Going to the store: Italian style

Let’s discuss the Italian food situation. Considering Italians are renowned for their food, you have certain expectations for the Italian supermarket, yeah? It’s all local, and you go to 4 stores for your groceries, each specializing in something, and theres fruit stands. Of course!

Italy is no different than the rest of the Western World--it’s modernizing, slowly. Northern Italy, where I am, is far faster than the South (haven’t been there yet folks, so I can’t inform ya there). Verona, however, has quite the mix. There are supermarkets!! But they are not American supermarkets--our “big” grocery store is about the size of the campus Walgreens. Hah! There IS an actual supermarket, Meijer sized, in the mall (available via 30 minute bus), which I haven’t shopped at because it’s intimidating and sort of like going on an adventure.

I shop at Pam, which is a bit pricier, but close to me. your average grocery store will have about 5 aisles. There are no grocery carts, but rather little baskets, because there is no way you can eat a cart full of food in the few days it will stay fresh--no preservatives here, folks. Meat goes bad extremely fast--at least 3 people have gotten food poisoning for eating meat opened up the day before. There’s an amazing array of cheese, that I haven’t even scratched--mostly soft. No cheddar ANYWHERE. You can get pregrated cheese, but rarely pre shredded. Milk comes in 1 litre sizes, never a gallon. It’s hard to come by fish outside the major supermarkets here, since we’re far from the coast. You can smell the fish from the front of the store, which might be a good thing, or not. American stores in general smell much more sterile than their European counterparts.

There’s some vegetables in store! There are indeed little fruit stands, but more usefully, there’s small grocery stores scattered about with vegetables and other common food items--similar to corner stores. You weigh your vegetables on a machine before you come up front--no cashiers with memorized codes. You put your vegetable on the machine, and there’s tons of numbers (you don’t type it in, that would be too modern, there’s rows of numbers instead), and you find the number on the sign of your vegetable and push the corresponding button. The vegetable weighs, and a sticker prints out with the price and vegetable name--it’s pretty cool, and the closest Italians get to the self check-out line.
Certain vegetables are more prevalent here: artichokes, lettuces and cabbage, oranges, and fennel appear to be the most popular. Fennel tastes like watery licorice.

There are lots of cereals and yogurts and fresh pastas--including pasta from Barilla, which I find hilarious. Lots of the cereals are English crossovers--I have “Special Flakes” (special k/corn flakes) in my pantry, and Natalie has a bizarre Honey Nut Cherrios thing going on. Similarly, you can find American candy (Milky Way is called Mars though, like it was in America originally), gum, and Pringles(only seen sour cream and onion, however) and such, but it’s expensive and the selection is poor.

The “carb” aisle is intense. There are lots of crossaints filled with marmelade or chocolate--to be honest, you can get anything filled with chocolate (mostly Nutella) over here, including cereal (they have like Koala yummies cereal for breakfast, and I am suspicious). There’s a bunch of types of cookies--frollini are chocolate chip cookies. Stelle are chocolate cookies with white stars on them. They look just as manufactured as American prepared food, no worries! There are tons of fresh breads, which are cheap, but also sliced bread. The main snacking foods are not crackers and chips (though they are available), but rather long crispy bread sticks, or small circles of denser crunchy dough.

There’s an insane amount of Nutella over here. You have your store brand Nutella, one or two knock off Nutellas, and then ACTUAL Nutella, in multiple sizes: 3 mini tubs for taking with you on the go (.67 euro), small size nutella (in a glass jar, 1.67 euro), and big nutella (the kind you find in the US, 3.67 euro)--the economy size of Nutella my mom got me at CostCo is yet to be found, but any store that sells crepes has a HUGE jar the size of a standard folder sitting out.

Most people buy carbonated (frizz ante) water, in HUGE bottles, though the tap water is fine. Eggs are not refrigerated--they sit on the shelf. Becca confirms that in Greece, it’s the same way. I’m still skeptical of this, and refuse to buy them (same with milk, but that’s me being paranoid). I refuse to buy the horse meat, a typical Veronese dish, either. Some things are just too weird.

Claudio trip 2: Sirmione

Our second Claudio trip was to Sirmione, Desenzano, Borghetto, and Treviso. We boarded the bunny bus and headed to Sirmione, “The Pearl of Lake Garda”. Sirmione is everything you thought of in an Italian town--quiet, serene, with lots of water and a medieval castle, swans about the dock, pizzerias and gelato shops, and little shops selling owl figurines and spaghetti strainers. We walked around the town for two hours, mostly sitting on the beach or enjoying the view from Catallus’ sanctuary. It was extremely peaceful.

Desenzano was similar--we grabbed lunch by the dock, and enjoyed the little artisan street market set up. I bought some “natural licorice” recommended to me by the owner--it tasted like shoe polish. Sugar is a great thing, kids. A bunch of us ended up sleeping on the shores(on the rocks--no sand) of the Lake, and I called Claudio to allow us to stay an extra hour to sunbathe.

After another sleepy hour, we made our way to an outlet mall, which no one wanted to go to, but Claudio insisted upon--there were some pretty good deals. After the mall, we went to Borghetto for dinner (and a nice view!). Wild dogs followed us to the restaurant, and we worried about them--especially when the dogcatchers showed up. We asked Claudio to see what was up, and he said everything was fine, and then all we could do was put it out of our minds. Some people weren’t there, so there was far too much wine, and everyone got drunk (Thanks Claudio!). We had tortellini with pumpkin (which I love), risotto, two types of meat (one of which was supposedly duck), salad and stuffed tomatoes, and a delicious desert plate with tiramisu and chocolate salami with panna cotta. We all passed out on the bus, but went out for Ted’s birthday afterward.

I wanted to sleep in, so I didn’t go to Treviso :)

italian politics: Berlusconi

Berlusconi is the prime minister of Italy, and an embarassment. So much so that you may have heard about it in the United States. He owns tons of TV channels, including the most popular 3, which helped him raise money for politics, and also keep down the bad press. He’s been in power for some time, something like 20 years off and on--his party has been in power a long time, and I’m not sure how he got to be in power this long (yeah! 2 party system!). He has a history of being ridiculous: not long ago, during a debate, he told his opponent that she was “more beautiful than intelligent”, and she was not very stunning. Women protest him in Rome.

He’s been charged with sex with a minor, and abuse of power. He was involved with a 17 year old hooker named Ruby a few years ago, who went to jail. He made a personal phone call to get her out of jail, which alerted everyone. He claims he thought she was “Mubarack’s granddaughter” (the former leader of Egypt). Even so, the Italian people are all embarrassed by his antics, and are tired of his terrible leadership.

He goes on trial April 6th.