I think I am really starting to get the hang of grocery shopping around here.

The grocery closest to my house is always super crowded and crazy so to avoid having to maneuver a shopping cart through the crowed aisles, I only use a basket when I shop at that store. When the basket gets full/too heavy I know I have to stop. I have to hand carry all of this stuff home so it's a good system to keep me in check so I don't end up with more than I can carry.

If I happen to only need a few things and know I won't be maxing out my volume/weight carrying capacity I have a standard list of things that I always pick up. Milk, sparkling water, fruit... all the staples that we always need.

I go to the grocery almost every single day, at least 5 days a week I think. Especially when B is home. We consume a ton more because we cook bigger and better meals when he's around.

The other grocery store in Discovery Bay is about a 12 minute bus ride away. They have a bigger selection of American brands and it's always calm and quiet in there. I would prefer to shop there exclusively but it's too far from my house. All my cold food is warm by the time I get it home from there.

Speaking of cold food being warm, let's talk for a minute about food safety. It is SO not the same set of rules I am used to in the USA. We always see pallets of food that needs refrigeration sitting outside for a long time waiting to be brought into the grocery. And even inside the grocery it is common to see all the food that should be cold just sitting there waiting to be stocked. And it's hot outside here. I don't like to think too hard about all that.

Recently one of the stores had all these markdowns on organic yogurt. I got so excited! Then I realized that the expiration dates were still pretty far out. (It's common to score awesome deals if you find things close to their expiration dates.) So then I had to wonder why it was discounted... and I am sure it probably sat out too long. But I went ahead and bought it. We ate it and we didn't die...

I have seen stacked trays of steaks sitting out next to the fridge section. Just sitting there. Each tray had probably 10-15 steaks and they were stacked as high as my shoulders. So lots and lots of steaks. With $10usd price tags. How long had they been sitting there? Who knows.

You have to be vigilant. I have to always check expiration dates (today I saw fresh ears of corn with a sell by date of more than a week ago), make sure the packaging was not damaged in transit (like that bag of tortilla chips I once bought that were completely stale because the I presume the bag had a tiny whole somewhere), and give the packaging a shake to make sure the product inside is in good shape (like no crushed pasta/chips or no rotten meat/fruit that isn't visible at first glance).

Most of the produce is shipped in from all over the place. The apples are in a big bin just like you see in the USA at any store. Except each apple is inside a sock like net thingy made of cushiony stretchy styrofoam stuff to protect it in transit. The pints of strawberries often have the same stickers and labels that you'd see in the US. But they're in an abnormal size container. It's bigger than normal because there's a big layer of bubble wrap in the bottom of every single container so they can stack them up and they are less likely to get squished in transit. There's many little oddities like this.

The Chinese do food differently than we Western people do. Like if they want some meat for dinner they head to their street vendor and buy it from the butcher who cuts it off from the whole pig while they watch. They don't do meat from styrofoam plastic wrapped trays. I don't think they get it. They buy their fish live and they see their meat come off the animal. It's not a bad system, right? But it's sure not what I am used to!

And, yes, there is an enormous fish tank with live sea creatures of every variety in my grocery store.