Grocery shopping...fun?

One of the necessities of life that becomes routine is food shopping. Not so, when you leave home and exchange a 45 minute drive to the nearest large supermarket in Vermont, for a half block walk to the corner shops to buy what you need for your next meal in Buenos Aires. The novelty of carrying a shopping bag, money, and a key to the apartment to venture out on Calle Vicente Lopez to the shops is great fun.

A half block down is a colonial market building that dates back to 1900. Today there are small individual shops along the road in part of what used to be this large mercado. I have become a regular customer here. I love the bakery, Hausbrot, that sells nothing but whole wheat healthy breads and delicious fresh quiches made daily.

Next door, is the pasta shop which I now frequent. The first time there I had no idea how to buy  fresh pasta and sauce. I must have looked lost because a friendly customer came to my rescue. I told her I had no idea how much to buy for two people for one meal, and how long to cook it. Her instructions to buy 400 grams of tomato sauce (made fresh with real tomatoes, of course), and 400 grams of noodles and 100 grams of parmesan cheese were perfect. Just boil the pasta 4 minutes. Of course, I had to decide between about 12 different sizes and shapes of pasta and whether it should be white or spinach or made with egg. Then I saw the ravioles, cannelones, and the other choices of toppings from cream sauces to pesto to meat sauces. My first visit, I stuck to wide noodles and tomato sauce but I probably could chose something different every day for a month! We had one of the more delicious meals at home for 38 pesos or about 9 US dollars.

Beyond the pasta shop is a fiambreria, or delicatessen, with many varieties of expensive cheeses, cold cuts, olives, pickles, pimentos, and other condiments. If you are a meat eater, there is a butcher who will give you any cut of beef you like. Next door is the chicken and egg store which also sells duck. There are two fresh fruit and vegetable places. Everything in these shops is sold by the kilo so if you think in pounds you just have to guess. Across the street from these mercado shops there is the mouth watering Confiteria del Norte, a bakery with more fancy, cream filled cakes, cookies, pastries, breads, and ready made tea sandwiches than I have ever seen in one store. Every time I go in to browse, the stock never seems to lessen despite all the people that buy there all day long and late into the evening. I want to know who is eating all those pastries and goodies when I don't see a single overweight Argentine anywhere! Directly across the street from our building is a liquor store filled with Argentine wines.

There are two supermarket choices within a block and a half of our apartment. One is Carrefour which I used to shop at in Dubai. However, this one is not nearly as elegant although handy for paper products, soap, milk, crackers, eggs, yogurt, cereal, bottled water and wines. A block in the other direction is the more upscale Disco, that seems slightly pricier. Both deliver your groceries for a small fee. This explains the dozens of white plastic crates that are stacked up high in the entrance to both supermarkets. Once you go through the checkout with your items, a grocery boy will put them in a numbered crate and stack it along with others going in the direction of where you live. You get a number and then leave. It is a bizarre to see groceries in stacked crates being pushed around on these busy city streets. However, it surely beats pushing a cart out to the parking lot and lifting grocery bags into the trunk of your car, when you can walk out empty handed knowing your groceries will come to your door later. Pretty nifty. Supermarkets are open long hours, seven days a week, but small food shops close at noon on Saturdays and do not open again till Monday mornings.

I have to remind myself that if I lived here all the time, food shopping would become a chore just like it is everywhere else in the world. However, right now I am savoring the fun of doing it in a totally different way...not to mention the fact that all I've just described is delicious.