Grocery Shopping

"that's it?"

A fully stocked fridge is not so common in these parts.  Generally speaking, you buy what you need for the days meal the day of and never buy in excess.  I’ve had a little trouble adapting to this style of food shopping as I come from a place where you visit the grocery store once a week, buy in bulk for that week, and load up the fridge.  I laugh to myself at the difference between my freezer here, and the stockpiled freezer I once had when I lived alone in San Francisco.  As my friend Lindsay once put it, “it’s like Tetris!”  Where to fit the next doomed frozen piece?! 

Here in Zadar most people don’t drive to the grocery store and/or outdoor market.  You walk, and walking restrains you from carrying more than a couple bags, so you buy what you need for the day, at most two days.  Luckily there is a grocery store or two on nearly every block.  No joke!  Of all the cities in Croatia, Zadar has the most grocery stores for its number of inhabitants.  

This makes grocery shopping for the day convenient, however limiting to a certain extent.  Most stores are small, so you aren’t going to get a whole lot of variety, especially when it comes to fresh produce and meat, so I find myself going to a couple of different locations to finish the job.  I try to shop at the open market for all its magnificent fresh food as often as I can, but I must admit it’s beyond intimidating.  The old pushy vendors just want you to but THEIR blitva (swiss chard), for example, not from the guy in the next stall, so you miss the opportunity to become comfortably acquainted with the local produce.

There are a few items I like to keep in the fridge at all times, mostly because it’s consumed on a daily basis.  This includes; tomatoes, sardines, chocolate, yogurt, cheese, eggs, lemon, milk, and a few condiments.  Everything and anything else I buy is on a day to day basis.  This keeps me from snacking, which WAS a huge vice of mine.  I sure do miss cheese puffs though L