Living in Italy: Grocery shopping

When I found out we were moving to Bologna, I fantasized about walking the streets on warm afternoons and stopping in at the latteria, the panetteria, the salumeria, a frutti e vedura vendolo, and perhaps the occasional pasticceria or pescheria. It seemed romantic to carry my groceries for the day home in my burlap bag. Mike pictured me shopping at the open-air markets on my bike and loading up the basket on the front with my shopping.

Well romantic it may be, but practical it is not. At least not for me right now. Maybe if I was an old lady without a nearly-10-month old strapped to my person at all times. The "big grocery store" here has many aisles that are too narrow for my stroller (or two people for that matter). So after a few trial runs with the stroller, I usually leave it home for my routine grocery shopping and take only Ada in the Baby Bjorn with just my wallet and the bags to carry my groceries home in.

Can packaging get much cuter here? Also, veggies almost exclusively come in bulk. No bagged carrots here.

I grocery shop about every other day—when you realize you have to carry it all home in piedi it makes you less prone to over buy and more prone to go several times per week. It also makes sense that the goods are packaged in smaller quantities. The largest container of milk you can buy is a liter. Flour and sugar come in 1 kilogram bags. While you can buy eggs in cartons of 10 (notice, not a dozen), most people buy them in cartons of 6 or 4. We're lucky to live about 5 minutes away from a brand new Coop where I do most of my shopping.

It's beginning to feel a bit like Days Market (or Cheers) "where everybody knows your name." Only I don't know anyone's name. They all know Ada though and when we walk in I almost immediately hear, "Ciao! Patatina!! Come stai?! Sorridere per me? Ah! Che bella. Che bellisima! Tu sei una bambola—una bambolina! Una principessa!! Ciao amore!" It's friendly and makes me feel like I'm part of a community even though there is still a big language barrier.

Something I didn't realize for a few weeks was that you aren't supposed to touch the produce with your bare hands until after you buy it. The grocery stores provide you with plastic gloves to wear while picking out your fruit and veggies. At fruit stands, you don't pick up or touch what you want, you point and ask and the shop keeper gets everything for you.

Once every few weeks, Mikey and I trek outside the city walls to one of the discount grocery stores and stock up on basics like cheeses and pastas. The price of food drops significantly outside of the city center.

I also visit Mercato Delle Erbe about once per week where I get great prices on fresh produce. I'll often buy fresh bread or maybe fresh pasta while I'm there.

For the most part, food tastes similar to food back home. I remember Mikey and I had egg salad sandwiches one of our first days here and were really thrown off by how strikingly dark yellow the egg yolks are (Italians like the yolks dark—the yolks give pasta its yellow color). They also taste a bit different, but I can put my finger on what it is.

Butter comes wrapped in paper and secured with metal eyelets.

Italians eat lots of pasta and pizza. It's not just an Americanized restaurant chain thing. They also don't eat much meat, and if you succeed in finding a boneless, skinless chicken breast in the grocery store, you'll be paying out your nose for a small bit of it. Most meat comes on the bone with all the gristle and connective tissue and yummy still attached. And they eat all of it. (Roommate, you would die).

Fun fact: there are more pigs than people in Emilia-Romangna. It keeps a steady stream of prosciutto, pancetta, and various cured meats at the ready. Bologna is, after all, the birthplace of bologna. But not the Oscar Meyer kind.

Advent Calender Day 7: Gingerbread Cookies

Christmas Song: I Saw Three Ships by The Lower Lights

Living in Italy: Walking and Biking

We're car-culture thoroughbreds. You would think that the thought of being car-less for 9 months would have been a scary one.

Not so.

We were excited at the freedom of not having a car. (Freedom? What?) Yes. Gas. Parking. Registration. Traffic lights. Car seat.

The scarier thought for me is driving in Italy. Mike said it best when he pointed out, "The Italians don't slow down, they just stop." It's true. You step out on a crosswalk and the cars barrel towards you, but they always stop. Just abruptly.

Living in centro has its perks. Everything is close enough to walk to. That being said, it has its disadvantages because everything is close enough to walk to. So you walk everywhere. And sometimes errands take hours. Like three errands take hours. Because you have a 20 minute walk between each errand. On some days, I love this. On others, I wish I was warm in a car and Ada was asleep in her car seat (and then I remember lugging around said car seat in and out of the car and in and out of stores and I quickly find myself blessing our carlessness again).

We also bike quite a bit. Mike and I almost exclusively bike to and from the University. And we (almost) always bike to church. If Mike runs to the store, it's usually on his bike. If he goes to scout out a good bread shop, he takes his bike. I've loved having them here. To most places in and near the center, they're faster (and less crowded) than the buses. The rain is the only thing that stops us. Ada's not so keen on it.

Some people thought that it might be frightening to ride in a city positively buzzing motorini, cars and buses. Truth be told, I feel safer here than in Provo. People are more aware here. They actually look for pedestrians and bikers and motorists and everything else.

Don't get me wrong, the streets are absolute chaos—organized chaos, but chaos nonetheless. They are narrow and winding, bumpy, and traffic rules are less rules and more like guidelines. But I love it. I feel truly Italian when I'm on my bike. People ride with their kids everywhere and I really think riding along with us is one of Ada's favorite things to do.

For the few places we go outside walking and biking distance, we take the bus. Or if it's really, really outside, we prendiamo un treno.


Want more of our day-to-day routine?
Living in Italy Part 1: Laundry
Living in Italy Part 2: Dishes

Living in Italy: Dishes

I know you're all dying to know how we do dishes here, right?

Short answer: we do all our dishes by hand (like so, so many people do. In fact, Mikey have only had a dishwasher at 1 of the 5 apartments we've lived in). But I had never seen one of these before:

the dishwasher

Above the sink is a cupboard that has drying racks rather than shelves. You can remove a plastic tray from the bottom of the cupboard so that the water drips directly onto the drain board/into the sink. Pretty nifty. Since counter space is so limited, it's great that we don't have to devote any of it to dish drying (Ironically, I took this picture after we had dinner guest so we had lots and lots and lots of dishes to do. It's the only time I've used another drying rack in addition to the dish cupboard).

We have come to refer to the cupboard as "the dishwasher" (when in reality, we are the dishwasher). As in "Hey hon, could you empty the dishwasher?"

If I don't get to have a big window looking out on the backyard over my someday-dream-home kitchen sink, then I want one of these puppies. I think they're brilliant.


Want more of our day-to-day routine?
Living in Italy Part 1: Laundry

Living in Italy: Laundry

One of the things I'm learning quickly is that doing things I would do a few times a week back in Utah is a daily must-do here. Take the floors for example. I rarely see carpet here. (They have some in the church, but it might as well be tile it's so dense and hard). I never knew how much dust and specks of dirt that carpet hides, and now that I know I just might vacuum more when we have it again. Our tiled floors don't hide a thing. So I sweep every day. Sometimes twice a day. (Otherwise Ada looks like a dirty dust bunny by the end of the day).

Laundry is another nearly daily task. Dryers are also a rarity in Bologna (Italy? Europe?). Everything gets hung dry either on the line in the back yard or on one of two drying racks (that Ada uses as her personal hideout when unfolded and laden with clothes).

The washing machines are almost always in the kitchen (they're hooked up to the plumbing that the sink is hooked into so when the washer drains, the sink gurgles a bit) in the apartments I've seen. The machines are small and only hold 5 - 7 kg. This is another reason why doing laundry (almost) daily is easier.

It's teaching me think ahead and plan more. There's no "Oh shoot, we're out of undies, I'll quickly toss a load in and switch it to the dryer before I go to sleep." Things take 12 - 24+ hours to dry here! You would have soggy undies and probably a rash the next day.

This does make cloth diapering a bit more intense. I have to do a load every other day because the liners take a day and a half to dry (unless I get them out quickly in the morning and catch the little patch of sun in our yard for a few hours. Then it's usually the standard 12ish).

But doing a load a day (and sweeping the floor once a day) makes the chores seem small. There's no saving up wash for a big laundry day that takes over a whole afternoon. There's no big-time Saturday cleaning the floors either. These things happen incrementally each day and I'm learning that putting in small, consistent efforts pays off in the long run.