I went to visit the new Sainsbury's superstore at Crayford this week as part of the day job and was surprisingly impressed. We do most of our grocery shopping online now and buy fresh stuff from our local high street when we need it so it's a long time since I visited a giant supermarket and the Crayford store is one of three of Sainsbury's 100k giants (more are planned), meaning that the store footprint is 100,000 sq ft. It's exhausting just thinking about pushing a trolley around that size space.
But I'm actually quite pleased Crayford is a long way from where I live as I think I'd be smuggling in all sorts of home stuff in the trolley, including these fabulous turquoise cast iron casserole dishes. The home ware dept feels a bit like a John Lewis store, spaciously laid out with loads of tempting cookery equipment, for which I am a complete sucker. The cast iron cookware is one of the biggest selling ranges in the store, according to Nathalie, the manager who showed me round. 'Ahh but', I sighed sadly, cheap cast iron doesn't work on Agas, as the bottoms warp and don't sit flat on the hot plates, not so say's Nathalie, Crayford sells such high volumes of the range, and Sainsbury's customers are so quick at bringing stuff back if there's even the slightest thing wrong, she reckons she would have heard if the range didn't work on all cookers. It's also got a ten year guarantee. So there you have it, quality cast iron at rock bottom prices in fashionable turquoise. There's also a third off currently, the pan here is reduced from £40 to £26.66, so even better and it's available on line.
