13.12.11

grocery joy

One of my favorite things to do pretty much anywhere in the world is go grocery shopping. Even if it's shopping in the same place I always go, there's always something new to be seen, a new kind of cheese I didn't notice, a shipment of strange vegetables, some crazy kind of pasta.

When it's the first solo trip in a new country, that's even more fun. Last time I was in Germany I sallied forth to provision for dinner at what I thought was a regular grocery store a few blocks from the apartment. When I entered I was dismayed to discover it was in fact some kind of bizarre discount shop. I wanted regular vegetables and meat and herbs and dairy products but found horse blankets, canned cheese soup, and obscure potato seasoning instead. The vegetables available were all in massive multi-kilo bags, and the dairy also covered a rather suspicious range of odd yogurt flavors. The dinner plan had to change drastically but after having had stranger shopping experiences I just took it as part of the learning experience that comes with new countries.

It wasn't an experience worth revisiting though, so this time I chose more wisely, armed with S's better information on where Germans really shop. Off to Marktkauf at the square nearby, where I found that strange combination of cheap housewares and good grocery variety that seems to come frequently here. I paid for my trolley in the trolley corral and found the descending trolley-conveyor to the subterranean grocery department. No trip to a German store would be complete without some clever engineering feat, which I found in the design of the trolley wheels- they'd been shaped in such a way that they rolled freely, but once on the conveyor, their grooved surface stopped the cart from shooting down the ramp and bowling over other shoppers. Cool!

What a store.. After years in Iceland I've forgotten that this kind of shopping experience is normal elsewhere, but for me now it's a total delight. What a vegetable department! Five kinds of carrots, beautiful firm mushrooms of all types, sprightly bright herbs, and everything so inexpensive compared to Iceland. I moved onto the spice aisle where I bought something in hopes it was bay leaf, then I rounded the corner into the baking aisle. Here I found a wall of flour, including spätzle flour, as well as more types of sugar and cookie sprinkle than I could use in a lifetime. I found nuts of all sorts prepared in all sorts of ways, special bakeable, edible cookie saucers, dozens of fruit sauce bases, pudding mixes of all sorts, and yet, the one thing I needed was not to be found. I trawled the aisles four times and didn't turn up a single can of baking powder. Perhaps it's classified somewhere else in the German mind? Whatever the reason, dinner was served without biscuits tonight.

I even found an American food shelf that was populated exclusively by Mexican dinner fixings and one lonely can of spray cheese. Glad the best of my native country has made it across the pond.

The meal came together without mishap, and the leaves I'd hoped were bay leaf were indeed bay leaf. Hopefully this is the beginning of many more culinary successes, and one of these days I intend to make use of that spätzle flour.