British Grocery Shopping

Janet was shocked at how much less money it was to purchase food from grocery stores and even little green grocers  in the U.K. 

British meat cuts are quite a bit different from ours, so they were never able to wrap their heads around purchasing too much in the beef department.  They tried some pre-made meatballs from Costco that were dreadful.  They later purchased some ground beef mince and made their own meatballs, which were also dreadful.  British ground beef is nearly fat free, so not quite what they are used to.

Janet took some store photos and for the convenience of our readers, has done the heavy lifting with the help of a calculator to multiple the prices x 2 to give you the Canadian dollar version!  Yes, Janet is indeed the mathematician whiz you assumed her to be!

Veggies:

Shallots - $2.66 for an entire bag!  In Victoria, they are about $4.00/lb

Broccoli that apparently is free as there isn't any pricing that was photographed.

They have many, many varieties of potatoes.  These ones - $2.00

Bag of onions - $1.10.  Note how most of the vegetables note they are British.  Interesting that the veggies have best before dates.  Here, with the exception of packaged salad greens and similar, most are buyer beware.

$1.19.  It's not obvious, but this was also a British product.

How about $1.00 for a round loaf of crusty bread?

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream for $4.32.  Janet doesn't purchase ice cream at home, but thinks it's in the $7.00 - $8.00 range for the same brand.

Chicken - $6.00 for a huge tray of drumsticks.

In the past, they have purchased pre-made food from M & S Food Hall and it has been really good.  M & S wasn't available whenever they went to purchase groceries, so they tried Tesco pre-made.

Sadly, this was the upscale version and it was awful.

Janet stir fried some chicken breast and vegetables and they tried this, which was quite delicious!

On sale for $2.00!!

Quite often, they passed these shops called Cook, where complete dinners were made in advance and in their freezers.  They were NOT inexpensive.

Inside the freezers:

Lasagne, $28.00, Beef Strogonoff $36.00

Roasted Pepper and Goat's Cheese Quiche $36.00

No price tags in the window, but we think it's pretty safe to say they weren't inexpensive!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.  Cauliflower and potatoes, $4.00 each.