EXPAT OBSERVATIONS: GROCERY SHOPPING
/"Let's talk about grocery shopping."
This, my friends, is a universal conversation starter with all expats, new and established. It's a topic that guarantees bonding-through-commiseration and if you're lucky, the sharing of non-Google-able insights and tricks. The struggle is real, and it's so much more than new brands and unfamiliar foods. Consider...
You need groceries. No, be more specific. What kind of groceries do you need? Enter: the highly fragmented world of Spanish food shopping. There are supermarkets, sure. But each neighborhood also has its own public market and at least two dozen places to buy bread. Then there are specialty shops for produce (e.g., the close-and-cheap one where you can find good citrus, the further mid-priced one where you can find good berries, the premium one with a "do not touch" policy where ladies in white coats do the finding for you). There are specialty shops for meats (e.g., one for fish, one for Catalan meats, one for Argentine meats, one for jamon iberico). And then there are organic versions of each of those. The result is that you will have an unbelievable selection of amazing foods, but everyone (not exaggerating) has a ten-point "I-go-here-for-X-and-there-for-Y" food shopping strategy. Know that you will spend approximately 3.7x more waking minutes thinking about/doing grocery-related activities than you did in the States.
only an idiot could miss The Personal shopping buggy checking area
Okay, so let's say you go the supermarket route. You drive and park in an impossibly small underground garage whose paint-scraped walls tell the tale of battles waged and won against unsuspecting fenders. Adrenaline subsiding, you walk in, quietly pleased at how "local" your personal shopping buggy and reusable bags make you look.
europe's ingenious way of getting people to put shit back where it belongs
But alas, don't make the rookie mistake of actually shopping with your buggy. No no. Personal shopping buggies must be checked in the personal-shopping-buggy-checking-area. You will receive no fewer than 12 dirty looks should you forget this point, you ugly American.
So you walk over to the store-supplied grocery carts. But they're all chained together like a rigged brain teaser puzzle with no possible solution. You loiter self-consciously off to one side as you wait to see how someone else does it. You realize you must insert a 1 euro coin into the handle of the cart to release it. You're relieved to find that you actually have a 1 euro coin. You're impressed to learn that same 1 euro coin will be returned to you when you put the cart back in its proper place. (Smooth move, management.)
Finally time for the shopping. Last week your hungry stomach dictated the grocery list and your hands obediently picked up whatever looked good. This week, you've promised a certain 4-year-old boy who has a tendency of never forgetting anything that you would make chocolate chip cookies with him. Which means you have a recipe. Which means you need specific ingredients. Which means you're not just wingin' it this time, mama.
11 Pounds of sugar, for which the primary use is sweetening 2 cups of coffee a day. #heretostay
Suffice it to say: Nothing is where you think it should be. Nothing. Baking soda is kept by the salts (of which there are approximately 20 varieties), while baking powder is kept near the flour. Eggs are unrefrigerated. Chocolate chips are apparently not a thing in Spain, so you can either buy 8 tiny novelty bags that cost 4 euros each, or you can chop up a chocolate bar that you're kinda-but-not-totally sure will work. You decide that if all else fails, you will just go out for gelato.
And then there are the packaging sizes. The metric system mocks you daily, but most especially in the kitchen. You have a flashback to last week's online grocery shopping error when a 5kg (11 pound) bag of sugar showed up on your doorstep. Kilograms make everything bigger than you're used to — larger sticks of butter, bags of flour and sugar — while liters make everything smaller (we buy many, many liters of milk). You buy extra of everything because you're not sure you'll have enough and you're sure as hell not running back out to grab it.
Yogurt aisle 1 of 2
As you finish up, you remember that you also wanted yogurt. But as you round the corner, two refrigerated aisles of top-to-bottom yogurt close in on you. The variety overwhelms you. You're pretty sure you have a literal PhD in this subject, but you're instantly paralyzed by the dizzying number of choices nonetheless. When you come to, you examine the fridges just long enough to realize they're organized by flavor, not by brand. You didn't realize such an important distinction existed between Greek plain, Greek plain with sugar, Greek vanilla, plain creamy, plain creamy with sugar, strawberry Greek with/without fat [etc.]. You just knew you wanted La Fageda. Nevermind. You will not have yogurt this week.
Exhausted, you wheel up to the cash register to check out. In rapid-fire Spanish, the cashier greets you. You smile and nod, trying to recapture your air of "localness," while listening for the inevitable question: "Que necesita una bolsa?" You've gotten burned by this one enough times to anticipate it, so you proudly hold up your reusable sack and tell her that no, you don't need a bag, gracias, adios.