Pickles and Tomatoes (25 January)

Sometimes you find the best things when you can’t find what you want. Back in Vancouver, Bob and I liked to put relish in our tuna sandwiches, and when I say relish, I mean your standard hot-dog-stand, green, non-fancy relish. Well I searched and searched at Sainsbury’s for plain old green relish, but they don’t seem to carry any amongst the staggering variety of relishes, pickles, and chutneys on offer. But wait—what’s this?

We like beets. We like pickles. So, with the deal sealed by the promise that it would be “delicious in sandwiches,” we bought some and it’s quickly become our favourite condiment, indeed delicious AND pretty in sandwiches. We’ve forgotten all about our green relish. Even when buying the same items as I would back in Vancouver, there are some things here that just strike me as so brilliant, so completely logical that I can’t believe I haven’t seen them in the aisles of Vancouver’s grocery chains. For example:
Tomato paste in a tube—so simple, so perfect. Squeeze out as much as you need, recap, and use more next time. This is very different from the way tomato paste is sold in Canada—in one-size-only cans which are messy (the paste never fully comes out of the tin) and inconvenient (there’s usually either not enough or too much for one use, depending on what you’re making). Our Sainsbury’s tube solves both problems!