Today's Italian Adventure: Grocery Shopping, Italian Style

It has been an incredibly lengthy span of time since I posted anything, but it has taken this long to finally get my thoughts coherent enough for others to understand!

Today, let's delve into grocery shopping. I know, not terribly exciting, but a necessity that we all face unless we want to starve the children, which, we don't.  Americans, on the average, probably grocery shop for at least a week at a time, maybe more.  Italians, however, do not. They shop for each meal, it seems, or at most a day or two.  This can be witnessed if you happen upon the meat or break counter at 5:30 or 6 pm. Surrounding you (and assaulting your personal space) will be non-line forming Italians, fighting to get the best cut of meat/freshest bread.

We have not quite converted to this manner of shopping, so I shop for a week or two at a time, as to minimize the rush and hassle to only once a week or less.  Here's how it goes:

Michelle's Guide to Italian Grocery Shopping

 1. List Making: First, I choose some fantastic recipes with my bff digital hoarding-helper, Pinterest. (My boards are here: https://www.pinterest.com/mcascio/). Once I am thoroughly starving and have wasted 1 hour and pinned at least 42 more pins, I have a functional menu for the week, and grocery list (which I add to while I'm pinning the recipe!) This step is usually done the day before.

2.  Shopping Day Prep: *very important* Gather about 10 reusable shopping bags. We have amassed enough for a small army, and we usually keep them in the trunk, however, if you ever forget them, be prepared to purchase a plastic bag for at least .10 euro/bag, or buy more reusable shopping bags, which is why we have at least 100 now.  Put them in the car. (Yes, I've missed that before, lol.)

Feeding the cart

Next, and equally, if not more important, be sure you have at least a 1euro coin. You need this to unlock the magical grocery cart that is fastened to it's friends via a metal chain. Otherwise, you will have to undertake some serious juggling and strategic stacking of as many groceries you can fit in your arms. (Yes, done this before, as well, lucky you, learning from my mistakes!)

Loyalty Cards!

Lastly, grab your trusty store loyalty card. Every store that we have shopped at thus far as a loyalty program, and it's the only way to get the advertised low prices. If you forget your card, you can beg someone in line to let you scan theirs. Otherwise, you pay full price. We also learned this the hard way. As a bonus, you gain loyalty points and you can exchange those for cool things from a store catalog. It's actually pretty cool.

3. Shopping: Before we got to Italy, we were worried that there wouldn't be grocery stores like we are used to in the states. Boy, were we wrong (see pictures of all the grocery stores here!) As with most italian things, they far exceed expectations, and although they are different, I almost prefer them to American Stores. There are just a few notes of interest that I will illuminate now:

• Veggies: you must wear gloves (guanti) to touch the fruits & veggies. I mean, you could rebel and go bare-handed, but you will get stared at, and maybe even yelled at by one of the workers. No joke. Also, after you pick your veggies, you must weigh them yourself. There are numbers for each item next to the price, and in case you forget, it's also at the scale. The digital scale then prints your barcoded price tag and you slap that puppy on the bag. We didn't know this on our first shopping adventure, and it was a mess at the cashier.  They also sell pre-packaged and priced items, which is useful if you are in a hurry and/or American. 

Shelf vs. Fresh Milk

• Milk: Yes, they have fresh milk, but it's only sold in like quart-sized containers, and it's expensive. Which, honestly, is probably best for these italian micro-sized fridges, but would last about half a day in cereal- and chocolate-milk loving house of boys. After the initial wariness of the shelved milk (Yes, it's on the shelf, not refrigerated), we have pretty much converted to that exclusively. No, I don't know how they stabilize the milk, or if it's even milk, but I don't care right now. I'm over that. I buy a 6-pack container of parmalat for around 6 or 7 euro, which is pretty cheap. It lasts us about a week and a half.

• Bread: They have "American" bread (it actually says "American" on it), but it tastes kind of strange, so we usually get the store bakery bread, which is awesome. However, it's incredibly moist and wonderful for exactly one day. After that, it's best used as a paperweight. Lol

• Pasta: Not surprisingly, there are so many brands of pasta here that there is an entire grocery aisle dedicated to just pasta. Also, you can pick up some fresh pasta in the refrigerated section, which tastes better and cooks even faster. I prefer this, but obviously the shelf-life is less, and it takes up precious fridge space.

• "American" & Foreign items: For all the awesome food you can get here, there are a lot of items that are just ridiculously expensive and not worth buying: BBQ sauce, peanut butter, maple syrup, cake mixes, refried beans, any mexican/foreign spices.  Also, many things we were used to having stocked you can't get at all like: vanilla, brown sugar, quaker oats, cilantro (sometimes you get lucky) and chocolate chips. Luckily for us, we make a monthly trip to the nearest Military base to stock up at the commissary. 

So, that's it. Everything we have learned about grocery shopping in Italy so far. Hope you enjoyed it - and get a passport to come visit us!