Italian Grocery Shopping for Dummies

Edited by Alice Adams, with contributions from Rosa Benders, Sofija Dudhia, and Kate Krehel

A note from the editor:

To celebrate the return to Florence of FFE and BDP students, as well as the newly arriving MAPS students, we at the Marist Italy office would like to highlight one aspect of the Florence experience that will hopefully excite new and returning students. To do this, we’ll spend the semester revisiting pieces written by First-Year students in Professor Campisi’s Writing for College class, which focused on composing food blogs every week. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll feature a new student’s adventures in gastronomy, each time with a different theme, with the goal of informing and inspiring our readers.

The Florence Food Blogs are an ode to food, of course, but perhaps more so to broadening one’s horizons. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?

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This week, we’ll start off with a collection of pieces focused on grocery shopping in Florence. It’s a bit different than most places our students hail from, but it’s not so hard once you get into it.

Here, Kate describes the supermarket experience, Rosa walks the reader through one of Florence’s beloved outdoor markets, and Sofija gives us a window into the origins of one of her dishes. Ideally, Kate, Rosa, and Sofija will help the nervous traveler feel a bit better about getting into the Florentine routine.

My Shopping Experience

By Kate Krehel

As a young adult who never needed to before, grocery shopping initially was surprisingly a tricky  task for me in the beginning. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the multitude of brands and products all screaming at you to buy, resulting in an empty wallet and ever-more anxiety over finances. It took some time and trial and error to discover the method that I currently use, but it has quickly become the best option for me. It’s quite simple, really, preventing me from buying too many things and spending too much money whilst saving loads of time. 

There are some similarities between American and Italian grocery shopping though. For one thing, which surprised me at first, Italian stores play American music. It provides me with a warm blanket of nostalgia every time I approach a speaker. There are plenty of snacks, including American ones like Oreos. And their potato chips are absolutely delicious and remind me of home. I’ve found many foods to be slightly cheaper as well, which brings me some relief.

So, overall, the grocery shopping experience in Italy is not that bad; it’s nice to peruse through and find what I need on a lazy Sunday. I appreciate the freshness and the quality of the produce here; it makes for more delicious and nutritious meals. With some tasty ingredients and a little bit of work in the kitchen, I can make myself delicious dinners that, at the end of the day, leave me truly satisfied.  

Getting Groceries at a Mercato

By Rosa Benders

One of the things I love most about Florence is going to the local markets, most of which stay open all year round. Coming from a huge supermarket culture where people tend to avoid human interaction, I fell in love with lively local fruit and vegetable markets when living in Tanzania. It is such a warm, immersive, and welcoming space to learn the local language and culture. It made me feel at home.

I usually go every other Tuesday by bike in between my morning and afternoon classes and leave regretting I didn’t bring more cash.

Buying food from local markets elevates my food consciousness in its entirety, actually making me excited to cook with the ingredients I buy. I am reminded of the hands that produced the food with care and how my food choices have an impact. Buying fresh produce at local markets is actually cheaper and actively contributes to the livelihoods of the community around me instead of large-scale agricultural industries with the excessive amounts of processing, shipping, and packaging that have become the standard. 

Anatomy of a Plate

By Sofija Dudhia

Read clockwise; from top middle (fig. 1) to top left (fig. 14)

fig. 1 – The Breadcrumbs: My roommate made these from stale bread—one of many attempts to salvage the baguettes and breads we buy but never finish. The story of our baguettes is one of optimism followed by neglect. Every now and then, we pick up a fresh loaf, imagining something has magically changed and we’ll actually eat it this time. But somehow, the days slip by, and before we know it, it’s rock-hard and collecting dust. My roommate, practical as she is, gathered the stale loaves and turned them into breadcrumbs, pumping a little leftover life out of them. I wanted to start using them, but when I added them to ground meat for a quick lunch, they didn’t bring anything worthwhile to the meal—just bulk without flavor. They sit in jars on the table, patiently waiting for someone in room 10 to get creative again, though I know they’ll probably end up like the bread they came from—overlooked, yet well intentioned.

fig. 2 – The Jars Which Store the Breadcrumbs: A symbol of where I started. I bought the salsa and peas during my very first grocery trip. The peas became my dinner for nights on end, plain or sprinkled with Tajín. I didn’t mind—it was quick, filling, inexpensive, and comforting in its simplicity. I bought the salsa for way expensive of a price tag at ViViMart because I missed the baking, relentless heat of Texas; it was lukewarm at best. I reminisce on back when every meal was about adapting to this new place and craving for what I’d left behind.

fig. 3 – The Tomatoes: These tomatoes are from Esselunga, plump and fresh and delicate, a step above what I’d been settling for on a 9pm Carrefour run before. Shopping at Esselunga feels like a mission—there’s no quick trip there. It’s far, and getting back home with groceries is a balancing act. I stuff my purse and backpack until they’re quite literally overflowing, then wobble back on my bike, the weight threatening to tip me over at every bump in the road. These tomatoes make it worth the effort. They remind me why I’m trying to prioritize healthier, fresher food, even though it takes more time and planning. Lately I’ve been trying to focus on my health, what with food being fuel and all, experiencing firsthand that with no home cooked meals to balance out the junk food that it does make a difference. I used to shop at the local Mercatos, and while their produce was beautiful, their hours and prices made them impractical for a student juggling classes and a tight budget. Esselunga isn’t perfect, but it’s a compromise that works—for now.

fig. 4 – The Potatoes: They’re always there when I need them. They don’t complain about being forgotten for weeks; they wait patiently, ready to be turned into something comforting and filling. When my fridge is empty and my options are running low, I can always count on the tubers. And in a place where everything seems to spoil faster than I expect, their longevity feels like a small miracle.

fig. 5 – The Coke Zero: Free will! my enemy and my saving grace. The acid is known to polish nails of rust, and the aspartame causes cancer, and the fake sweetener causes diabetes probably – it is so bad for me and I see how it affects my mind and skin, but I want one sweet treat every once in a while after a cold, dark days work. A spark of something optimistic; a pop of a carbonated bubble. Maybe it’s not about the drink itself – it’s about what it represents. In a life full of structure and responsibility, this is my one unplanned, unapologetic choice. It’s a habit I don’t entirely like but can’t seem to shake.

fig. 6 – The Tortilla: Cracked from sitting in the freezer for too long. It was bought in a Conad-induced haze. I have only been there once and the chaos that goes down was enough to bring me to tears. I don’t like it, it’s too heavy.

fig. 7 – The Beets: Pickled and spicy, these beets are a holdover from my Carrefour days. Back then, I shopped there almost exclusively, not because I loved it, but because it was close and easy. Beets have always been something I enjoyed. Familiar, bright, and tangy, with a kick that reminded me of the pickled vegetables I eat in Poland. Now I shop at Esselunga, where I could buy more beets for less but can never fit them in my backpack after everything else.

fig. 8 – The Mayo: This spicy mayo belongs to my roommate, part of the vaguely spoken system of sharing and splitting we’ve worked out. Living together means navigating a constant dance of whose food is whose, who’s out of what, and who forgot to restock. I shop alone, so sometimes we end up doubling up on staples. Other times, I assume we have something and find out the hard way that we don’t. I respect the balance; it works most of the time.

fig. 9 – The Meat: These steaks have been sitting in my freezer for weeks, marinating in fajita seasoning. I bought them with every intention of making something special, but I kept putting it off, until I got scared of freezer burn. Cooking them feels like a commitment; a promise to take the time to make something worth savoring. Most days, I’m too tired or too busy to follow through, so they stay frozen, waiting for the right moment. I forget often.

fig. 10 – The Bell Peppers: Delicious and spicy. Courtesy of Esselunga. I always buy them with a plan in mind, but life has a way of unraveling those plans. More often than not, they end up in improvised meals, thrown together with whatever else I have on hand. I try to plan what I buy to make healthy and filling and fridge-lasting meals. Food and ingredients go bad so fast in Europe. They were so volatile to keep fresh that I ended up roasting them before they could rot.

fig. 11 – The Broccoli: My mom would boil broccoli until it was tender, and it’s still my favorite way to eat it – plain and soft. Cheese feels like too much here—too indulgent, too temporary. And it spoils before I can finish it, so I don’t bother buying it. Broccoli, though, is simple, satisfying, and packed with nutrients, a little taste of home in a city that still feels foreign.

fig. 12 – The Container from The Caf: A relic from someone else’s meal plan, since I don’t have one myself. I shop sporadically and definitely not frequently enough, usually on Mondays or Tuesdays, and cook big batches over the weekend. By the end of two weeks, my fridge and bank account are empty, and I’m scraping by on peas and hot dogs from the cheapest store I can find.

fig. 13 – The Bag of Onions: The communal garlic-and-onion bowl is either shared among us or an accidental overlap of shopping trips. I lose track of how much I use, but they’re the base of almost everything I cook. They might be someone else’s, but the bowl of alliums is either used by everyone or I keep forgetting when I buy its restock. Something about Italian food shopping that is different from what I am used to back home that I dislike is how everything – stores, schools, operating tram lines – are so far apart so its hard to work something like groceries into my routine.

fig. 14 – The Eggs: I’ve given up on eggs. They’re too fragile to survive my overflowing backpack, too prone to spoilage when I inevitably forget they’re an option to eat, and too delicate to freeze for later. When I need eggs, I borrow from my roommates. It’s easier, and it saves me the stress of yet another thing to keep track of.

Sofijax7

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