It's been a great boon to have Costco open in Farnborough. So much easier to go buy things in bulk that we have no place to store in our little English kitchen but still it is so much fun to go and wander around and image that some day again we might have a freezer big enough to actually buy some meat and put it all in the freezer to use before it gets freezer burned. But not the topic of the day.


We tend to hit Costco a lot more often when my daughter is in town because you can buy certain vegetables in bags that are ready to cook. No messing around with the cleaning and tossing of the leaves and such that is not edible. We like to time it so that we hit Costco when most of the samples are out on view and ready for tasting. Yum. For awhile, we were missing it each time, just getting a single bite of something, IF we were lucky. But our last three visits, we have hit the gold mine, so to speak. There have been tables set up all over the place with something to eat at each one. Usually, we manage to hit the dessert/pudding samples first. That established a pattern in that if we liked it, we probably bought it. Usually we don't buy anything else because they come in containers too big for us. But we have managed to buy: sticky toffee pudding cake, chocolate croissants, and we almost bought last week's yummy: bakewell cherry tarts (where we both got 1/4 of a tart each to taste!). Then we go on to the other taste treats and have had things such as: noddles, lasagna, sushi, soups, fish sticks, cheese, sausage (we bought that), crisps, chips, bread, spreads and dips, salami, and several different kinds of sauces, some of which we bought.  

On occasion, we have had a mouthful of something nasty. We try to be polite and head for the next trash bin before we spit it out or throw it away. Once, it was too nasty to do that and the poor lady had to see us take this thing out of our mouth (into the napkin at least) and toss it in her bin. Wow, her bin was full too. Maybe they don't get to choose what they are displaying because not many people liked her taste sample. That day, we also had to immediately head back to the dessert table and get another sample of the sticky toffee pudding cake to get the yucky taste out of our mouths.


Our last three visits, the taste treats have been my lunch. By the time we get to the checkout, I am full and have no need to go home and fix lunch. What a bargain! And a couple of times, we moved on to Tesco! More dining out.


Tesco, Meadows, store has a taste kitchen. We were first approached several months ago to stop and do a taste comparison for them. They take you to the kitchen, you park your shopping trolley outside the door (it's in the back of the store), go in and sit at a computer and they give you two samples to try. You judge them on appearance, texture, smell, and taste. Since our first time, we have been approached about 5 times to do the taste comparison. Each time we have agreed. In fact, I think you can walk up to the taste kitchen and tell them you'd like to do a taste comparison and if they are working that day, I think they will let you - although we haven't tried that yet.


Anyway, we have tried: rice and beans, cake, biscuits, creamed corn, and I forget the last one. Usually one is pretty tasty and the other is pretty yuck. Hopefully you will get the yuck first so you can eat the entire second sample and have a nice taste to leave the store. Once we got the yuck last and it was hard to get that taste out of our mouths. We opened something as soon as we got to the car to gobble it down and erase the yuck.  


Anyway, it is fun to dine out at such posh establishments as Costco and Tesco. Hoping to continue our eating experiences at both places.