Hi. Glasgow here. I use Tesco online shopping all the time (have the mid-week delivery thing so it only costs me a couple of pounds to have it all schlepped upstairs as long as I get 40 pounds worth of stuff), but am careful to tick the "do not substitute" boxes.... They do have bell peppers, as does Sainsburys, Morrisons, and Waitrose. For the most part, I let them bring the staples, but for fresh fruit and veg I like to pick out my own, in person. I've been quite happy with Tesco's delivery. The few things I've allowed to be available for subs, when they have subbed, it's usually been of equal or better quality. You can always hand it back to the driver if you don't want to take the substituted item, and they'll refund you.
Peppers. As I type, about 10 feet behind me in pots on my windowsill are growing a half-doz jalapenos, another half-doz cayennes, and one sturdy "Ring o Fire" pepper plant. (I didn't get the nosferatu pepper seeds ordered, darn it.) All the plants have several promising-looking peppers on 'em, except the jalapenos, which got a late start and haven't flowered yet. Having dealt with "chili" peppers at the grocery stores here (underwhelming) I just decided to grow my own. When I asked the staff at the stores what kind of chili peppers they had, they were very proud to tell me they had "red" ones. (sigh)
The Daughter tells me she had a Sophia Loren pizza (unidentifiable green peppers on it - supposed to be "hot" - and it cleared out her sinuses and left her eyes watering, so they do exist here!) at an Italian shop near the Uni a while back, but had a pizza recently elsewhere with "local" jalapenos on it that she didn't realize were there until she picked one off and ID'd it. Minimal heat. So it's hit or miss.
Roots and Fruits on Great Western had some scotch bonnet peppers (I think???) the last time we were in. I am way too timid to go near those. They also had some romeros - and if they're there when we go in the next few days I'm going to get some and stuff them with cheese and grill them. (I'm taking a stab at making cheese this weekend.) I second Lupe Pintos - the one in Glasgow has some stuff, more than you'll find anywhere else that I know of. I got some dried ancho and arbols there, but the stock changes so not everything is there all the time. You can get a few other goodies (Vlassic Kosher Dill Spears) there, too, occasionally. Our Tesco (the one we hoof it up to in Maryhill) had Cholula and Chipotle Cholula the last time we were up there. Were happy to find that.
We also have a crop of cilantro coming along. (Coriander here, whereas at home coriander was the seed of the cilantro, wasn't it?) Yes, the names are often different and that has caused me some consternation! I went nuts trying to find tomato sauce. The closest I got is something in a paper carton that is pureed tomato. (Passata. It works well enough.) If there's a cheat-sheet of names for things, I'd love to have a copy!
The root veg here is really good. The fruiting veg is... and the Daughter agrees... underwhelming. The tomatoes are pretty tasteless. The salad fixings are wonderful, tho. Watercress and baby spinach is our new go-to for "leaves" with a meal.
We found several things tasted different here than in the States. Table salt (the additives, so we are back to using the Himalayan pink) and table sugar (it tends to be made from beets, although you can find cane sugar, and it does taste different) were the ones we ran into first. There's a vinegar thing going in some prepared food that you wouldn't really expect. They've localized the sauces at the Taco Bell in city center, much to our dismay. Again, the sweet and vinegar flavor thing.... There are some great cheeses here, but you can't get a good Monterrey Jack, and there's no Longhorn or Colby. The cheddar, tho. Mmmmmmm~
Back to sugar - went to the store looking for powdered sugar. There was like three kinds of icing sugar alone, and castor sugar, and preserving sugar (it had pectin in it), turbinado sugar, muscavado sugar (which is spectacular in baked goods) and I don't know how many other kinds... at least several more. A truly amazing amount of variety of sugar!
Extracts need to be inspected (check the labels). They are often loaded with sugar and gawd-only-knows-what. I had a devil of a time finding a pure vanilla extract (just the vanilla in alcohol).
Flour - yeah, they have more kinds than I was used to using, but some really nice ones (the seeded ones are great in bread). Bacon - you can get quite a discussion here on the streaky bacon and how dismal it is. Tesco's best smoked streaky is as close as I've had to "real" (aka USA) bacon, and it's not there. It's perfectly acceptable, but not quite there. (It's better baked than fried.)
We brought our implements of destruction and my cookbook collection with us, so the measurements are the same. Except the mixer. We foolishly left our egg-beater style Sunbeam behind and now have had to settle for a planetary-motion stand mixer that does the job, but takes longer. And I regularly kick myself for leaving the old 1950s metal and glass Waring Blender behind!
The dairy products here seem better - and we put away a lot of butter, eggs, and milk every week. We tend to make bread at least once a week, and the yeast we are using is pretty impressive - always a good rise, and relatively inexpensive. Some of the fish is just spectacularly good. Especially the salmon. Have had some really good beef from an online butcher, but the quality is hit or miss - some shipments are great, some are disappointing.
All-in-all, I have to say that the overall quality of the food here is better than the run-of-the-mill stuff in the USA.
And then there's Indian... oh, now THAT's good stuff!
