Sweet as: The Grocery Experience

One of my all-time favorite pasttimes is walking through a grocery store in a foreign country. I picked up the habit ages ago – probably when I was living in Spain when I was 19 – and I’ve gone into a grocery store or food shop in every country I’ve ever visited. Most of the time, I just wander the aisles reading the packaging and touching the products that I never could have imagined would exist. Sometimes, I buy up a few special (or special-looking) items and bring them home. I would guess that 2 out of 10 are inedible – not because they’re rotten, but because my taste buds aren’t accustomed to whatever flavor profile it has. More often than not, I’m disappointed that I didn’t buy more!

We had our first co-shopping experience just a few days ago. I happen to think that roaming the long, brightly lit aisles in the supermarket or food store is an intimate experience. For me, it’s such a personal thing: choosing the food items I want to cook, the snacks I want on-hand, the comfort food I’ll never admit to eating in private. So sharing the experience with someone for the first time is a milestone of sorts.  [Ironic, isn’t it? I moved halfway around the earth, but food shopping is the big relationship marker!]

For sure there are things here you don’t see anywhere else. I couldn’t take pictures of all of them, but there was such a massive variety of things that I had never seen before! I’ll chalk it up to Queenstown being a pretty touristy place, but in reality we went to a locals-only kind of neighborhood for real groceries. That’s where I saw these:

I have no idea what “Coca Cola Life” is. I could have sworn he was saying “Coke Lite” when he asked me about it before going to the store, but clearly that’s not it…  I was so fascinated by it that I didn’t even read the label! And right next to it is “Coca Cola Ginger” – which actually sounds like something I might want to import to the US. Coke is supposed to be good for an upset stomach (well, the flat stuff is), and so is ginger. So how bad could it be? Apaprently it’s a limited edition, so I should probably buy some soon and report back on it.

The other thing I noticed in the grocery store is the way eggs are stored:

In the US, we are familiar with eggs in a refrigerated section, but as far as I can tell, we are the only country (that I’ve been to) that stores eggs that way. I talked about this with my mom not long before I left, and apparently the way these delicate items are shelved is the result of how they’re farmed. If you wash the eggs after collecting them, then they need to be stored in the fridge to prevent the growth of bacteria – but apparently if you leave them be after collection, they can protect themselves on the shelf. Who knew? (On a side note, the yolks on these babies are much yellower than the ones we have in the US. Haven’t worked that part out yet.)

I’m excited about shopping here on a more regular basis. There’s fresh gluten-free bread! (In the US, it’s always frozen.) There are fewer preservatives! Interesting flavors! Real butcher shops! I think this is going to be a *lot* of fun.