Food City is owned by a company called Cargills, and today they decided to have Cargills Day. Fahim and I have no idea what that means other than the store is closed. Oh. We didn’t, of course, find this out until after we were already there and saw the sign on the door. Oh.
So we went to Park ‘n Shop instead. It’s another grocery store/pharmacy about another hundred feet or so down the road. Food City is right at the mouth of our road, which is why we always go there. Convenience. Park ‘n Shop – not quite so convenient. That explains why we’d never gone there before. But today, if we wanted food, there was little choice. So we hoofed it over there, got a grocery cart, and started wandering around looking at the availability.
It turns out that, while Food City and Park ‘n Shop are roughly the same size, Food City has a a greater quantity of the same things while Park ‘n Shop has a greater variety of different things. The European/North American seasonings I was looking for are actually available at Park ‘n Shop, and the ones that are also available at Food City are much cheaper than at Food City – as in, half price. They have all sorts of things Food City doesn’t have. Like syrups and sauces for ice cream. Like a much wider variety of baking stuff – as in vanilla extract and another thirty or more other flavors of extracts. Which are called Essences here. You know, I don’t really care what they call it as long as it’s available, and let me tell you, I’m excited at the availability here. Oregano, basil, marjoram, paprika, oh yeah, all that normal to me stuff. Cool. Tres cool, but no accent there, I’m sorry. Wider variety of pretty much everything. We wander I pick up cocoa powder.
But here, I can only get it in packs of 100 grams. That pretty much sucks. One cake, and it’s done for. Or maybe only half a cake, depending on the recipe.
Have I mentioned that here, things come in small bags? For example, flour and sugar can only be bought in 1 kg bags. not the 5 or 10 or 20 kg bags you get in Canada. Of course, in the US, it would be in pounds. But seriously, how much can you do with 1 kg of flour? Not a whole heck of a lot. When we buy sugar, we buy two or three bags at a time. In Canada, I wouldn’t even waste my time buying a bag that small. Sure, it’d take me a year to go through the sugar, but I knew I would eventually, so what did it matter? It’s not like it can go bad. But here, 1 kg bags.
I digress on a flour and sugar tirade. Is this what my life has come to?
So we pick up a 100 gram bag of cocoa. 60 Rupees, or about 60 cents, US. Well, it’s not bang on 60 cents US, but it’s a pretty close estimation, so that’s why we go with it. Vanilla essence. The artificial vanilla extract, or essense, doesn’t exist here. Only the real thing. That’s pretty cool.
Oh my goodness. I’m so excited by grocery shopping? What in the world is the matter with me? I’m excited by oregano and basil and cocoa, for crying out loud. I really do live a life of quiet desperation, don’t I?
