Supermarkets, or Of Square Bread and Warm Eggs

Today I wandered across the street from the office for my first relaxed grocery shopping experience in the United Kingdom.  Though I have been to the supermarket multiple times since arriving, I have always been brutally hungry and thus in a rush to purchase any food whatsoever, and have had no chance to actually browse the aisles.  This time however, I was getting lunch, and I was not yet at a critical hunger point.  My goal was simple: peanut butter and lemon curd sandwich.  First stop - bread.  I figured there would be no difficulty here, but I was wrong, and in a most ghastly way. 

All the bread was square. 

I think you know what I mean.  Like Wonder Bread.  Ick.  I set about looking for a rounded-top, high quality loaf, and saw the cheap store brand (85p).  Nice.  Now a look at the square bread... 1.45.  Huh?  I think that in America we've come to associate the squareness of bread with cheapness (or, you could say, Wonderfulness), and so the less square, the more expensive.  Hence why the square bread at the grocery is $1.00, but the Arnold's and Pepperidge Farms loafs are $3.99 or $4.99.  Well, so what?  I'm attracted to the cheap bread.  This is good.  85p it is.

I set off around the corner to find the lemon curd (I didn't want to steal my roommates for heretical peanut butter and lemon curd sandwiches), and took a quick glance on my left.  There they were... eggs.  And not just normal eggs... warm eggs.  Little packets of delicious salmonella, sitting right there on the shelf.  As Ashley so duly noted in her comments to my first England post, I'm not so sure I will be eating many eggs, or at least raw ones (so much for cookie dough!).

Anyway, I finally reached the lemon curd (and peanut butter).  To my dismay, there were only two brands of lemon curd, and neither one was Wilkins & Sons, my favored british brand.  Strangely, there were only 3 varities of Wilkins & Sons jams (5 at another store I went to later) compared to about 12 in my New York City grocery store.  Very bizarre.  No matter, the English know how to make the stuff, so I went for another one.

As for peanut butter... ugh.  There were only two brands.  One had no sugar.  If I wanted dry nut paste I would eat linseed, so no thanks.  The second one was a bit dodgy (new word!), but I had no choice.  Upon examination at my desk, it was found to be dry, and a bit grainy (e.g. not so creamy as one would hope).  I will now be on a quest for Skippy!

Interestingly (to me) I didn't need to sign up for a club card, I could just grab a temporary one and sign up later (it gets both discounts and points for later use).