Krogers it Ain't!

Today we made our second trip to Setiabudhi, the local supermarket. It's about a mile and a half from our apartment, so we decided to walk to the store and take a cab back with our groceries. Our walk was like any other in this city - hopping up onto and back down off of the curb, traveling over stretches of broken sidewalk and tightly hugging the curb to prevent getting ourselves run over!

seaweed flavor chips?

Shopping itself is equally challenging. Brands we recognize are few and far between. We must have been in the store at least 2 hours to buy $65 worth of groceries. It seems that everything we do takes a lot more time here. It's not like I can just run down the aisles, throwing things in my basket like I usually do. Unfamiliarity with brands, inability  to read ingredient lists and not even knowing what some things are make food shopping somewhat of a guessing game. And even brands that we are familiar with don't taste the same.

fresh fish

We were advised to shop at this particular store because they carry more Western products. While we did find a *few* items we recognized, they were about 4x's what we're used to paying in the states. Makes sense. They had to travel half way around the world to get here, just like we did. My thinking is you have to want them pretty bad. So needless to say, we'll be challenging ourselves to try more local brands each time we shop. And who knows? Perhaps we'll even miss some of them when we go home?

durians

Fruits and veggies are a whole 'nuther subject. There are many of both that we don't recognize. The durians kind of smell up the whole produce section and even the packaged flesh looks unappetizing. I'll put them in the "grow on you" category. Ronnie's colleague told us that Indonesians actually like the way they smell. Hmm. Cleaning the fruits and veggies is going to be a time consuming chore, I'm afraid, as our tap water is not potable. I've heard horror stories about what is sometimes used as fertilizer, so that is enough to keep me on the straight and narrow! ha Step 1 requires a vegetable wash using bottled water, Step 2 requires rinsing in a bottled water/bleach solution and Step 3 is a clear bottled water wash. I fear that there will not be enough veggies in our diet between now and June 2012.

Yogurts and milk are plentiful but cheeses are very expensive. We really wanted some Parmesan cheese for our pasta, but not at $10 a bag. The young lady working in the dairy section had never heard of cottage cheese.

anyone for late night snacking?

The only bread in the store is made in the store bakery and there were several choices there that were really good. However, it is very different from the entire aisle of bread choices that we are used to. 

Something really neat happened while we were on the hunt for saltine crackers in Setiabudhi today. I will relate that in tomorrow's post.