The Quest for Popcorn Seeds

We knew they had to be out there somewhere; Cinemas sold popped popcorn, and there were individuals bags of microwave popcorn for sale in the stores, but we didn't have a microwave and just wanted to buy some straight up seeds. Most grocery stores here are not like home -- rather, they are very numerous and small; little fruit and vegetable stands on the sidewalk, a fresh bakery at the tram stop, and small grocery stores with the basics on every corner. There are some larger grocery stores in the shopping malls, but even those don't carry everything. One has fresh beef roasts, another has a very small gluten-free section, and yet another carries fresh cream or frozen strawberries. But what about popcorn?! I admit, after scouring (as thoroughly as one can scour in a foreign language with two toddlers underfoot) no fewer than 8 different grocery stores, I was beginning to panic. We finally broke down and asked the workers where we might find some, and they were stumped. They asked our friends; still stumped! We searched online and discovered we could have 22 kg of popcorn seeds delivered; a bit extreme, perhaps, but it was still cheaper than having Danica ship a much smaller quantity to us from the States. Finally, I was out picking up some necessities while Finn was home napping. Lev was in the carrier gnawing on the a juice box, so I had some time to really

look. And there they were! Tiny little 100g packs of just popcorn seeds for $0.25 a pack. I bought five, went home and popped one bag up, but should have popped two as Matt didn't even get any.

In general, fresh fruits and vegetables are really cheap and delicious. We have found the produce to be much more flavorful than back home, more on par with home-grown or farmer's market taste and quality. Most fruits, including peaches, pears, grapes and plums are about $0.50 a pound, and watermelon is only $0.10 a pound! Vegetables, including peppers, cauliflower, potatoes and carrots are about $0.25 a pound. It is currently the harvest season so it will be interesting to see how prices and availability change with the seasons. The produce selection is much more limited, however; we have yet to see celery, fresh broccoli, avocado, or really any leafy greens. Matt did find one bunch of leaf lettuce and we were surprised to discover included the roots in a bit a dirt, so we will likely try to keep that going for awhile!

Basic meats are also quite reasonable. A whole chicken goes for about $0.70 a pound. We had a hard time finding proper bacon (the first "bacon" we found was actually thinly sliced beef steak), but we have found our source now, although it rings in at about $7.00 a pound so it will be a rare treat.

Our initial foray into ice cream was worrisome as it was similar in price and quantity as Ben & Jerry's (ridiculously overpriced for a very small portion). I value quantity over quality in my ice cream so that just wasn't going to do! I was relieved to discover there is another name for the less fancy version of ice cream, if that makes any sense at all. Anyway, it is $2-3 for roughly a half gallon, and it comes in a big log so you can just hack a slice of it off and not worry about bending your spoon. Much more my style, when it comes to ice cream :-)

We have found more of the special "Finn foods" here than I had expected; almond milk, dairy-free butter, gluten-free noodles, cookies and pretzels, and even gluten-free baking mixes and bread! The breakfast cereal selection is meager, with corn flakes being the only one Finn can have, but it is probably ok that we can't feed him that junk anyway. We have found peanut butter (although it is really expensive and full of sugar and hydrogenated stuff) and we even gathered the ingredients to make chocolate chunk cookies (no chocolate chips to be found, luckily dark chocolate bars are easy to come by)! We just pulled an apple pie out of the oven that we will share after our study tomorrow morning. I do miss our apple peeler-corer-slicer, but I think we will survive. I've made a couple of batches of apple sauce; it is rather time intensive without the proper tools, but the apples are delicious and cheap right now and the kids are enjoying the healthy treat.

We have been enjoying sampling various local cuisine mostly just from street vendors so far. Bakeries have a wide assortment of delicious goods for 10 or 20 cents, and entire loaves of fresh baked bread for less than 50 cents! Other vendors have meat pies, shish-kabobs or something like a gyro for just a dollar or two So far everything we have tried has been delicious.