I still don't know where everything is and a different logic is applied to the layout to the one I'm used to. There are byways, special counters and sections that prevent you from cruising up and down each aisle in a methodical fashion. In the shop I usually go to in College Station there are at least 5 quite separate places where cheese can be found...speciality and foreign cheeses, bulk cheeses (large pieces, wheels etc), everyday cheeses, cheese that has been sliced or grated and cheese in a section the criteria for which completely eludes me, though I have stood in front of it and tried to work it out! This makes for a lot of to-ing and fro-ing....did I miss something here...oh, no, here it is again on this counter... Thinking about where I usually shop at home, I realise that there is also more that one place where you can find cheese (three in total I think), but five seems to be overdoing it!
The second reason my progress round the aisles is delayed is because I gawp at the huge variety of products. There's a lot of processed food, I think you can buy a 'mix' for anything, and a great deal of it is not what overweight people should dream of eating and I mean OVERWEIGHT! I know I've been going on about my weight and you'll think that I'm the pot calling the kettle black, but my problem is that I eat too much of the good stuff! I arrived at the checkout one day with a basket which was 60% fruit and vegetables and the young man sliding the items down the belt asked "Are you having a healthy eating week?" I won't bore you with my haughty response (!!) but he entered into a conversation about his diet and admitted that he only knows how to cook spaghetti bolognese and wished he could enlarge his repertoire. Sadly, there's such an emphasis on 'convenience' that people are buying packets of stuff they could so easily prepare for themselves - minus the additives. Bread here lasts forever - you just know it contains a lot of preservative.
And thirdly, every item comes in a bewildering number of varieties. There is so much 'choice' that buying anything requires detailed reading of the ingredients labels to really understand what you're getting. Avoiding added sugar is a nightmare. Sugar creeps into practically everything and labelling is poor. There's no standardisation so it's hard to quickly work out the number of grams of any ingredient per 100 grams for comparison purposes. So sugar is labelled as x grams per serving and a 'serving' can be any amount that the manufacturer thinks you might eat at one go. The serving size is given, so you have to stand there are do 'sums' in order to compare two products.
So, to avoid the preservatives and the sugar and the wrong type of fat, etc., I decided to make my own bread. It took some time to decide between the different types of yeast and sadly there wasn't a great variety of bread flour but I made a white loaf with unbleached flour and added sunflower seeds and sesame seeds to give it a bit of bite and flavour. The flour is different and so is the water (it's very soft and saline) and the yeast was a bit strange but my first loaf turned out to be edible. Not perfect - a bit heavy - but edible just the same and not a bad flavour. Just flour, water, salt and yeast. I'll try and vary the proportions next time and see if I can get it to rise a bit more.
OK, rant over! There is actually a great selection of fruit and vegetables and very helpful staff and 'baggers' who will also take your groceries to the car for you, though the 'baggers' would rather fill plastic bags than the 'bags for life' that I take with me...but that's another story!
No comments:
Post a Comment