Grocery Shopping Adventures

As I have previously mentioned, we do not have a "meal plan" or "cafeteria" here in Prague. In order to not go broke, cooking meals is unavoidable. Each floor has 1 kitchen. I had been avoiding "real" cooking during the week of orientation as well as the first week of classes. My excuse was that I was getting adjusted and had no time. Anyone who knows me well, however, might be surprised to hear this. I am an avid fan of the Food Network, and often am glued to the TV with this channel on. I'll often refer to Rachel, Giada, Ina, and Sandra so often that you might mistake them as my close friends rather than chefs and tv personalities. Additionally, in the fall of 2008 I had taken a 7 part 2 hour vegetarian cooking class at Bucknell's craft center, and a similar baking class in the fall of 2009. Well, before coming to Prague my extent of cooking on my own has been limited to heating up Lean Cuisine entrees in the microwave, baking brownie mix from the box, and making tuna sandwiches ("tuna in the toaster..." - that's for you, khs '08-ers!). The thought of replicating one of Giada's italian feasts or Ina's home cooked wonders has always been something I have eagerly anticipated. But, the thought of approaching this task in a foreign country with different cooking units in the metric system and heating units in Celsius, and grocery labels in a different language was more than slightly intimidating. And yes, I was also just really, really lazy (and tired!). This is coming from someone used to food magically appearing on the kitchen table at home (a la Mom) or in the caf at Bucknell. I didn't exactly have the time or energy to make elaborate meals (or for that matter, a kitchen to myself... there are 6 other hungry people on my floor using the kitchen as well!).

So, I slowly proceeded to get "staple ingredients" from Tesco and local grocery stores. I went every couple of days after class. After all, I don't drive here so I have to carry all of my groceries back myself!

09/07/2010 Shopping Trip at Tesco

Some "staples": salt, soy sauce, nutella, hot sauce, roasted red peppers, grilled vegetable seasoning (garlic, ginger, sweet pepper and turmeric), whole wheat pasta and "cling film" (aka saran wrap, in the US)

09/08/2010 Tesco Trip

Whole wheat wraps, rice, olive oil, plastic containers, peanut butter, honey, Neapolitan tomato sauce, tuna, black pepper, paprika, carbonara sauce, oregano, and bay leaves

09/13/2010 Alberts Trip

Canned chickpeas, potatoes, eggs, cheese, and frozen vegetables(cauliflowers, green beans, carrots, and bell peppers)

09/15 Alberts Trip

Frozen broccoli, mushrooms, milk, deli chicken, foil, bananas, sponges, and mixed salad

Buying milk also proved to be an interesting experience. Hearing the stories of a fellow Machova-er who thought she had bought milk only to later realize she had bought "sour milk," I knew I needed to do my research first so I wouldn't come back with buttermilk instead of regular skim milk. In fact, for the first week I instead just ate my cereal with strawberry yogurt. Eventually I was able to find out that "mleko odtucnene" is "defatted milk" and is labeled green or light blue. So that certainly made my job easier! (And that particular store only had them in the boxed variety)

I'm still deciding on what my first kitchen experiment should be... A blog entry to come on that, shortly!