It’s All Foreign to Me: Grocery Shopping In Germany, an International Experience
Today was like many other Saturdays we’ve enjoyed in Germany: wonderful! Saturday is the day we do most of our fresh food shopping, and the last couple weekends, we’ve been trying some new things.
We started out at Aldi where we find cheap salami, Gouda, potatoes, bell peppers, strawberries, cereal, yogurt, and other sundries.
Next stop, Perfetto, which is in the basement of Karstadt, a department store. Parfetto is an upper-end grocery store, and we have recently discovered–and taken advantage of–their fresh fish market. Every Saturday, we pick out something that’s on sale: fresh salmon, trout, shrimp, muscles, calamari, red snapper, anything you can imagine! and it is our dinner on Saturday an Sunday. Today, salmon and trout were on sale, so we asked for those. The trout was really fresh: it was swimming in the tank behind the counter! The fishmonger caught one, killed it, and deboned it for us.
Parfetto also has a nice selection of fruit, and today, they were offering samples of pineapple, which is, incidentally, my favorite fruit ever. The sample tasted like liquid gold, so I bought one. Again, delicious.
We live right down town, so we walked back home and dropped off our purchases, then headed back out. Our favorite Turkish market, Varli’s, the one right around the corner, closed last week, so we were on the hunt for a new place to buy one of our favorite snacks, sheep’s cheese spread with tomatoes and garlic. We checked out every Turkish grocer between our place and Marburger Strasse.
We stopped by the market and visited this little antipasto stand. I have always wanted to try their offerings, but never had before, so today bought some freshly made green pesto so I can try a spaghetti recipe Christina made for me last week.
No luck at the Turkish markets, though, so we took the long way home and stopped by the Russian market, learned our weekly Russian from the best and friendliest saleswoman I’ve ever met, enjoyed warm, home-made Pierogi and tea (€0.69 per Pierogi, and the tea was free if we ate in). We also checked a Persian market, just in case. Finally we found something close to the sheep’s cheese spread at a Turkish bakery, one we had skipped on our first trip by: the day was a success! Across the street is a cute little Asian store (Kim-Phat), and I bought some soup. It’s like Ramen Noodles, but way better. I came home with Kimchi, duck, curry, and Thai suki.
Dinner tonight was fresh trout with just a little salt and pepper inside and flour on the skin and with mushroom risotto, and it was delicious. Simple and delicious.
I love the food variety here, in this small, unassuming town of 70,000 in the heart of Germany.
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The Joy of Cooking... at Home | Linden's Pensieve
[...] There is one more thing that helped me find joy in cooking, and that is, well, Germany. In Germany, you can get so many fresh fruits and vegetables, I mean the variety is just delectable! There are less boxed meals, less meals that require you to “Just add water!” Don’t get me wrong–it’s not that Germans make everything from scratch or never eat out, but they have a greater variety of foods available to them for home preparation it seems. And I haven’t even mentioned all the ethnic markets that abound even in a small town like Giessen (it’s about the size of Joplin). I wrote about them before, though, so you can check out that post. [...]
That sounds fun to shop at so many ethnic places, Linden! It’s extra fun for me, having been to some of them. ;) I can’t believe the dude killed and deboned the fish right then and there! How long did that take? Did you get any pictures?
Incidentally, pineapple here costs 3 for $1.50. We eat it all of the time! You should visit. :)
@Beth: I just love the ethnic diversity in this town the size of Joplin! Amazes me every day. Did we take you guys to the Russian store? The death and deboning took like 5 minutes. Or less. Nope, no pics–the death and deboning station was behind a little half-wall. Mmm, enjoy the yummy pineapple for me! I wish we could visit, but there really isn’t any time now. :(((