Food talk

Like I promised, my focus on my blog will change now due of recent events. And since this was my main strategy with coping with the situation the focus change to cooking! But before doing so, we have to talk about something probably most people who start to live abroad have to deal first: the wonders of abroad supermarkets!

I think most of you experienced that already on a smaller scale during vacation (except you’re doing all inclusive or eating out during your whole vacation, but I don’t think you would have find your way to this blog, since you’re totally different to me). You go to the local supermarket or whatever is the place to go to on the place of your stay to get food. In Eilat I was wondering why the local Israelis don’t have supermarkets or markets for fruits and vegetables for days till I finally find one in a decent size and okay-ish prices. (We guessed in the end that they probably have hypermarkets outside the city and doing once or twice a month a huge grocery shopping or something like that.) Okay, so you go in there and at first it’s just overwhelming.

Maybe you’re lucky and the structure is similar to the one you’re used to. Still, there will be a lot of tiny details which will irritate the heck out of you. Like the question… where is the f*cking salt? First I didn’t found any so I bought some salt with herbs in it, that I found. And no, there was no regular salt on that shelf next to it. Really not. At one point I’ll realize italians put it in a different corner and using a total different size and package. Reason behind that is that different cultures have different patterns what they combine and this is important for marketing to seduce you to buy more than you planned. In Germany I normally find the salt in the same or at the angle next to the one with pasta and sauces. So, when you need salt, you go there, see the sauces and pasta and are like “oh yes, this salt will be perfect for some pasta and tomato sauce” and you buy it.

Sometimes you’ll make mistakes because you don’t understand the description or made a translating mistake. I bought baking powder (lieveto in polvere) instead of yeast (lieveto). The cake I wanted to do was delicious and it was easier to get in in form, but it was not fluffy at all. My flatmate laughed a bit about it. The cake. I didn’t found out that I bought the wrong thing some days later.

Sometimes you just don’t find stuff. Here now the crazy revelation about the reason: they probably don’t have it. Because their kitchen routine is different. And I am not talking about exotic stuff. Try for example to find some good bread outside of Germany. In the end I settled with Ciabatta. Was fine, but I’ll be so happy when I buy my first fresh baked german bread tomorrow (couldn’t ordered it online). I went a little bit wild on the ice cream. Don’t know if it was because of the lockdown or if italians prefer to buy it on the street, but the choices of ice cream in the super market were kinda small. And I didn’t found any caramel. Heartbreaking, I know! In general most products didn’t had so many options of brands I was used to.

But there was not only confusion and grief about the stuff they don’t have. There were so many new things I didn’t know I like to try till I found them. The Emilia-Romagna is famous for their food and there is no argument against that. The vegetables were so fucking huge, my bulgarian friend always refer to the peppers as abnormally huge. The fruits tastes for sun. The sausages, the ham, and oh dear… the cheese. I was quite amazed of the Sugo di Formaggio, the consistence was much stickier than I am used t here and I think it also survived longer. Heaven. And I never used that much parmeggiano. It’s now basically in every second food I cook. The wine was also much better than here, where I am used to drink beer. Even the cheaper brands didn’t made me any headache (and I drink a lot) and the red wine was lighter than the ones I know here.

To be honest, I didn’t really missed something from home. Some days maybe I would have liked a slice of bread or against the stress my favorite cup of too expensive bucket salted caramel ice cream. But there was much nice food to try out, I couldn’t really complain. Especially because the supermarket was always full of stuff and the quality very good. And since the choices for healthy food was much bigger than the choices for unhealthy stuff I have to admit, I was eating much better and lost weight. I hope I don’t let myself seduced of to much of the crappy stuff anymore. My cooking was far better than before I went to Italy. Which is only a cheap cliffhanger, so you’re coming back.