Now that I'm living independently, I have to independently buy my own food. I enjoy cooking and, strangely enough, I enjoyed going to the grocery store when I was in college. In college, I would usually go to the grocery store with my roommates and friends on Sundays, and it was a good time to take a break from studying. Also, I'm pretty serious about my diet (gotta hit those macros for muscle growth), so I would always plan out exactly what I was going to buy. And, if nothing else, going to the grocery store was an chance to drive my car, and that's one of my favorite things to do.
It's a little different here, though. First of all, I don't have a car, so I have to walk to the grocery store or take a bus, and that limits how much I can buy at a time. I can't do the once-a-week grocery runs here because I can't carry all that food back from the store. There are a few stores very close to my apartment, but they are standard Russian grocery stores, and by that I mean that they are really lousy. If you want to buy white bread, mealy tomatoes, frozen chicken, mayonnaise, canned meat, and sticky-sweet candy, you're in luck at those stores. If you want anything else, you had better go somewhere else. Fortunately, we live close to Globus, which is a giant, German-owned grocery store that has most everything (although they don't have capers, which greatly annoyed my roommate). It's a fifteen-minute walk or a ten-minute bus ride, but that's where we usually go.
Globus has a lot, but it is still, at its heart, a Russian grocery store. Its Russianness, of course, is because it depends on the Russian food system. Certain things are very available and cheap, such as fish (we bought a two-pound fresh salmon fillet yesterday for $12--that would cost at least $25 in the US). But other things are of poor quality or simply don't exist. I bought a rock-hard avocado there for $3 and then decided that I'll just have to wait until I get back to the US to eat decent avocados again. US grocery stores have big selection of berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries) pretty much year-round, and those berries, while not super cheap and sometimes not all that fresh (nothing like Chilean blueberries in Columbus, Ohio, in February), are plentiful and won't break the bank. Globus has a tiny section of berries, and they are amazingly expensive. Want strawberries? You can spend $5 for about 12 of them. Raspberries are even more expensive.
Most Russians, of course, don't buy berries in stores. They either grow them at their dacha, get them from friends who grow them at their dacha, or buy them at bus stops or markets from old ladies who grow them at their dacha. Dachas and home gardens play a huge role in the Russian food system, and that means that grocery stores often don't carry a lot of fresh produce. In the summer, that's great, because that in-season, locally grown produce tastes great. A fresh dacha-grown tomato tastes nothing like the watery, dreary thing you can get at the store. The situation gets depressing in the winter, however, when the only produce you can find is old tomatoes, shriveled peppers, mushy cucumbers, chalky bananas, and flavorless oranges.
I know that local produce and a push back against factory farming are popular in American these days, and I fully support a more fine-grained food system that is more rooted in communities and less dependent on chemicals, but I have to say that being in a country without such a well-developed food system makes me miss my industrial food. The fact that US consumers can get fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, and meat (not to mention all the specialty products that are shipped thousands of miles) for a decent price in the dead of winter is a testament to technology. Most foodstuffs in Russia cost about the same as in the US (meaning they are a lot less affordable--the average salary in Vladimir Oblast is about $510 a month), but the quality is often sub par.
As a testament to my Midwestern heritage--and the Midwest feeds the nation and a lot of the world, so this is related to food systems--here's a great country song. This goes out to the high-fructose-corn-syrup-producing, GMO-planting, mega-farming capital of the world and one of the reasons that American agriculture and the American food system is so astoundingly productive. Here's to those fly-over states.
It's a little different here, though. First of all, I don't have a car, so I have to walk to the grocery store or take a bus, and that limits how much I can buy at a time. I can't do the once-a-week grocery runs here because I can't carry all that food back from the store. There are a few stores very close to my apartment, but they are standard Russian grocery stores, and by that I mean that they are really lousy. If you want to buy white bread, mealy tomatoes, frozen chicken, mayonnaise, canned meat, and sticky-sweet candy, you're in luck at those stores. If you want anything else, you had better go somewhere else. Fortunately, we live close to Globus, which is a giant, German-owned grocery store that has most everything (although they don't have capers, which greatly annoyed my roommate). It's a fifteen-minute walk or a ten-minute bus ride, but that's where we usually go.
Globus has a lot, but it is still, at its heart, a Russian grocery store. Its Russianness, of course, is because it depends on the Russian food system. Certain things are very available and cheap, such as fish (we bought a two-pound fresh salmon fillet yesterday for $12--that would cost at least $25 in the US). But other things are of poor quality or simply don't exist. I bought a rock-hard avocado there for $3 and then decided that I'll just have to wait until I get back to the US to eat decent avocados again. US grocery stores have big selection of berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries) pretty much year-round, and those berries, while not super cheap and sometimes not all that fresh (nothing like Chilean blueberries in Columbus, Ohio, in February), are plentiful and won't break the bank. Globus has a tiny section of berries, and they are amazingly expensive. Want strawberries? You can spend $5 for about 12 of them. Raspberries are even more expensive.
Most Russians, of course, don't buy berries in stores. They either grow them at their dacha, get them from friends who grow them at their dacha, or buy them at bus stops or markets from old ladies who grow them at their dacha. Dachas and home gardens play a huge role in the Russian food system, and that means that grocery stores often don't carry a lot of fresh produce. In the summer, that's great, because that in-season, locally grown produce tastes great. A fresh dacha-grown tomato tastes nothing like the watery, dreary thing you can get at the store. The situation gets depressing in the winter, however, when the only produce you can find is old tomatoes, shriveled peppers, mushy cucumbers, chalky bananas, and flavorless oranges.
I know that local produce and a push back against factory farming are popular in American these days, and I fully support a more fine-grained food system that is more rooted in communities and less dependent on chemicals, but I have to say that being in a country without such a well-developed food system makes me miss my industrial food. The fact that US consumers can get fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, and meat (not to mention all the specialty products that are shipped thousands of miles) for a decent price in the dead of winter is a testament to technology. Most foodstuffs in Russia cost about the same as in the US (meaning they are a lot less affordable--the average salary in Vladimir Oblast is about $510 a month), but the quality is often sub par.
As a testament to my Midwestern heritage--and the Midwest feeds the nation and a lot of the world, so this is related to food systems--here's a great country song. This goes out to the high-fructose-corn-syrup-producing, GMO-planting, mega-farming capital of the world and one of the reasons that American agriculture and the American food system is so astoundingly productive. Here's to those fly-over states.
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