What's For Supper?

Going grocery shopping is usually one of the first things you have to do when you first move to a new country. There is no gracing period; the troop need to eat no matter what and this first official outing can be a little daunting. What will I find? What will be missing on my must-have list of items?

Each country has its own way of arranging items in their stores and it’s often a challenge for the first few weeks to remember where everything is. Habits of different countries start to blend in and what should take half an hour to an hour can eat most of your morning while still missing half of what you actually needed.

The other challenge is to buy the right products with the little knowledge of the local language you can remember. Grocery shopping with a dictionary in hand is NOT something you want to do: How do you say butter, salt butter, margarine? How about whole milk, half/skimmed milk? The first few weeks are usually critical in our family as I buy products which will be tasted in situ and when I finally find the ones that please the taste buds of my worldwide culinary experts I stick to it until the next move. But the judges are always happy when we are in a country that sells Nutella!!!

Who knows, we might miss it when we leave!!!