Bastides

Following the Bastides Experience noticed at reference 1, back at it again a week or so ago, with a slightly different version of the sausage. Even more heritage-full than the last one. Not that there was any choice: Waitrose's stocking of such seems to be quite capricious, at least in their not very big Epsom store.

With more including a net as well as the hard to remove casing. Didn't bother with beef tomatoes on this occasion, and as BH had claimed all along, you would be hard put to tell the difference. I imagine I would have failed a blind trial.

Under construction, with this snap being taken just about thirty minutes after the first and probably a couple of hours after operations started. Potatoes on board, on this occasion cooked from raw rather than second hand.

A bit more than thirty minutes later again. BH takes hers with her salad, I tend to take my salad after. Plus a stump of stale bread to make up for the absence of second hand potatoes.

We must have been hungry because, even with the larger sausage, the stew more or less all went at the first sitting, leaving just a very modest portion for me to snack on later.

PS 1: are Waitrose making a mistake by trying to compete with the likes of Sainsbury's and Tesco's? Never mind Lidl and Aldi. Why couldn't they just sit quietly in their niche-market at the top end of the grocery supermarket business? Why do they have to go for growth - which seems likely to dilute quality, certainly in the long run. Will they overreach themselves? Alternatively, just look what has happened to Sainsbury's over the past sixty years - from the days when counter staff in long white aprons sold loose bacon and loose cheese. Maybe even had cashiers in booths at the back of their stores. They did have rind on their bacon, but I don't think they went so far as to have rind on their cheddar cheese, at least not in my time, although they did go so far as to take the shrink wrapping off their bricks of cheese - that is say, not truckles - somewhere out of sight. Is the answer simply greed - that is to say of management types at HQ who need more stores to justify more HQ and fancier salaries for its inhabitants? Not really interested in groceries at all; just in the height the greasy pole.

PS 2: cranking up to make the switch to volume 5, at reference 2. Not quite content with its appearance, but I suspect I will end up going with it just the same. No doubt I will get used to it fast enough. There will be a proper announcement in due course.

PS 3: early the same afternoon: some time recently, perhaps the same time as I purchased the sausage of present interest at Waitrose, I also purchased a couple of packets of sausages described as kabanosi, from Greisinger of Austria. I have bought cheese flavoured kabanosi from them (by accident) before and not liked them. I may have bought these regular ones too. But I certainly did not like them today: too much mincing, too dry, too much spice and too much red food colouring. Not my idea of a proper kabanosi at all. Not the sort of thing that I remember coming from Poland in the early 1970's at all - even when one makes allowances for the passage of time. Maybe Waitrose have been cutting back in their foreign cooked meats purchasing department: no more Waitrose financed tours of Polish sausage makers. Best taken on licensed premises, naturally. Alternatively, perhaps the Poles were very short of hard currency in the 1970's and exported the very best to western Europe - while now they can afford to eat their very best themselves.

PS 4: blog search is usually very reliable, picking up on new posts more or less immediately. But for some reason, this post is not responding to the search term 'waitrose'. Try again tomorrow.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/bastides.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.greisinger.com/en/.