Locating and purchasing sustenance has been first on the agenda most days since we arrived. Sure, fridges are small, food spoils more quickly as a general rule, and shopping close to daily is sort of the European thing to do. But the real reason for our frequent short trips is that our collective meal planning and shopping stamina is very, very low. It's all we can do to find the store, find a few things we recognize, and find our way home.
We've been eating a lot of pasta, eggs, yogurt, fruit, and bread so far. Household products such as cleaning supplies are a mystery, since back in the US I had become so accustomed to making my own out of vinegar, baking soda, castile soap, essential oils, etc. It feels strange and like a "regression" to buy things like Shout and Ajax, but they are easy to recognize and immediately know their function.
I'm also accustomed to buying many organic food items and knowing exactly what's in anything else we consume, but there's no time to figure that out now. The current strategy: That's yogurt - buy it, that's pasta sauce - buy it. Hope it tastes okay. The fine tuning of price and ingredients will come later. Overriding the picky/worried part of the brain is tricky for me, but we're here to stretch ourselves! Right!
(And I'm fully aware that this is a "first-world problem," yes? We have food - I'm grateful.)
A few shopping shots:
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| at Naturata, an organic/natural store, we didn't buy anything, will probably take us awhile to figure that one out |
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| random "Trader Joe's" nuts at a Grocery Outlet-type store called Aldi |
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| Cora (on the right), a grocery/household store inside a shopping mall (similar to Fred Meyer or Walmart) |
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| Delhaize has been our most "comfortable" store so far, a bit like a Safeway I suppose |
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| Pete grabbing yummy bread |
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| returning cart to the parking garage |
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