If there’s one thing you get to eat a fair bit of at Christmas, it’s bread sauce. As bread sauce reviews (and some of the bread sauces themselves) are fairly bland, I thought I’d spice it up a bit this time and turn it into to a contest. So, in the red corner we have Colman’s Bread Sauce and in the blue corner we have Schwartz Luxury Bread Sauce. Which one tastes the best? There’s only one way to find out! Er, no … not like that.
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Review: Mayonnaise
A common question I’m never asked on a regular basis is: “What sort of mayonnaise should I put on my burger?” So in an effort to answer this clearly important question, I have decided in this blog post to review two common mayonnaises that I put on my burgers (between the burger and the bottom of the bread roll, if you must know) which are both available from a leading brand of supermarket close to where I live.
Review: Whole (“blue top”) milk
The other day, I went to the supermarket to do the weekly shop as usual, but they’d run out of semi-skimmed milk (“green top”) which is about 2% fat), so I had to buy whole milk (“blue top”) which is 3.5%-4% fat, and I hadn’t bought for ages.
And so, the following morning, I got up as usual, reached for a bowl and put a handful of corn flakes in it, poured some milk into the bowl and sprinkled a bit of sugar on them, and started to eat them. I’d forgotten just how nice corn flakes tasted with “unskimmed” milk! (OK, not quite as nice as when the milkman delivered the milk bottles and you got a bit of the “cream” on the top, but still pretty nice. If you want that you can still buy 8% fat “gold top” milk still at the supermarket.)
So the question is … do I buy whole milk next week, or go back to the decidely-inferior-on-corn-flakes semi-skimmed? Decisions, decisions…
Likes: Tastes great. Also nice in coffee.
Dislikes: Makes you fat(ter)
Rating: 9 out of 10
(Corn flakes with “gold top” milk would be rated at least 11 out of 10, if I had any in the fridge)
Review: Waitrose
Why am I reviewing a supermarket, you might ask? Well, yesterday was the grand opening of the new Aylesbury store, so I thought I’d pop along and see what it was like. The supermarket is around 21,000 sq ft so not too big and not too small either. The building is brand new and has a car park above it, owned by the district council, which is a bit of a pain if you drive to the shops since it means you have to pay £1 per hour (max 2 hours) to park there and then spend at least £10 to get your parking fee back from the store.
There are plenty of checkouts, and some a few self-service tills, and a few “quick pay” ones for those people who want one of their credit cards. I didn’t get time to try out the cafe, but it looks quite nice, so I might grab a “free coffee on production of your loyalty card” sometimes and give it a go.
There’s all the usual meat, cheese and other counters available. I thought the counters were a bit small, but I wasn’t really looking very hard as I was in a hurry buying a few items on the way round.
Despite it being a relatively small store compared to (say) the big Tesco store in the town, it did have a small range of non-food items which is nice. The aisles are quite wide, and the prices don’t seem amazingly worse than any of the other major supermarkets I’ve been to, as long as you stick to the “essentials” range.
So, all in all, only a quick visit to the store, but I think I liked it, and the staff seem friendly and helpful, as you’d expect from John Lewis. Maybe I’ll do a weekly shop there next time I need to go shopping and see what it’s like properly then.
Review: Tesco Bread Sauce
Had to buy a different brand of bread sauce last week since my usual brand was either out of stock or they’ve stopped selling it. So I thought I’d give the “house brand” a try.
First impressions were, well, about average – it was a rather finer powder than the other stuff, and I wasn’t that enamoured with the ingredients list – celery powder?! But I measured out half a pint of milk, brought it to the boil and mixed the powder in as per the instructions, then simmered it for a few minutes.
I found the sauce to be very smooth (which is not necessarily a good thing in my book), but the overpowering taste of celery in the sauce really put me off. All in all, it tasted quite bland, and too much celery and onion taste. And it wasn’t very thick. A rather disappointing bread sauce overall, but not entirely inedible either. But I probably won’t be buying that again if I can help it.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Comments: Need to do better, Tesco!