The Grocery Store (or: Uh Oh, Metric)

Made my first big trip to the grocery store yesterday. Nice store, but there were some things that were a bit tricky:

1. The Metric System. Yes, I know they use the metric system here (the weather forecast is basically useless to me), but it really hits home when you're trying to buy food for a recipe. Also, there's kind of a weird mixture of metric and Imperial units. For example, meat is all priced by the pound, but it's packaged by the kilogram. Huh.

2. Milk in a Bag. What??? So I walk over to the dairy section to get some milk. They have milk in cartons just like I'm used to, but most of it was in plastic bags. I stood there for a while poking at it just to be sure what it was. Apparently people buy it and pour it into their own containers.

3. No pinto beans in a can. That was troubling, as the recipe I was buying for calls for a can of pintos. You can buy raw pinto beans, just not any in a can. I ended up going with Goya "pink beans". We'll see how that works out. Now you can buy canned tomatillos, so I don't think I'm completely out of line to expect canned pintos. I'm sure they're available somewhere....

4. No Rotel products. I must admit that was a long shot. Will end up making my own out of canned tomatoes and green chilis. Yes, I've been forced to buy an Old El Paso product. This is what I've been reduced to ;)

5. Maple. Damn there are a lot of things with maple syrup in them!