A visit to Tesco's

Despite the heat yesterday, we managed a visit to the fine Tesco's store south of Ryde yesterday. Where, for the first time since I can remember, we bought some fresh peas; two bags totalling a kilo for £3.50 or so, which I thought very reasonable.

A little overripe, but they still ate pretty good. 

For some reason, FIL, although a keen gardener, did not grow peas, so BH's exposure to fresh peas as a child was very limited. My father did, and I tried - being defeated by infestations of small green caterpillars - so I had rather more exposure. Which included the occasional salad based on peas rather than lettuce, and without the customary addition to our salads of tinned tuna fish (mashed up with salad cream, never mayonnaise).

I thought I would have a go, with the result snapped above. Pretty much all from Tesco's, with the exception of the ham which was from Sainsbury's. Baked, for a change, after soaking, rather than boiled, which did leave it a little salty. But then, we are told to replenish salt on account of sweating it out during the present heat.

No balsamic, vinegar, oil, dressing or condiment to be seen. I leave that sort of thing to restaurants.

The white bloomer, visible top right, was the finest that Tesco had to offer, £2.50 rather than the regular £1.50, and I have to say it was good. As good as I remember bakers' bread of old, which was a pleasant surprise. We shall be back for more.

They also sold us some very decent English cherries, improved by not spending some hours - as the previous ones had - in the refrigerator.

Proceedings wound up with a slice of BH's light fruit cake. A variety of cake with the useful property that it improves after cutting - at least for a few days. No need to eat it, more or less straight out of the oven.

PS 1: my understanding is that rich foreigners buying up luxury property in London is an important prop for our otherwise pretty dreadful external account. That is to say our importing a great deal more than we export. So I was interested to read that at reference 1 that the prop may have caught dry rot: rich foreigners are losing their taste for antiquated and expensive houses in central London. My eye have been caught by the word 'Montpelier', the subject of an excursion near ten years ago, noticed at reference 2.

Prop rot notwithstanding, it is hard for me to get worked up about the travails of the market for high-end housing. We, along with various other countries, could do with a bit more equality. All our inequality is going to cause trouble one day - if not sooner, if the snake-oil populists of the right keep their grip on us.

Noting in passing, that some years after the passing of Soames and his saga, I have come back to Galsworthy. For which, see, for example, reference 3.

PS 2: I might add that reference 1 includes one of the animated pictures which decorate so many of the articles in the FT these days - and you get it when you go to the home page. All very irritating. Do the punters really want all those images flickering in the margins? This one certainly does not.

PS 3: an impressive hole which appeared the following day (Friday), further into the Tesco's loaf. To me, an indicator that there has been a decent bit of rising going on. Plus, loaves are sold by weight and holes do not weigh.

Although, thinking with my fingers, I wonder how you weigh out portions of sticky dough in a factory? I saw a baker doing it once in what was Ella's bakery in Ashburton and he, as I recall, was cutting out portions of dough by eye, only weighing it if he was in doubt. On the other hand, when I cut my batch of dough in half at home, and bother to weigh it, I only get it right by eye maybe one time in ten.

Gemini explains that big factories use fancy machines, which work essentially by volume but which are continuously calibrated for weight. Artisan bakers, who can't afford such things, do more or less what I remember from Ella. And I have picked up a few tips for my own baking - if I both remember and bother to look over my lesson from Gemini, next time around!

Is he going to take over from YouTube as the goto place for DIY instruction? But who then will write the material that he feeds on? I have worried about Gemini and his friends living off the accumulated capital that is in Internet of today, before. And slightly scary this morning how cuddly about it he is getting: moving into therapy territory even.

For Ella, see, for example, reference 4. She has now retired from the business, handing over to one of her colleagues. Maybe she got fed up with all the early starts.

References

Reference 1: The luxury square that shows London’s mansions are not selling: In Knightsbridge’s Montpelier Square, property prices have tumbled from a decade ago as foreign buyers look elsewhere - Julie Steinberg, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-search-for-soames.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/galsworthy.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/polenta.html.

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