Gastronomica

New England grocery stores are weird. When I first moved to Rockport the grocery stores required you to get a membership card of sorts to get the 'discounted' price on products in exchange for the opportunity for them to demographically track you and your purchases. The first major difference from any other US grocery store was found in the frozen food section; not 1, not 2 but 3 whole aisles filled with ice cream. I discovered that New England is the highest per capita consumers of ice cream in the US. The layout of the stores were wrong too as the aisles were narrow and the dairy and meat were at the beginning of the store instead of being near the check-out. The produce section was small and disappointing but the seafood counter was usually impressive. Meat, especially chicken was very expensive compared to the midwest prices.

Well, I know I'm getting old as I just discovered the best grocery store in the Boston Area and I'm excited about it; The Roche Bros.. They have an extensive deli/bakery/produce section with fresh products, reasonably priced meat and the dairy/frozen food section is the last thing you see before heading for the cashier. It's as though an engineer who shops designed the layout. Amazing. Oh, and the reciept is categorised! And they have baggers who have a concept of how to pack groceries and then wheel it out to your car. I feel a bit weird about them taking the cart out to the car still. Maybe everyone else has this, but since I left St. Louis with Dierberg's, I've lowered my expectations to meet the average New England grocery store. So long Shaw's/Star Market, Stop and Shop, Trader Joe's, Bread and Circus and every other grocery I ever had the misfortune to shop at.

Food is often the barometer of a culture and whenever I visit somewhere new I usually visit a grocery store just to get a handle on the people. Helsinki's grocery stores are small but there is a high premium placed on freshly baked goods, produce like fruits/berries and dairy. The packaging isn't as elaborate as the US and whole foods outnumber processed food. Finns lack Velveeta, call the Embassy. We took Jarkkos parents to the grocery when they visited last year and while she couldn't really articulate what she thought of it, I could tell his mother was entertained by the size of the store and the 50 varieties of mustard or 135 different cereals available. She asked me how I found the time to shop in such a store with all the choices. The US may only have 2 political parties but we have plenty of mustard produced by the monster food conglomerates to choose from :)

If you like food and culture then you will probably be interested in Gastronomica, a quarterly magazine and the new Modern Library Food Series including Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet.