Things *are* different here. I give up. I won't go on pretending that everything is the same (I will, however, go on pretending that my last post wasn't about how things are different here). I do want to focus on one particularly curious area though, and that is the lovable supermarket.
For you older stateside readers, you've been hearing about European-style supermarkets for years and years. There might have been one or two in your entire metropolitan area as of 15-20 years ago, but they're growing in number in the US of A. Aldi is the most notable one, and they're doing booming business (there are probably statistics to back this up, but I'll pass on them) in lots of big cities where people want cheap food options.
Yes, you have to pay for bags. No, carts aren't an option. Yes, you bag your own groceries. These are some of the smallish quirks of the European grocery store. It's really very simple and they're almost indistinguishable from their American counterparts. Except for one small thing.
They are a goddamn nightmare like all the time.
I just visited the supermarket and spent more time there than I have on any previous visit. I did this because I have today off and we needed some things, and also because there were some items that we didn't think they would have, so I looked very intently for them. We kinda want to make Christmas cookies (OK, busted, chocolate chip cookies under the guise of Christmas. We'd eat them all long before the 25th, if they even made it past the dough-form and into becoming actual cookies at all), but buying cookie-dough is quite literally a foreign concept over here.
We needed brown sugar and I also hoped to find chocolate chips.
In typical US grocery stores, things are impeccably ordered. There is a baking section, there is a breads section, chips aisle, dairy section, pharmacy aisle, etc. You've all been there and you know that you can pretty comfortably find anything in a standard Kroger, Giant Eagle, Piggly Wiggly, Jewel, or whatever your local retailer is called. Hell, you could easily go into one a grocery store 1000 miles away and feel pretty comfortable there to find whatever you need.
Not quite the same here. I counted four different areas of the store where bagged sugar is sold. None of it was brown. One of those areas sold "raw, organic sugar" while another sold "raw cane sugar." They were on different floors of this store.
Flour is the same - I noticed flour in what appeared to be the baking section. It had pancake mix, cake mixes, and more, but not sugar, nor salt, nor anything else that comes to mind when you think of baking. Except, you know, candles, cake decorations, sprinkles, and literally everything that you could want that isn't essential to making cake.
What I'm trying to say is that while everything is "orderly" in some way - the breads are all in one place, but they're only near certain types of bread-based things...like some of the crackers while the other crackers are upstairs. The pasta sauces are all together, but they're two aisles away from the other dressings and sauces. The milk....oh the milk. Some of it is in a refrigerator, most of it is not. This is inexplicable - I cannot explic this and I don't want to.
Woof.
Send cookie dough.
For you older stateside readers, you've been hearing about European-style supermarkets for years and years. There might have been one or two in your entire metropolitan area as of 15-20 years ago, but they're growing in number in the US of A. Aldi is the most notable one, and they're doing booming business (there are probably statistics to back this up, but I'll pass on them) in lots of big cities where people want cheap food options.
Yes, you have to pay for bags. No, carts aren't an option. Yes, you bag your own groceries. These are some of the smallish quirks of the European grocery store. It's really very simple and they're almost indistinguishable from their American counterparts. Except for one small thing.
They are a goddamn nightmare like all the time.
I just visited the supermarket and spent more time there than I have on any previous visit. I did this because I have today off and we needed some things, and also because there were some items that we didn't think they would have, so I looked very intently for them. We kinda want to make Christmas cookies (OK, busted, chocolate chip cookies under the guise of Christmas. We'd eat them all long before the 25th, if they even made it past the dough-form and into becoming actual cookies at all), but buying cookie-dough is quite literally a foreign concept over here.
We needed brown sugar and I also hoped to find chocolate chips.
In typical US grocery stores, things are impeccably ordered. There is a baking section, there is a breads section, chips aisle, dairy section, pharmacy aisle, etc. You've all been there and you know that you can pretty comfortably find anything in a standard Kroger, Giant Eagle, Piggly Wiggly, Jewel, or whatever your local retailer is called. Hell, you could easily go into one a grocery store 1000 miles away and feel pretty comfortable there to find whatever you need.
Not quite the same here. I counted four different areas of the store where bagged sugar is sold. None of it was brown. One of those areas sold "raw, organic sugar" while another sold "raw cane sugar." They were on different floors of this store.
Flour is the same - I noticed flour in what appeared to be the baking section. It had pancake mix, cake mixes, and more, but not sugar, nor salt, nor anything else that comes to mind when you think of baking. Except, you know, candles, cake decorations, sprinkles, and literally everything that you could want that isn't essential to making cake.
What I'm trying to say is that while everything is "orderly" in some way - the breads are all in one place, but they're only near certain types of bread-based things...like some of the crackers while the other crackers are upstairs. The pasta sauces are all together, but they're two aisles away from the other dressings and sauces. The milk....oh the milk. Some of it is in a refrigerator, most of it is not. This is inexplicable - I cannot explic this and I don't want to.
Woof.
Send cookie dough.
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