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! 

Today's Italian Adventure (TIA) #342: Attempts to Register for Preschool.

Okay, this is the beginning of all the Cascio Italian adventures you have been waiting patiently to read about. We FINALLY got internet at our house, after an agonizing and excruciating 3 months of paying way too much for our Italian SIM card data plans.  Well, actually, we will still have to do that, until we get a soggiorno (sah-jorn-oh) (permit of stay), which will probably be sometime mid-May on the Italian timetable of things.  That's another rant for another post, though.

So, today, before we got our magical modem delivered, I wanted to try and get one task checked off our list. (I say *try* for everything now, it's much more accurate.) Registering "sniffy" for preschool.

However, it was pouring rain. Not like little wispy sprinkles that we got in California, but full-on, flooding the sidewalks, relentless, rain.  And Jeff drove the only working car to work today, because the volvo seems to be a little temperamental. Anyway, I wasn't going to let a little rain stop me! I told Isaac we were going on an adventure, and started layering on 4 layers of athletic gear (which is the warmest thing I've got right now).  It's pretty cold here, and the rain certainly kicks that up a notch.

So, after gearing up, we don our umbrellas (mandatory that each family have like 25 umbrellas - they sell them EVERYWHERE!), and set off for what I thought was going to be a short walk about a quarter mile down the street to the preschool.  Well, everything is going good until the first 10 puddles, and I'm soaked from my knees down! Isaac is not phased, and thinks this is fun. Good. I've got something working in my favor.  We get to the school, figure out how to buzz the office (Gates everywhere here - another Italian thing) and they let us in. We add our two umbrellas to the line of 100 lined up in the hallway and venture inside.  The segretaria (secretary) is very nice, but of course, does not speak English, so I ask her in my broken English-Italian if I can register here for preschool.  She tells me a few sentences in Italian (which are equivalent to paragraphs in English, because the words are multi-syllabled), and I figure out that I am not in the right place.  *Note: yes, I could have called, but my phone-Italian is much worse!). I ask her to write down the address  (Scrivilo l'indrizzo) and she writes and talks and motions with her hands, and writes some more. I'm trying to make sure I understand what she wrote, so I'm trying to put the address into my GPS on my phone at the same time telling her I'm understanding what she is saying and thanking the Lord I just studied directions in my italian-language app.

Our new destination is 1.2 miles from where we were at the moment. I have a decision to make, here, people, and I choose to trudge on, because Isaac seems content with the umbrella-power and his spiderman hat and gloves. So we continue to walk, and it continues to rain, and the puddles are huge, more like ponds really, and I'm trying to keep a positive "adventure" attitude going.  (Meanwhile, I have birth certificates, our lease, our codice fiscale cards, passports, visas, and every other form of ID in my bag right now, in case any of that is required. I'm trying to keep this all dry.)  5 minutes and 27 puddles later, Isaac is now tired and complaining that his feet hurt. My feet are soaked, and I'm not sure we are walking in the right direction. I keep him moving forward by telling him it's not much further, and he gets distracted by the huge leaves on the ground.  4 minutes later, he trips on one of those leaves, and falls on top on his umbrella, breaking nearly every spine in it. It kind of works, so we keep using it. 17 minutes later (oh yes, I was watching the time!) I saw the "Posta" which the secretary mentioned, so I know I'm close! I see a big school across the street, and I think that must be it. (When in Italy, never trust your first guess. It's usually wrong. Honestly.) I was wrong. A lady who was surprised to see us (in what could have been a High School back hallway - I'm guessing here) told me that this was not the place. (Everyone in the story does NOT speak English, ok?) I *think* she told me it was right around the corner, so we take our one umbrella and set out around the corner.

I enter another place which looks like it *could* be the right place, but once again, no one speaks English (I ask) but they tell me to go across the street. So, we set off for what I hope is our last stop of our rainy journey, and this looks promising! It's a primary school - and there is someone there that speaks English! She tells me this is the place, and just go wait at the window over there. So I do, and then 5 minutes later, she tells me, "Oh, I forgot, they are only open for registration during these hours" and points to a paper posted there. She kind of shrugs and says, "Well, you can come back tomorrow morning!" And I die inside. I tell her I've walked here for almost 2 miles, in the rain, with a 4-yr old. No response. This patience that I prayed for has definitely reached it's peak, because I'm totally cool with this now. Irritated, yes. Soaking wet, yes. But mad? No. Amazingly. Isaac and I start on our quest back home. Only 132 puddles to go.