Lidl calling

On Monday, into Epsom to see if Ben the Butcher was up and running which he was not. So a management decision to switch from beef to pork for the weekend to follow. 

I consoled myself with a visit to Lidl, a bit further along, a place with a different feel to Waitrose or Sainsbury's, although I would be hard put to say what exactly this amounted to.

I fell for a couple of Masurian sausages - eatable enough, more or less spam in sausage format - and a kilo of Moldovan plums. 

On my last visit, there had been a shop lifter, noticed at reference 1, but on this visit there was a little gate on exit from the self-checkout area to - the pole to the right of the flag - to which you had to present your receipt. Lucky that I had happened to keep it, as often enough I don't bother - in the knowledge that if push comes to shove an attendant can extract one from the machine concerned. Which would have been tiresome in this context.

Got down the rolling ramp with my trolley without incident and headed down Church Road. Where from the bridge I was able to spot the very same Wellingtonia as can be seen from the town side footbridge, the other side of Sainsbury's, as noticed at reference 2. A little to the right of the poplar to the right of the tracks.

The stream down Longmead Road, the one that drains this side of Epsom Common, was doing well after the recent rain.

The plums were described as 'ripen at home', but the few that I tried were ripe enough already. Eatable enough, but I ruled that stewing was the way forward. They had been in some store for too long for eating raw to be right. Plus the skins had a slightly odd, matt texture - something that I have noticed before on cherries from far away places.

Unusually, the stones came away from the flesh cleanly, which I like. Something which the recent plums (aka apricots) from Waitrose and M&S had not managed.

BH stewed them with a little sugar, in two batches, and they did well enough. Some for breakfast in lieu of - and slightly cheaper than - red grapefruits. Variety 'Stanley', which Bing knows all about, offering lots of places offering trees. See, for example, reference 3. Suitable for the manufacture of prunes.

Nevertheless, I don't think I will be buying them again. Nothing quite like an English plum, in good condition, at the right time of year.

Nor am I too sure about this one. Stuff that I have been using for years, but with price and availability at places like Boots and Sainsbury's being uncertain, even when BH's loyalty cards are brought into play - and I have taken to using Amazon. Hitherto reliable, but I (think) I found on this occasion that buying three bottles was cheaper than buying a pack of three. So I went for six, to find that they leaked slightly in transit. No weight loss that I could detect with kitchen scales, but a little messy. No sealing foil inside the not very screw-fit lid. So, after drying them off with kitchen paper as best we could, the shelf in the shower room seemed the right place to finish the drying off process.

Distributed, if not made, by a Swedish company, to be found at reference 4. This from the well-oiled 'contact the supplier' feature offered by Amazon. Was it always just a name, or was it once a name with a real connection to a real company?

Group search key: E45.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/lidl.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-cold-morning.html.

Reference 3: https://wintercovefarm.com/shop/stanley-plum-tree/.

Reference 4: https://www.karohealthcare.com/. Complete with lots of tasteful videos. And some arty shots which might have fallen out of some Scandi drama on our smart television.