CeeCee's Grocery Store Adventure

Yesterday was an exciting step forward in becoming a Real Grown-up Person.

I had a tour of the library, which is currently under construction but otherwise seems pretty library-like. On the tour were a couple of the American girls that had been on the welcoming bus with me- they told me how sorry they had felt for me when I got dropped off at a motel alone in the pouring ran (rather how I felt). Then one proceeded to tell me that her room wasn't air-conditioned and was full of bugs, and also that Australia doesn't have the same anti-hazing laws of the US. And since they're at JCU for the first time, they've been getting hazed. Also the drinking age here is 18, so this usually involves booze. Apparently they made a freshman who was allergic to wheat chug some beer the other night and the kid ended up in the hospital. (She said it's more the guys- the girls watch and feel belitted.) So I'm feeling a lot better about being off-campus.

I'm not really here for the culture at all, anyway, I've noticed. I mean, I'm sure Australia has a lot to offer and a cool history and all that, and you study abroad to expand your horizions and become a global blah blah blah. I'm honestly just here for the plants. And as a bio major I feel nice and justified in saying that.

Which isn't to say that I can avoid culture, which brings me to my real topic, which is my first grocery shopping trip.

The grocery store is just a bus ride down the road (it's a little bit far to walk), and it's part of an enclosed mini-mall (which probably has something to do with how hot and sticky it is down here all the time), which includes a dollar-store type deal (except not because nothing in Australia costs a dollar), a hair salon, an eye doctor, a pharmacy (which sells the same stuff US pharmacies do), a café, and a donut shop.

I really do know better than to go shopping on an empty stomach, but... well...

First off, fruit is in-season here right now... as compared to Ohio, which according to what I've gathered from facebook statuses, is currently buried under about four feet of snow but bravely continues to have classes.

They also have more fruit than the US. The papayas are huge (which I guess isn't odd if you're from, say, Georgia, but I'm not). They have fresh figs and fresh dates, for reasonable prices. I think Giant Eagle (my home grocery store) had figs once, and they were $4 a pop. They had something called "dragon fruit", which I intend to eat at some point just because.

The fruit is a little smaller here, too. I bought some peaches and an onion, and they were tiny. I suppose Australia does more organic? Maybe?

(I also bought some navel oranges, Product of the USA, and felt very very silly about it.)

The deli is cheaper than pre-packaged meat here... something that was difficult for me to figure out, because all the weights are in kilograms, so the signs say "Black Forest Ham- $24.85 kg."

I'm still not very comfortable with Australian money. An AUD is worth slightly less than a USD, and also things are just a little more expensive here in general (possibly because I'm used to rural Ohio prices). I'm also not used to shopping for one, so I can't really gauge how much I should be getting just in my own language. And I'm really bad with the metric system.

It's pretty embarrassing. For one, I knew they used the metric system here (and everywhere else- the US just likes being difficult ‘cause we're mavericks). For another, I'm a science major. We never use anything but the metric system. I'm perfectly comfortable with the metric system in lab. In fact, I'm really fond of the metric system in lab. (Except temperatures. I never did figure out Celsius. I don't need to know it here because it's always only one temperature, and that temperature is "sweltering".) But it turns out that when you're shopping in a different measuring system, you really do need to know how to convert between the two, or at least have a vague idea of what the conversion rate is.

I ended up going to the prepackaged meat, finding a package the size I wanted, checking the weight (100 g), and ordering that much of the deli ham. 100 g is a lot of ham, as it turns out. Also $3.75 a kg for peaches isn't really that expensive.

Weights aside, I had to cope with the product differences, which is a little daunting, too. Of course, part of the problem could be that I'm used to small-town grocery stores that don't carry anything too exotic, and Townsville is a fairly large city where you expect more variety. They had little single-serving cups of tiramisu in the yougurt section, and I do believe I will have to look into that some time.

They keep the eggs on the shelves, as compared to refridgerated, which makes sense because the store is air conditioned. (I'm keeping mine in the fridge, but we don't use the AC where I'm staying.) Also, all the eggs are brown, which makes me feel very gourmet when I use them. (Eggs, by the way, are the best thing ever if you're cheap and living alone.)

The major difference that can't be attributed to population was the candy. I noticed this earlier, but they don't have Hershey's here- they have Cadbury's. So the good news is that Cadbury creme eggs are readily available this time of year.

Cadbury's makes hot chocolate mix and candy bars, too, as it turns out. I picked one up (a "dairy milk bar" which I think means milk chocolate), and it was pretty tasty. They have a lot of flavors and different candy bars I'm uncertain about (including ‘bubbles", which I think are like poprock chocolate?), and chocoholic that I am, one of my goals to experience Australian culture is going to be to eat as many of these as I can without having a hideous allergic reaction, so more on candy as I get to it.

On the Welcome Bus, the other girls (who had all been in Australia for a few days, sight-seeing) were munching on these chocolate cookies called "Tim-Tams," and they all assured me that I needed to try them. So I picked up a package, and let me tell you, they are the richest cookie I've ever bought in a grocery store. I don't quite know how to describe them. They're two crisp milk chocolate cookies sandwiched together with what tastes like chocolate Oreo filling, then covered with chocolate frosting. I can't eat more than one at a time, and yet.. they're strangely addictive.

I only bought enough food for the next couple of days, since I got there and realized that I was never going to survive without a very detailed grocery list. Last night I had a ham, cheese, and onion omlette... which is also on the menu tonight.

I've found a couple of really cool cake-related blogs on here, and I was going through hoping to find some recipes for myself, but they're mostly gourmet, fancy type things (or else pastries. Or both), which I'm in favor of, but... I'd like to see a blog that's just new things for singles on budgets- stuff that's cheap, easy, different, and serves one person. It probably already exists somewhere, but if I ever get my act together, I may start one. I mean, looking at fancy food and drooling is nice, and trying to make an awesome cake from time to time is fun, but when I have to plan a menu for the week and I just want food that tastes pretty good and isn't too unhealthy, I don't really have a practical resource.

So, my culinary nerdery aside, it's raining really hard today... probably because I want to take my laptop to Uni today. I was going to take a self-defense course, but it was just a fun filler thing to do, and I couldn't really bring myself to catch the bus in the pouring rain at 10:00, so that's that. I can't wait for rainy season to be over.