The blue market

We have now been in the USA for a few months now (yippee!!) but I promised myself I'd do a couple more grocery store posts and I really do want to showcase the different types of stores, since it's pretty interesting. Needless to say, these days when I go shopping at the local Publix supermarket, I really, really, really (how many really's can I include to show how much I mean it!) appreciate all of the beautiful, plentiful, fresh foods they sell. Anyway, on to what Scott and I called the "blue market," because of its blue sign. 

This market was across the street from our apartment building, on the same side of Tverskaya, and quite easy to get to. From the outside (wish I'd taken a photo of the outside, oh well), it looked teeny-tiny, but it was surprisingly large once you got inside. Lots of little rooms with shelves of food that were tough to navigate if you had a stroller. We used this market as our source for Diet Pepsi when our usual, big supermarket ran out, which probably happened once/month. You'd think the bigger market would have no supply issues, but for whatever reason, that was not the case, and this little market almost always had our diet soda. We also went to this market if we ran out of a non-perishable staple, like pasta or rice. This was not, however, our "go-to" for last-minute meat or fresh fruit/vegetables. Another post about that market to come.

Front and center for the beer. You had to walk past this to get inside to the rest of the food.

Milk aisle. This market didn't sell any refrigerated milk at all; everything was in a box and shelf-stable.

View into the 2nd room, which contained cookies and cakes. To the left is refrigerated for yogurt, sour cream, cheese and kefir. To the right is the non-refrigerated, boxed milk (see above).

Mysterious fridge containing all kinds of salted and cured fish in small packages.

Bread selection, none of which tasted very good. Nor did they last longer than a day or two (no preservatives? I guess that's good, but...)

"Fresh food" section. Literally this is all they carried, which is essentially the ingredients for people who want to make borsch (potatoes, carrots, beets, onions). Those iceberg lettuce heads were a surprise - usually this market didn't have any lettuce or other salad-type ingredients. 

jams, canned veggies/fruits and oil. 

Cereals and pastas. Below was a freezer case with some frozen meals in boxes that I could never figure out.

New Metro Observations

Went to Metro again and because I'm getting to be slightly more comfortable shopping there, I noticed a few new things!

1) Sooo much sour cream! This is actually next to the infamous wall of mayonnaise and it's a wall of sour cream!

2) Tons of unidentifiable fresh fish. Just sitting out, for anyone to help themselves:

3) Whatever the orange stuff is that's in the back and to the right, it's not cheap (~$55/kg!):

4) Some long slimy looking things. Maybe some big eel? They're all from Russia is really all I can read on the little signs:

5) Live sharks, crayfish, and others, all in large tanks:

6) There's also a ton of different types of SALMON:

7) And we must not forget the caviar. The pricey stuff is in the locked fridge 

-within-the-fridge on the far right:

Just all stuff I hadn't really noticed before - probably because I don't use a lot of sour cream nor do I feel comfortable buying fish here. :) I must remember to take some photos of my "usual" grocery store for comparison.

Good news and bad news

I'll start with the bad and just get it out of the way. 

Yesterday I made a stir fry for dinner, which is one of my go-to dinners. Fail-safe most of the time.

The plan was to get chicken, but at the last minute I saw a package of beef all cut up and perfect-like for a stir fry, so I went for it. Mind you, I had no idea what the label said (of course it was in Russian, and I didn't recognize any of the words), but I knew it was definitely beef because it was in the section with the little cow. :) So how bad could it be?

So here's what my stir fry looked like. Not bad.

And my sauce smelled great: fresh garlic, ginger, onions.

That's where things went downhill. The meat was SO tough. Scott and I were chew-chew-chewing each bite and the whole thing was very unsatisfying!! All that chopping and marinating for nothing. Should have gone with the chicken. Boo. :(

Score, to date...
Moscow: 25,001 CB: 0

Okay, now on to the good! This one was a HUGE SCORE for Miss Siena!

There's a school behind our apartment building and they have this sport court (rectangular and self-contained, a little smaller than a tennis court). It's got 4 walls and seems very secure (ie no openings for someone to squeeze her little body through) and looks absolutely perfect for, yep, you guessed it, ball-throwing and running and general dog romping fun stuff. Whenever I'd considered it before, it appeared to be all locked up. Well yesterday I took a closer look at the gate and while there was in fact a padlock, it wasn't actually locked! Woohoo!

Here's her majesty's first freedom run (video) in our new "dog park." Such joy, this little dog has for living. 

And here's another fun video (longer). This sweet girl always cheers me right up.

Updated score, to date...
Moscow: 25,001 CB (and Siena): 2

A Wall of Mayonnaise

Finally did some shopping at Metro Cash & Carry. Quite an experience. Metro (pronounced "may-trah" by the Russians) is Moscow's version of Costco and Walmart all rolled into one. You need a membership card, it's in a giant warehouse out near the Ikea and a lot of their products are sold in bulk, but then again some are sold individually, which is why it's kind of a combo of those 2 stores. As I have mentioned in the past, grocery shopping in Moscow stresses me out. At Metro however, I actually wasn't stressed out; instead, I was just exhausted. The store is so big, it's a workout just walking from section to section!

The other interesting aspect of shopping at Metro is that the Russians go crazy there, loading up multiple carts with everything but the kitchen sink and then maybe even buying a kitchen sink (since they sell appliances there too)! The amount of consumption occurring at these stores is astounding.

I took some highlight photos. What I didn't manage to capture was someone at the checkout with 2 hugely overloaded carts, because it just would have been too awkward and too "Americanski" of me to whip out my phone to take a photo. As it is, I got some funny looks taking these.

Xmas decorations on steroids

more holiday decor

speaking of steroids....here's the fireworks...new year's is a BIG DEAL in Russia (bigger than xmas really). of course they have a security guy watching the explosives.

One thing that's different from the States, people just leave their carts at the end of the row and walk down the aisle to get what they want. So there appear to be stranded carts everywhere, when really it's just their shopping norm.

Gouda cheese. 965 rubles, which is approximately $30. Holy crap this cheese is made of gold!

The Wall of Mayo! Seriously, 2 out of the 3 sections on this wall were dedicated solely to MAYONNAISE.

Meat locker, aka freezing room stocked full of meat, meat and more meat.

the ubiquitous RECEIPT STAMPING to make the purchases official. you can't see here, but the receipts are printed in triplicate on dot-matrix style printers.

Here's my receipt -- I wasn't kidding about the dot-matrix printing. Note the official STAMP at the bottom. And then, just to be safe, we have the normal receipt too, stapled on top. I didn't even buy that much stuff!

PS Oh and here was my treat for myself for successfully navigating Metro alone: chocolate dipped heart and star-shaped pretzels! Just kidding, not really pretzels. They turned out to be gingerbread cookies dipped in chocolate, SHAPED like hearts, stars AND pretzels. Oh well.

Saran Wrap take two

As mentioned in my previous post, I was on a plastic wrap mission. The best part is that I don't even really have all that much that needs to be wrapped...I just feel like a functional kitchen needs to have it, like salt and pepper or paper napkins.

I asked around and the consensus was that Russia's version of plastic wrap isn't very good but if I must buy it here (most women suggested bringing it back with me from the US) that the big department store Stockmann's would have it.

Sure enough, I went to the aisle with all the paper supplies etc and carefully, very carefully studied all the packaging again.

And wouldn't you know it, they had that darn cellophane (yellow box) mixed in with everything else again! I just don't get it. Put that stuff with the gift wrap, will you?!?

Anyway, once again after looking a while, I found one whose box had a little medal cutting edge with teeth and figured this HAD to be what I wanted.

And.....BINGO! I got it!

Got it right this time!!

Such a small victory, but very satisfying. :)

Grocery shopping

Going to the market for food shopping in Moscow stresses me out. It's very hard to tell exactly what you're getting (prices / descriptions are in Russian, weight is in grams, and not everything has an appropriately "descriptive" picture on its label). Given that everyone lives in apartments here, everything is in tiny packages but they cost at least twice as much as in the US. Add to that, the stores don't always have the same things they had the week prior because of supply chain issues and what seems to happen to me: when I go with a specific item in mind (like the day I wanted a jar of honey), many times you can't find it and there's no one to ask or they just don't have it that day. Just all around frustrating.

Today I went to the store to get a few things for dinner and some other random items we needed, among them Saran Wrap. We actually have a tube of Reynold's wrap that was mistakenly shipped over here with our kitchen stuff which I've been using; this actually turned out to be a wonderful mistake because it's worked just fine for wrapping up leftovers and perhaps more importantly it's what we use to keep Siena off the leather couches! -- but I digress. In most instances for food, Saran Wrap is what I would prefer and tin foil is overkill. So off I went.

When I got to the little section with all the various wrappings and baggies, I must have spent a good solid 5-6 minutes staring at those shelves, studying the all-Russian packaging and the only thing I could correctly identify was that this was where they sold aluminum foil. Yay me for figuring that out! So I was in the right place! I saw a few boxes with plastic bags - possibly ziploc type but probably not since those are not common here - but the rest of those long rectangular boxes were a mystery. I think they had some large bags for steam-cooking stuff in the oven because the boxes indicated a temperature (as in, "can be heated up to 320 degrees").

So here's what I chose to buy after as I said, much deliberation:

Looks like it might be the right thing, huh? Kind of hard to tell, but really I studied this box quite a bit and I honestly thought it might be their version of Saran Wrap.

Alas, when I got home and opened the box, it was not. Bummer. It was a roll of cellophane. Why would anyone need this much cellophane and why was it near the tin foil? If it were me, I would have put it with the gift wrap...

Oh well, if at first you don't succeed, try try again. I'll ask around and see if one of the wives knows what it's called in Russian and if she can recommend a brand to look for. Or, maybe she can take a photo of hers so I can show a store clerk.

I was able to get the rest of my list though so it wasn't a complete waste of a trip.