Food Shopping
Now that we moved into our home, we need to do some food shopping. There is no one stop shopping here; it is the extreme side of the family specialty store.
This is our cheese store. Any type of salty, soft cheese you want, they have it. We have tried about six types so far. Our favorites are the mozzarella and this yogurt-like stuff they call leben. We get a pound of mozzarella for 95¢.
This is where everyone hangs their bread out to dry. Actually, the little window to the left is the bread store. It comes out of the oven piping hot and the people need to cool it on the racks before putting it into a bag. We get 10 pieces of flat bread for 83¢.
Meat is our biggest grocery expense here. The butcher is where we spend most of that but you cannot beat freshly ground lamb. It cost us $5.17 per pound.
The shawarma and rotisserie chicken shop is the other reason why we spend so much on meat. A whole chicken will cost us $4.66. It is not nearly as good as a chicken from the Philippines for $2 though. A shawarma sandwich dripping with goodness is 62¢.
I have grown fond of having my coffee mixed with cardamom. However, I still find it amusing my spoon can stand up in it. The only shame about the coffee here is that Nescafe Instant is so popular. Coffee and tea are essentially free; you can walk into any shop for a conversation and the owner will offer you a drink. We typically drink about six cups a day. No wonder we do not go to sleep until 3 am.
Honey, sugar, pistachios and lots of butter; not at all fattening. Good thing we limit ourselves to only one 2 lb tray per week. Having made baklava from scratch we know how much work is involved so it is a steal to get it for $1.88 per pound.
Ah, the spice shop. This has been another costly category in our grocery budget. What a boon it was though to find a shop with English names. We have made several trips back here. Our spice man makes his own mixes for meat, fish, salad, vegetables and any other dish you can think of. The prices vary but we were able to stock our kitchen with all the regulars for about $40.
And I saved the best for last. This is the pickled foods store. Mostly I buy my olives from here but they have a wide selection of radioactive vegetables. The purple is usually from beet juice but I have no idea how they get the red and yellow colors naturally. Olives range in price but I usually get the spicy ones for $1 per pound. The colors are real, you can see the white wall to the right as a reference.
