Supermarket Frustrations

I have some great news! I found oatmeal (aveia) yesterday! And not the instant kind. The real thing.

Recently I mentioned that I was really missing my regular breakfast from back home. I have searched high and low for it and finally stumbled upon it in the health/diet food section at the supermarket among the protein bars and wheat germ. Who knew it was such a delicacy here.

Accidentally finding it yesterday brought to mind my complete confusion and frustration regarding grocery shopping in Brazil. I just can’t figure out how things work when it comes to stocking everyday items. Finding staple ingredients here is like one big scavenger hunt.

I head to the store with my list in hand and find myself searching endlessly for products that are strangely rare here. I say strangely because these are mostly baking products and the baked goods abound. Cakes, cookies, breads – you can find it all. So why is it so hard to find the ingredients for these things?

It started with baking soda and brown sugar and then it spread to cocoa powder and oatmeal. Due to my unwavering perseverance I can now say I’ve found them all, but the frustrations do not stop there.

I shop at 3 main grocery stores. Two are average size supermarkets downtown and one is a hypermarket that we often drive to on the weekends. (Two of these stores are owned by Wal-Mart – big surprise, right? They are everywhere!)

In the US a similar make-up of stores would all carry the same products. Sure you might get different brands or more variety might be available, but overall you could find the same things.

Not so here. One store has brown sugar and the other two don’t. One store has baking soda another store has oatmeal. Don’t even get me started on the milk. I’ve come to find my favorite brand of skim milk here and sometimes the stores have it and sometimes it is like it never even existed at all.

It isn’t like these items have a permanent spot on the shelf. You won’t see an empty spot and think, “Oh, they ran out of my milk today.” They fill the shelves up with other products and what you saw there just two days ago is no where to be found.

So being the organized meal planner that I am, I sit down and find possible recipes and then make my grocery list. Depending on what store I pick that week, I might be out of luck. Consistently there is never everything I need to make what I had planned. It is incredibly frustrating.

I love to cook, but the shopping game down here just makes me want to forget it all and go out to eat. I try to make more Brazilian dishes from the recipes I’ve found, but rice and beans are about the only thing that can be considered a truly healthy option.

Every now and then I do get a surprise like finding the oatmeal. This makes things a little better, but as pessimistic as it might be, I know it won’t last for long.

I am willing to put money on the fact that the oatmeal won’t be there when I go back to the same store and the same spot to find it. Thus, the game will continue…