In general, I've been a bit particular about what my family eats. In the US, the kids were good eaters; they ate well balanced meals with plenty of vegetables, whole wheat breads and pasta, low sugar. I avoided high fructose corn syrup, and sought natural products without additives and all that gross unpronounceable stuff. I never serve processed meat/sausage or "cheese products." In the morning, I've always cooked them good breakfasts with a substantial protein source. My kids always prefered to bring lunch to school, and their US school only allowed fresh fruit and vegetables for snacks. My eldest son's 5th grade teacher used to crack up because he would eat edamame as one of his snacks. The kids often helped me cook, and we ate dinner at the table every night and largely limited desserts to weekends only. That was then.....this is now.
Adjusting to the food has been a process. The first few weeks we lived here, we ate mostly carbs. We discovered the most wonderful white breads...buttery croissants, and these amazing big soft warm pretzels, delightful rolls, donuts called 'Berliners,' and sweet breads. We've discovered other naughty delights such as nutella, Rosti, and nutty Swiss cookies. The stores have dozens of types of yogurts - and wierd combinations and flavors: caramel, apple-mango, chocolate, and unusual berries. And Muesli -sweet dried fruit with nuts, seeds, and some kind of granola type flakes. How I love muesli in my yogurt. Before I picked up the kids at school, I would often stop at the store and pick up some nice big warm pretzels for them (and me!). It was on one of these trips that I had an epiphany, and came to my senses: I read the ingredients: white flour, and butter, salt...and some other things. Butter was the second ingredient? Oh dear ! I realized that we could not continue down this road. I had to introduce meat and vegetables.
When I first arrived, and walked thru the stores, I felt sad. Between the exhorbitant prices, and the lack of variety, it seemed that all the fun had been sucked out of grocery shopping. This is the antithesis of the big fun Costco shopping experience. Really, just the bakery section is fun, interesting, and appealing. The produce department does not have the variety and I feel like we are continuously buying the same fruits and veggies every week: bananas, apples, grapes, clementines/oranges, iceberg lettuce, carrots, onions, the trio of peppers, and tomatoes. Also, the produce in the US is picture perfect - nicely packaged, shiny perfect apples, and unbruised bananas. Here, the apples are not pretty (unless you buy the $4per pound beauties), the apples are still in their boxes half the time and a bit bruised. The onions are very small. They all seem to be the runts of the litter.
There's a variety of factors contributing to why Europeans shop every day. They have very small refrigerators (although I have an enviable American Size fridge!!!!), they don't have storage space nor pantries, and the don't use preservatives so things don't "keep" very long.
I found I was shopping every day, but for other reasons. The packages are so small for my American-appetite family; we've used a jar and a half of sauce for pasta. The Applesauce jar barely has 4 servings for us - no seconds! Different stores carry different products (cottage cheese, beans, cream cheese, whole wheat bread, hummus), so there is no "one stop shopping." I would think about a product that we would like (such as cream cheese, or hummus) and I would go to a couple stores and comb the shelves seeking it.
Speaking of combing shelves....a "big" grocery shopping expedition takes about two hours for me. Since we all grew up in America, we are so familiar with the stores and products. We know the brands we like, can easily read labels, To try new products, friends share information about products they like, or we listen to the advertisements and get the scoop on something new, or we received a coupon as incentive to try something new. For me - every single item was new, and I had no coaching or incentive to differentiate one from the other. I must look like an oddball, as I stand very close to the shelves and look at each item to figure out what the item is by looking at the picture. When something looks appealing, I pick up the box and scan the ingredients. Since I only know a few words in German, I look for any familiar words, but mostly I understand the prepositions..."and' "with" It is very time consuming. I also use my common sense, if a box has 50 ingredients, it likely is highly processed and not something I prefer us to eat. I know you are probably thinking," why don't you just use your translation app or German-English dictionary." If you recall, I can not get an Iphone here yet, until my residency permit arrives (again - requires an entire separate post, but suffice it to say that it is very far out on the horizon, thanks to a change in laws), and really I can not use my dictionary to go thru all the ingredients on everything I pick up - I'd be there for 8 hours instead of 2.
Another thing that I have to consider when I am examining the boxes is the preparation process. English is not an official language in Switzerland, so none of the words on the boxes is written in English. The words are ususally written in German, and some cooking instructions are oftentimes in German, Italian, and French, but never English. Sometimes there are pictures and I find that helpful so I can see whether it is a stovetop item or an oven, or a microwave item. This was critical in our first few weeks, if you recall, as we could not use our fancy oven/convection oven and high tech combination steamer (?)/ microwave/convection oven (?) (we still don't know) because the operating manuals are all written in only German. (I know...you are thinking," why dont you just order them in English?" We have, our realtor has, and our landlord has....several times. Apparently only the Installation Manual is in English....its a German Product. We're still working on it)
Meat....I still haven't really mastered the meat and the various cuts. Here are the few things I understand about the meat. They have a picture of the animal on the package so I can readily tell if I am looking at pork, beef, poultry, or horse. They note the country of origin on the package as the Swiss greatly prefer the quality of items from their own country as opposed to the clearly labeled "imports." I still can't guage the weight very well - as its all in Kg.
I can confirm the rumor: the stores all carry an extensive aisle of chocolates, but only a handful of cereal items. Its true, every store will have -no exageration- 50-100 items of chocolate, but maybe 20 types of cereal. I have recognized some familiar cereals, Special K, Rice Krispies, and Frosted Flakes....none of which we normally ate. We were big fans of Life and Kashi, and enjoyed Kix and Cheerios, none of which I have found here. Another thing they don't sell is instant oatmeal....bummer. Good thing we stocked up before we left.
The two larger chains offer some "ethnic" items. There are some Indian foods products, Thai food products like ramen-type noodles, and Mexican items - which is basically a handful of bright yellow Old El Paso products like taco kits, refried beans, tortillas, and canned jalepenos. I miss fresh jicama, and Chicago's Fresh Salsa. I managed to find canned corn on a bottom shelf in a nondescript can. Someone gave me a tip: there is one store that carries hummus in its refrigerated Kosher section. I buzzed over and picked up 2 containers for $15 - a bargain! Despite the fact that it is just plain hummus, not the garlic variety, nor roasted red pepper, nor my favorite spicy hummus, I was so happy! An added bonus of this store's ethnic section was that I found black beans....the REAL black gold. At another store, I managed to find a british biscuit/cookie that is similar to graham crackers and white (pink and blue colors are more common here) marshmallows. Although the marshmallows are more sticky, more taffy- like, they leave a powdery white residue when melted...I know this because I have made about 8 batches of Rice Krispie type treats for the school bake sale and classrooms for Valentines Day.
Once I picked out a cartful of items, I would have to check out. In the first few weeks, I would consistently hold up the line for a good 5 minutes while I quickly tried to pack my items into my reusable grocery bags, and figure out the money. I always carried around a few hundred dollars with me every day, because I didn't have a Swiss credit card, or ATM/Debit card, so cash was the only way I could pay. The Swiss make good use of durable, heavy coins in their currency. There are coins for 1chf,(symbol for Swiss Franc $), 2chf, 5 chf, as well as the little amounts .05, .20. 50. So, when the cashier would give me change, it would be quite heavy after a few days of accumulation! Sometimes, I would be a little more savvy and count my coins before I went shopping so that I would know how much I have and could try to pay in coins to lighten my purse. This however, would really cause me to hold up the line at the cash register. Everyone was always patient, thankfully.
I have to leave quite a bit of time to work on dinner. Once I figured out how to sort of use the oven (after a great deal of trial and error as it requires 2 buttons to operate and none of them is as simple as "on, off, bake or broil"), I could convert the temperatures to celcius and attempt cook things in the oven. I was frightened to use the microwave(? - at least I think its a microwave - certainly some sort of fast cooker/popcorn maker) at first, but somehow figured it out too.
Convenience things turn out to not be so convenient. I have to boot up the computer and input the preparation instructions into the Translation site and take it from there. Its pretty tough to input unfamiliar words from a foreign language into the site - you don't know if you have a typo because all the words are strange. Also, German uses a lot of compound words, so sometimes they don't translate readily. I usually can get a good handle on the preparation, although there are always a handful of words that don't translate and I am fairly certain our foods don't always turn out as the manufacturer intended. Because these are new food items that my family has never eaten before, they have no frame of reference as to how it should be prepared, or look, or taste, so it is all heartily accepted, despite the flaws.
Suffice it to say, in the first few weeks, we supplemented the delicious bakery items with a lot of cold items... it was just easier. Dinners soon evolved to include stovetop items ( as it took me about 2 weeks to figure out the oven-type thingys.) Our first dinners generally involved a variety of pasta- ravioli, spaghetti, rotini, accompanied by meatballs from Ikea, or a variety of deli meat. I branched into Rosti, rice, sauteed shrimp (with lemon and just a bit of garlic), and pouletbrust (chicken breasts). Grilled cheese and soup is another old favorite, albeit a bit more challenging as there is not a wide variety of canned soups and No Healthy Choice All Natural varieties. I've enjoyed making my own soups in the US, but it is a bit more difficult here as they do not sell chicken broth....just high sodium bouillion cubes : ( .
One thing I miss is the variety of premixed sauces and seasonings. I managed to find Worcestershire sauce, and Barbecue sauce ($10 per bottle), sweet and sour sauce, curry sauce, taco seasoning, and salsa. I miss the Newman's and Lawry's marinades, Terriyaki sauce, Caribbean Jerk seasoning, Lemon Chicken. I miss Newman's Salad dressings...they largely sell only an Italian, a Balsammic, a white French dressing that is very watery. I did pick up some sort of Wasabi sauce/dressing, but haven't translated it yet to know exactly what it is. I miss fancy dressings like Poppy Seed, Champagne, Ranch, lite Ranch, Vidalia onion, Thousand Island....green goddess. I don't actually miss eating them ( I don't personally care for salad dressing), but I miss the possibities that they offered. I miss being able to set them out when we had a special dinner, or guests. I know I can make all these things - there are loads of recipes on the internet, but I just miss having them at my fingertips; they are fun and convenient.
There is a site that many Americans have described as a lifeline: American Food Avenue www.afoodave.ch . This is a business that imports and sells American food favorites that are not available here otherwise. They sell instant soups, instant oatmeal (10 packets for $10), some cereals, cake mixes ($5 per box), and ready made frostings (not bad at $4), brownies, bread crumbs, Kashi cereal ($10 per box), small box of poptarts ($5.50), Mac Cheese, Cheerios (2 bags for $16), Froot Loops (2 bags $21), gravy mix, stuffing, hamburger sliced pickles, mexican seasonings, Goldfish, pancake mix, decaf coffee, etc. The good news is if you spend over $175 (easy to do!), you won't get charged shipping. There are a few stores that do stock a few of these items at similar prices...or more, such as the English bookstore in Zurich. Some of the British gals shop occasionally in Germany and France (1.5hrs away) to pick up some British goods, groceries and toiletries for cheaper prices, particularly meat. I suspect I will be joining them one day, just for fun.
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