Who likes going to the grocery store ?

metro?

My Bova has a retail store. It is where I first tried a frozen ball of smoked moz straight from Italy. I like making my own pizza dough but I realize I was being very silly. Now I just nab frozen balls of pizza dough from there. Love even the feel of the defrosted dough when I stretch it. I also have Assi a large Korean supermarket with even a sizeable food court. So much live seafood on offer too.

No, it’s called Hanos. In the Netherlands. We have live seafood, lots of ingredients from France (foie gras, numerous cheeses, label rouge poultry), and a very good wine collection from especially France and Italy.

See here for an impression:

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When we lived in the Netherlands for my husband’s work, we were able to shop at VEN near The Hague. It was so wonderful!!

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That sounds nice! When you say “straight from France and Italy” does that mean no storage between making the product and arriving there, or something else?

Looking forward to visiting the Netherlands this fall. Wish me luck! It has been delayed twice already.

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Indeed, no storage, e.g. fresh meat - but also having availability of French regional produce, at more or less the same prices as in France. Then again, Paris is only 350 miles away. You’ll be holidaying here?

Yes; or at least that is the plan.

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Oh yeah welcome to the group. Hope you are way less clueless than I was/am. I am slowly learning though. Very slowly.

I like cooking, but having to leave the house and interact with humanity makes me stabby. Instacart, Mercato, Drizly, and Amazon Fresh have become very important to my functioning.

Stabby?
:scream_cat:

Seriously. There is something about sheltering in and then plunging into that sea of humanity that is rude, noisy and not using any social distancing. Covid numbers are climbing suddenly in my area so I get the stabby. Good job staying safe. Also extroverts do not understand introverts like me.

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When in the U.S., I generally don’t enjoy going to the supermarket. Regionally, there are some amusing choices – NetCost and H Mart in northern New Jersey, H-E-B in Texas, some random Mexican ones in L.A. – but in general, the standard issue chains are depressing.

For other countries, Belgium, Spain, and Thailand have stood out to me, for quality, diversity of products, and produce.

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I’m in Aldi plus another reg-price grocer daily. I’ve pretty much always shopped that way - grab a couple of day’s worth of whatever whenever I need it.

Having a huge cart full of stuff in biweekly shopping trips is just not my bag, so to speak. The one non-Aldi grocer always has 1 or 2 of the 10-or-fewer lanes open and the Aldi staff here is pretty good about opening another lane if people get backed up, so it’s not too painful there, either (well, usually - yesterday I was behind a guy obviously shopping for The End Of Times and apparently he wasn’t of the sort to let the guy with 3 items go ahead of him).

I really like Asian and Indian marts but don’t go too often (half hour away v. Aldi etc. 5 minutes) but when we do, the kids and I have fun exploring and usually buy at least a few “what IS this thing?” items that we then figure out how to deal with when we get home.

Yesterday I realized I’d gotten through enough of my dried ancho, New Mexico, and chile de arbol that I needed more for making beef chili for dinner. My usual grocer’s manager said “we stopped carrying dried chiles a while back”. None at Aldi. None at Kroger, nor at Sprouts. The local fru-fru store? Nope.

So I started searching “supermercado” on Waze, drove to two closed locations (which I think Waze should have known!) then searched “carniceria” and found a nice little store. They had the chiles! Plus 10 other kinds. So I bought too much (only another 3 types, not all 10), figuring I’ll figure out how to best use them as I go.

The chili was excellent.

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“
shopping for the End of Times” - hilarious! The only time I have gone to a store in the past 2+ years has been for groceries. When the pandemic first began, my husband & I started getting our groceries when the store opened at around 6:30 am. We kept that habit until we were both vaccinated and boosted. This year we’ve been more relaxed - but now it’s tourist season on outer Cape Cod, and on weekends, especially, it’s common to see people with carts overflowing - sometimes 2 carts for a family - as visitors stock up for their vacation rentals. So we are back to our early bird habits. Other than fish markets, we don’t have specialty stores out here.

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I love going to the small store here in town . Walking over the wooden floor reminds me of shoppers corner in Santa Cruz. Walking up to the vegetables I talk to the girl trimming and displaying vegetables for the day . I’ll pick something out for dinner . She says to me ." You are so predictable. " I know ." As I grab carrots for the horse. I walk the deer trail to the wine and what else I need . She smiles and says ." I like that wine " . Pretty much every day.

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That sounds so relaxing. You have reminded me of a shopping experience here in the suburbs of Phily but it is not year round. There is a farm stand that uses the honor system. There used to be three but this one is on a big farm in Mennonite country. Everyone knows it has the best corn grown right there They are open from July-October and sell plenty of different fruits and vegetables. Sometimes a teenager or a middle school student mans the stand but often if I go later no one is there. The farmer accepts checks and cash and has a little locked box with a slot nailed to the table. I always push the bills deep inside. No piped in music no coupons no shoppers club card. Heaven. The first time I show up each season the farmer is there bringing burlap bags of bodacious corn and he greets me and says welcome. So lovely to buy the food from the man who grew it. One year there was a sweet little black cat named ebony who ruled the farm stand with an iron paw. No doubt she was in charge. She would greet me and accept pets but on hot days I would find her on a rolly chair in front of a fan. What a boss cat. Can’t wait to go again this year.

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I know that particular dance pretty well. For us, it’s usually vacationing in FL twice a year. Changeover day (Saturday for most weekly rentals) sees the grocery stores overflowing with people’s overflowing carts of stuff they don’t really need if they’d just plan ahead a bit.

We learned early on that most rental homes (back then, 25 years ago) would not retain anything in the kitchen - not even S&P. I guess for fear of a subsequent guest claiming contamination from a prior. That’s relaxed a lot in the last 5 years or so, and in some of these home there’ll be leftover S&P, olive oil, herbs & spices, coffees and the like.

But from the early years I learned to pack up a laundry basket with herb/spice essentials and some other basic goods to get us through the first couple of days (cereals, some breads, fixings for chili or a simple pasta meal) and a cooler with milk, eggs, some chopped beef for the chili, cream etc.

Oh - and at least two good knives and a cutting board, and a couple of “do anything” pans. The cutlery and cookware in rental homes is generally pretty atrocious.

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I should moderate this a bit, on reflection. For those flying in, what I do won’t work so I should blame them. But judging by traffic and license plates driving down I-75, turnpike, I-95, an awful lot of the people coming in for Spring Break are driving. I’m often surrounded by cars from the Midwest if our SB is close to Easter - that’s when we sync up with IL/IN/MI/OH/WI schools.

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Arrgh! Dangers of posting while trying to get the ribs and taters out. “
 so I should NOT blame them”.

Sorry all.

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We usually take our vacations in France - I do pack herbs/spices in small quantities so I don’t have to pay a lot to buy them there, including a disposable pepper grinder (sea salt is cheap there). We also put good knives in our checked baggage. I take aluminum foil without the box/cardboard roll and various sized ziplock baggies. Instant read thermometer. Domestic vacations I do the same, actually, but also bring a salt grinder. We also bring our preferred coffee and teas. But no real foodstuffs since we fly and then get a car rental


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