Where do you get your food?
I've been to a lot of grocery stores. Which is an odd thing to think about, but yeah, it's true. I know grocery stores in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Panama, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, England, and Scotland.
Idk about you, but when we visit a country, we tend to stay with family/friends/couchsurfer hosts. And we definitely use the grocery stores. Because no matter where you are, going to restaurants can get expensive. Also, restaurant is such a hard word to spell! I never get it right.
Trader Joe's is one of my favorite grocery stores. It was super awesome when Gainesville got our Trader Joe's. But, ya know, there's Publix too. And between the two, that was the main places for food shopping in good ol' G-ville.
But now! There's been a new grocery store in Gainesville. It's called Lucky's Market and it sounds so so awesome. Ken Eats Gainesville talked about it here, my parents love it, and the other parents that I have as friends on Facebook seem pretty excited about it too. So, when I get back to Gainesville, I look forward to checking them out. Unfortunately, I will not have one in my college town of Sarasota, but hey, at least I'll have a Trader Joe's.
Something I will have fairly nearby to my college town that is not in Gainesville is Costco! Another favorite of our family's. It's similar to Sam's Club but a million times better. Great prices for bulk, they treat their employees really well, there's samples, and the food they sell is also good (we've gotten Costco pizza many a time). Also a good place to buy cell phones. They're just awesome in general. They're my 2nd fave to TJ's. I guess we'll have to see where Lucky's falls on my list.
Something I will have fairly nearby to my college town that is not in Gainesville is Costco! Another favorite of our family's. It's similar to Sam's Club but a million times better. Great prices for bulk, they treat their employees really well, there's samples, and the food they sell is also good (we've gotten Costco pizza many a time). Also a good place to buy cell phones. They're just awesome in general. They're my 2nd fave to TJ's. I guess we'll have to see where Lucky's falls on my list.
In Europe this past summer, we spent a lot of time in grocery stores, and my parents reaally took their time in them sometimes, checking out everything they had, even if we'd already been in that store before. If you read my Europe blogs, you probably saw a lot of grocery store mentions throughout. Ooo, it got exhausting. Quick tours, please, quick tours. It was really neat to see them though. I didn't mind the visits, as long as they weren't too long. It's interesting to see what foods are available in what countries. Hummus was super hard to find outside of the UK and black beans were practically impossible everywhere. We would get the big containers of Greek yogurt and chocolate granola to have for breakfast in nearly every country, and it was really cool to see the slight changes to those two items, despite them being pretty easily available throughout. The greatest store was a place in Germany, though to be honest, I think we decided that the German grocery stores were our favorite of all 5 countries. This place was a discount grocery store called Magowsky, which made me especially happy because I got spinach tortellini (love!) and canned soups (for Ida and my music festival in Denmark) for super cheap. Discount groceries are great. I love Europe.
So hey, what about Panama? After all, I am living here!
When it comes to food, we tend to get it from 3 types of sources...
Grocery Stores:
Just like everywhere else, they have grocery stores. Except. They call them supers! Supermercado -> super. Some of them are more expensive, (El Rey), but we have three others that we go to. There's El Fuerte, which is nice, but a little too far away, so whenever we're near we stock up on pancake mix because it's cheaper. There's Xtra, which is also pretty good, but you have to walk a little ways to get there. And then there's Super 99. We actually have two of these across the street in our Los Andes shopping center. The things about these grocery stores, though, is that they're ginormous, usually crowded, and the labeling for prices can be really hard to find. Labels kinda just stop existing sometimes. However, the 2nd Super 99 is only a few months old, and while it's a slightly longer walk than the other, it's smaller, it's usually not crowded, the price labels exist, and I like their produce section. While I do think it's rather wasteful to have something like 3 malls worth of stores in one shopping center area, I am really glad they made the smaller Super 99. Yay food shopping!
Tiendas:
Everywhere, there's little "tiendas" (translates to "shop") or "chinos" where you can also buy food and whatever else. I don't know how to describe them except as mini-groceries/convenience stores. Personally, Nef and I don't use them a lot because we like to do one trip a week to Super 99 and get pretty much everything we need for the week (excluding most produce). Occasionally we'll grab some bread or an egg, but they tend to be just the slightest bit more expensive in things, so it seems kinda pointless to use it, when we make it a priority to get almost everything we need in one trip.
Stands:
Okay, so we have a fruit stand nearby, and they're available daily (except on some holidays and I'm not sure about Sundays). Now that is super awesome, because they're also really cheap. So if they have something available in their stand, we get it there. The main exceptions to this are usually lettuce, and occasionally ginger (the stand doesn't always have ginger). A pineapple is usually $0.50-.75. A pound of bananas is $0.25. This fruit stand also takes part in the weekly farmer's market on Saturday mornings. This market confuses me, though, because between all the fruits and vegetables and all that, you'll also find a lot of prepackaged store-bought type of items. It's as if people got things from the store so people could get it right there instead of actually going to the store. Whyyy? This kind of paying-for-convenience seems so pointless because the actual grocery stores are literally just across the street! Needless to say, we pretty much only get produce from the market. In this way, I prefer Gainesville's farmer's market. Besides our loyal fruit stand friends, the market doesn't hold a lot of worth for me. But it's a start. Maybe it'll become better? Though, Panama's definitely spoiling me on produce prices....
I know food shopping isn't the most interesting of topics, but when you're becoming an adult, it's suddenly a very important topic. It seems super easy and not something you think about until you're in a different place without the stores your parents shopped at while you were growing up and without any knowledge of where and how to shop when everything's different. Having lived in 3 different places, I feel like I've gotten used to having to figure out anew where to shop. And yet, I really appreciate the stores available in my home state. Ya know, I'm totally looking forward to all my awesomely available grocery stores in college!
See ya.
When it comes to food, we tend to get it from 3 types of sources...
Grocery Stores:
Just like everywhere else, they have grocery stores. Except. They call them supers! Supermercado -> super. Some of them are more expensive, (El Rey), but we have three others that we go to. There's El Fuerte, which is nice, but a little too far away, so whenever we're near we stock up on pancake mix because it's cheaper. There's Xtra, which is also pretty good, but you have to walk a little ways to get there. And then there's Super 99. We actually have two of these across the street in our Los Andes shopping center. The things about these grocery stores, though, is that they're ginormous, usually crowded, and the labeling for prices can be really hard to find. Labels kinda just stop existing sometimes. However, the 2nd Super 99 is only a few months old, and while it's a slightly longer walk than the other, it's smaller, it's usually not crowded, the price labels exist, and I like their produce section. While I do think it's rather wasteful to have something like 3 malls worth of stores in one shopping center area, I am really glad they made the smaller Super 99. Yay food shopping!
Tiendas:
Everywhere, there's little "tiendas" (translates to "shop") or "chinos" where you can also buy food and whatever else. I don't know how to describe them except as mini-groceries/convenience stores. Personally, Nef and I don't use them a lot because we like to do one trip a week to Super 99 and get pretty much everything we need for the week (excluding most produce). Occasionally we'll grab some bread or an egg, but they tend to be just the slightest bit more expensive in things, so it seems kinda pointless to use it, when we make it a priority to get almost everything we need in one trip.
Stands:
Okay, so we have a fruit stand nearby, and they're available daily (except on some holidays and I'm not sure about Sundays). Now that is super awesome, because they're also really cheap. So if they have something available in their stand, we get it there. The main exceptions to this are usually lettuce, and occasionally ginger (the stand doesn't always have ginger). A pineapple is usually $0.50-.75. A pound of bananas is $0.25. This fruit stand also takes part in the weekly farmer's market on Saturday mornings. This market confuses me, though, because between all the fruits and vegetables and all that, you'll also find a lot of prepackaged store-bought type of items. It's as if people got things from the store so people could get it right there instead of actually going to the store. Whyyy? This kind of paying-for-convenience seems so pointless because the actual grocery stores are literally just across the street! Needless to say, we pretty much only get produce from the market. In this way, I prefer Gainesville's farmer's market. Besides our loyal fruit stand friends, the market doesn't hold a lot of worth for me. But it's a start. Maybe it'll become better? Though, Panama's definitely spoiling me on produce prices....
I know food shopping isn't the most interesting of topics, but when you're becoming an adult, it's suddenly a very important topic. It seems super easy and not something you think about until you're in a different place without the stores your parents shopped at while you were growing up and without any knowledge of where and how to shop when everything's different. Having lived in 3 different places, I feel like I've gotten used to having to figure out anew where to shop. And yet, I really appreciate the stores available in my home state. Ya know, I'm totally looking forward to all my awesomely available grocery stores in college!
See ya.
Except you're going to have a meal card at college with virtually no need to go grocery shopping! And TJs is still better than Lucky's. I like Lucky's, but their super cheap sale prices have dwindled since the grand opening. Still some nice features that Publix, Ward's, and TJ's don't have, like pizza by the slice and in-house cured bacon. And there's always some produce item on sale. Yep, welcome to adult-world!
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