but also enjoy shitake, chestnut and an especial favourite are oyster mushrooms which are my absolute favourite.

I am also very fond of dates specifically Medjool dates and you can buy these loose or in packs.  At the moment there is also a large selection of different varieties of oranges.  They also sell horseradish root every so often and I buy a couple of these and then store the grated horseradish in ice cube trays in the freezer to make our own fresh horseradish sauce.  That really does set a nice rib of beef off to perfection.  Waitrose sell the full range of root veggies for you to prepare and also ready prepared.  The options are up to you as to which way you want to buy them.

We also like Cavolo Nero, purple sprouting broccoli, bok choi, kale, pumpkin, squash etc. etc.  What am I looking at the fresh produce for well I buy ingredients and then do something with them.  I am also set on getting the canner operational (which I still have not done).  As the canner has been invested in specifically for those items that are high risk of attracting botulism i.e. vegetables I want to be able to start processing these for the pantry shelf and indeed today I have watched a tutorial for processing French beans and carrot slices.  I am keen to have a go.  I have also been looking at Rotel tomatoes, salsa and making home made soups and potatoes.  I have also watched a tutorial for preserving pineapple, oranges, mandarins, clementines, grapefruit and other citrus  in a simple syrup as well.  That tutorial did not use the pressure canner but the water bath method (or what we in the UK refer to as bottling).

This is just the first section of the store which has given me a lot of ideas and lots of food for thought.  They have a very good herb section and herb plant section there which I do use extensively in any event - I love fresh food and I like my food to have lots of flavour.

I shall leave the first part here and continue in a separate post.  However I will say that going into the store without a trolley and having a good look on the shelves and various counters was extremely liberating.  I did not buy anything that was not the purpose but I have come out with a clearer picture of the sorts of things that I want to restock my pantry, my freezers back up with and my preserve stores.  Now the work begins I believe.

Food Porn Part two will follow shortly.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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