kitchendiaries: Blueberries and a bit of spectacular | pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

For the nine years I have lived in England, I have constantly been mystified by the sheer prestige of shopping at Waitrose. We seem to have a pyramid of the grocers in this country. I remember a professor (who, ironically, was British) discussing how in a town of not-that-many, Wal-Mart was the great leveller. Everyone in that town had to go into Wal-Mart now and then because it was virtually impossible to get some things elsewhere, as the town wasn’t big enough to support a giant Wal-Mart as well as smaller shops dedicated to each section of Wal-Mart’s wares. _I know this has long happened in so many towns, but unless you visit this place you will never quite grasp the wrongness in proportion of the supergiantmassive Wal-Mart to the town. All I can say is the CEO of Wal-Mart lived there once, and he decided to go back and leave his mark._ Anyway, this professor, in a voice that we all thought was terribly posh but now I know…wasn’t…said that if the Queen herself had lived there, she inevitably would have had to go to Wal-Mart, and if someone had declared themselves homeless in that town, they also would have had to go to Wal-Mart, and that both of these events would probably have several pages of coverage in the local newspaper.

From what I’ve seen here though, we don’t have that great leveller. And for a few years now, we’ve even had Wal-Mart (in the guise of Asda, which Wal-Mart owns). But there’s always been this pyramid of who goes where…not so much a leveller at all. When I first lived here I was a student and as a foreign student I wasn’t allowed to have a job, so I was basically more broke than I had ever been in my life. There were several places within walking distance to buy groceries, but most of the students went to Safeway. If someone had send me a card with some spending money, I might go to Sainsbury’s, as they had food I still missed from home, but it really was a special treat. A few years later I discovered the glory of the Marks & Spencer Food Hall, and I might as well have taken out a loan just to eat. I was convinced that there was no better food in the world and that everyone I saw shopping in there was leading a life of amazement and decorum. (Yes, it amazes me now that I was so obsessed by people’s shopping habits. Perhaps I missed my vocation in some level of grocery marketing research.) But after M&S, everything just hit a plateau. Surely there was nowhere to go from there.

It was only after that that I started hearing about Waitrose. Never having been near one, I was convinced that they would be exceedingly posh stores with everything organically grown and ethically packaged and everyone who shops there would happily pay ten times the price of anywhere else because it would really be so good as to be worth it. This was partly because the people I knew who did live near Waitrose shops were all spectacular people with spectacular lives and despite the professor telling me the Queen would shop at Wal-Mart, I didn’t believe that these spectacular people bought their groceries at anywhere less than…spectacular.

So the other day I went on a little journey to a fabric wholesalers in search of twenty metres of something that would make fabulous curtains, all at a price that would be lovely. When I found the wholesalers (where I did find some lovely fabrics at ridiculous prices), it was in true bargain-basement fashion, where a building has been gutted and the fabric has been thrown in, without worrying about increasing the overheads of the business with things like finishing touches. Just fine for what it is. But next door—as in sharing a car park – there was a….Waitrose.

Now clearly I had saved enough on my fabric that I could buy just one meal’s shopping at this store that promised to be nothing short of amazing.

But really? It looked just like the Safeway where I bought my bargains as a student in Brighton. Though the employees did offer a lovely level of chit-chat, there was no spectacular! spectacular! to be seen.

There were, however, blueberries on offer. And carrot and hummus sandwiches and raspberry lemonade. So yes, there are some lovely, lovely things. But I didn’t see anyone resembling the Queen. She must have gone to Wal-Mart after all.

And why record my silly obsession with the status of British grocery chains when I could tell you about this lovely blueberry buttermilk cake from Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros? Because everyone else has been making it too. So you can read about it here and here and here, just for starters. It is lovely, and indeed like a fluffy giant vanilla pancake with blueberries. I do believe you could even serve it to the Queen. Although I served it to two of my bridesmaids, which was just as good.

xlovesx

PS: Yes, I am saving Fortnum & Mason for a day that will need to be very, very special. I might need a new dress for such an occasion!

Read more about:

23 January 2008

Next post: Super Sweet
Previous post: Hummus by Hugh