At home, Gary does most of our grocery shopping. I hate going to the grocery store except when I am planning to cook a big meal.
Here, I still hate going to the supermarket, but I love going to the market.
I have been trying to conduct transactions in stores and restaurants in Italian and succeed better at some times than at others. My vocabulary is returning slowly, but conjugating verbs is a problem. It makes me sad to think that at one time this lovely language just rolled off my tongue without thinking. But, I managed to purchase a belt and purse entirely in Italian, I can conduct most transactions at the market in Italian, and usually can pull off restaurant orders, acting as translator for Gary.
Several clerks, waiters and waitresses have expressed surprise when I tell them we are here for seven weeks, not just three or four days, and have expressed appreciation that we are staying for a time in their city. One waitress asked us if we did not have to return to work, and I struggled to remember the Italian words to explain that we are retired. She understood and exclaimed, “Ah, pensionata!”, meaning retired person. In Italian, it sounded so much nicer and softer than “retired person” or “pensioner”. Brandon mentioned the same thing when he was here, saying how much nicer “panettiere” and “panetteria” sounded than “baker” and “bakery”.
Back to the market.
The market for us is the Mercato della Sant’Ambrogio; it is one of the two major markets where Florentines shop and is about a 15-minute walk from our apartment. Outside are the fruit and vegetable stalls, along with clothing, antique and bead stalls. Inside are the meat, cheese, fish, bread and pasta stalls, along with a small dining area featuring local specialties.
Apart from a few types of frozen fish, everything is fresh, in season and local. If it comes from anywhere other than Tuscany, a sign will tell you from where it came.
Produce is much less expensive than at home and the variety of fruits and vegetables in season surpasses anything we have at home. The first day I went, one stall had five varieties of peaches, another five varieties of tomatoes, another three or four varieties of eggplant, and at yet still another, several varieties of fresh beans. I listened to one elderly Italian woman argue with the vendor (in Italian of course) over the size of a tomato. The tomato was a variety I had never seen, a rather knobbed and ugly specimen, and it looked as if it measured five inches across and weighed nearly a full pound. She kept telling him she did not need one that large; he kept saying they are all that large; she said I need half; he said, I cannot cut it in half and sell half — all or nothing. Finally, she caved and bought the whole thing, muttering under her breath as she walked away.
I bought one of my favorite cheeses from the time I was a student here — stracciatella, which I cannot find at home. I bought Peccorino-Romano, which the vendor assured me had been made by his sister.
At the fish stall, you can buy squid — whole, cleaned, cut into rings, cut into steaks; octopus; mussels and clams; shrimp of all sizes; and a wide variety of fish. We’ve had shrimp and swordfish from there, both excellent and reasonably priced.
Chicken comes in pieces — breasts, with or without bone; thighs; legs. And it comes whole — in some stalls there are whole chickens, just as at home, except less plump (probably no hormones, etc.) and not wrapped in plastic, but in the counter waiting for the vendor to wrap the one you select. At other stalls there are whole chickens with the feet still on; at others whole chickens with the neck and head still attached. I opted for a boneless breast stuffed with ground pork and wrapped with pancetta and rosemary — it was easy to cook and served three of us while Brandon was visiting. No chicken heads or feet for me yet.
There also is a supermarket close by; we go there for non-food items, such as paper towels, detergent, and standard items such as bottled water and jar spices. Even the supermarket has wide variety of cheeses and cold cuts, both in deli counters and in pre-packaged containers, certainly more than you would see at any deli counter at home. The bread there is warm if you catch it at the right time, though we also have been buying bread at bakeries.
Then, of course, there is wine. We can buy wine at the grocery store — only Italian. There is a wine store at the end of the street, which sells a few French and German wines — have not seen California wines. We have purchased wine at both places. But, my favorite place to buy wine is the vino sfuso shop. There are a couple around here — small mom and pop places with demijohns of local wines, red and white. You tell them you want a red from Montepulciano and they fill a bottle from the demijohn, cork it and it is yours for 3 euros. Bring the bottle back when you have emptied it and they will refill it again. Early in the day the restaurant owners are in there buying their vin di casa, or house wine. We will save the fancy wines for our visits to wineries; for now, vin di casa is for us.
