Are you salivating yet? I am

Yummy! 

How does one go about shopping for groceries when one is on a budget but one wants to try new things all the time?

By purchasing the items that are "Reduced." I remember walking to Waitrose at about 4 - 5 pm on weekdays. Thats when items that are about to expire are reduced in price to half price. Its by buying these reduced priced items that I got to try organic salmon, lobster, scallops and all the items above.

When I first tried the Goldtop milk it was reduced from £0.99 to £0.69. I am a big milk drinker but with this delicious Jersey and Guernsey milk, I was even more hooked! And I refused to put any of the Goldtop milk in coffee or tea, I would drink it out straight from the bottle, sometimes in one sitting (well the first time the excuse was the milk was expiring but thereafter hahaha it was just too good.) I remember a cashier once remarked to me, "Ah Goldtop, the champagne of milk." And I could not agree more. There is a smooth taste that was lemak-manis, has a wonderful after taste and sometimes its really hard to buy it! I found out that it is not pasteurized so the milk don't last as long as they other types on the shelves, so the stores don't stock too much of it all at once. So sometimes the Goldtop milk don't even get reduced, they just run out of it!

And the clotted cream. I was never a cream fan until I came to the UK. To me cream was something fattening that Starbucks but on top of coffee or hot chocolate. And then came the strawberry season, and I have always heard about people having strawberries and cream. So one day, on one of my trips to Waitrose, Rhoda's clotted cream was reduced. Of course I had to try it and whoah!! It was really, really good! My favourite part is the slightly hardened top. I woouldn't even have them with strawberries, I would just take the top part with the spoon and immediately pop it directly in my mouth! My hubby often complained that by the time he could put his hands on the clotted cream, all the top bits have been skimmed off! I would smile sheepishly of course, and would often do it again, but I sometimes leave him a small spoonful of the top crust so he won't complain. I am terrible aren't I!

Just the thought of the GU cheeky puds just make my mouth water! Again, I bought them because they were reduced so I thought it was a good time to try them. They are literally melted chocolate in a small canister! Its so yummy that I literally have to stop myself from buying them everyday for fear that I am consuming too much sugar! And I also love the cute tiny canisters that they come in. I save these canisters for my vitamins. I want some GU!!!


And strawberries! I think English strawberries are the best! I love the Kent ones rather than the Spanish ones because they are bursting with sweetness! For me one of the best things about the strawberry season is the pick-your-own farms. Hubby and I will make a special trip out to the nearby strawberry farm to pick our own strawberries and rasberries. Of course we would `taste` a lot of strawberries before buying them hahaha as afterall tasting is free.

And we did try to grow our own strawberries in our backyard. We bought a growing bag from Homebase and three strawberry plants. Cost us about £20 I think. I tended after the plants, watered them religiously everyday, put lots of Miracle Grow, and even made my own plant shield using plastic meneral water bottles because I thought the squirrels and the birds were eating our strawberries. Boy I was so wrong!! It was actually the slugs that got fat on our strawberries! And the slugs were living inside the growing bag! For all out effort we only managed to eat 2 strawberries! In the end we decided that we could get a lot more strawberries from the supermarket rather than our garden!

And how I yearn some good thick cream! Either with strawberries or just a generous dollop in my tea! All we get here is the whipping cream which isn't as nice and the English creams! We used to make our own ice cream as well. Just some cream and the fruit of our choice in the ice cream machine and Wallah! Home made ice cream! No preservatives, not too much sugar and all with the freshest ingredients we could get.

Its amaziing that I didn't gain too much weight! But these are my lovely memories of summer, the rain, the strawberries, the creams and the puds.