Wednesday, April 19th was a big grocery shopping trip. Nancy walked 35 minutes to get to Sainsburys, a large grocery chain like Safeway or Albertson's in the US. This was her first chance to really go up and down each aisle and look at labels. So, not only was it a big grocery shopping, but an informative one, too. Fruits and veggies are displayed differently - mostly each item or group of items comes pre-bagged. All are identified as to the country of origin. Most of the fruits come from Africa and Spain.
There are great wide aisles with prepared foods - ready to eat or go into the freezer. Packaging is similar to in the states - a couple of chops per pkg. And, everything is in kg so I'm trying to convert. Basically, I'm just looking at what it is and buying what I want to have in the refer or freezer. Everywhere you turn, they are trying to sell you sweet things; i.e., candies, biscuits (cookies), or prepared cakes and desserts. Not just in one section - all over the store.
After so many years of shopping at Costco and buying in quantity, it is hard for me to buy little packages of things. Since I have a small freezer and refrigerator, there's basically no storage capability. I can have some items in the freezer and it has helped a lot. The refer/freezer volume is about the same size as what is in our RV. And, the temperature doesn't get as cold as we're used to in the US. I have to be careful as I'm having to throw food away that has spoiled after only a couple of days.
Ice cream is very different - flavors are not at intense, tasty though. It is much softer when you take it out of the freezer. When you stop to get ice cream at a shop or little kiosk, it's almost like soft ice cream. They do have soft ice cream and it's very creamy - but not real cold.
Nancy likes to drink cold liquids and finally found a way to have ice cubes. Actually, Bruce found a "fish" shaped ice cube tray on one of our shopping trips. He and Nancy like ice in their drinks so they both were watching and changing out the water when it froze and put the cubes into a bowl in the freezer.
After grocery shopping and successfully using her ATM card at the store, Nancy had them call for a cab to take the load home. It cost £6! ($10.80). Pam found that we can order groceries online and have them deliver for a £5 charge. I don't think the taxi was worth the £6 - we took a cab from the way north-end of town, from Ikea, for only £8. I think I was bamboozled on that trip. We've taken longer rides for less money. There's no direct bus or I would have taken the bus home - well, it would have been very awkward with so many bags of groceries. They use plastic bags here and you have to bag everything yourself and can't really bag them carefully. Grocery clerks sit on chairs to do check out.
There is a knitting group that meets two times a month on Wednesday nights at one of the trendiest pubs in Bristol. They meet at "The Watershed" right at the Centre and overlooking the Floating Harbor and the tour boat quay. There's plenty of light at that time of night and Nancy walked (1.5 miles) to the Watershed for the 7:00 meeting. Jerry came about 9:00 to walk home with her. The road home is well lit and safe the whole way but Jerry felt better knowing she was safe.
The knitting group welcomed Nancy with open arms and she enjoyed the evening and even was able to help someone learn how to do a long-tail cast-on. Next meeting some of the
Nancy wore her just-finished Noro sweater and the knitters were interested in her technique for the ribs that were different than the pattern. This group of knitters (men and women) will be having some unusual meetings - for instance when the weather is better they will be taking the water ferry and knitting on the water. Should be fun! They definitely want to expand and encourage knitting in public!
The yarns are different; many of them are on cones because machine knitting is pretty big over here. Patterns call for 400 or 800 grams for a pattern and there are these huge skeins of yarn and many of them are acrylic. There were some novelty yarns, but not the selection that we have in the Bay Area shops. I did find something, of course, and bought the yarn and pattern for an Aran sweater for Evan, our grandson, for Christmas.
Nancy found someone who would like to be considered as a vendor/supplier of hand-dyed yarns and hand-spun yarns to the US. Nancy will be passing that information on to her manager at the yarn store, Creative Hands. I did buy 100 gms of her hand-dyed wool boucle that will be used for a stash vest - I think I'll try and create one while I'm here that is just yarns that I pick up here and there around the country. Got a big bag of some wonderful fiber to spin in an interesting combination of greens from a mill shop and one of their skeins of a deep forest green. Looks like it will have a green theme! The boucle will work with it, too, as it has greens, blues and apricot colors in it.
A Good Day!