An American in Europe at the Holidays

As many of you know, Eric and I have access to a commissary. It is conveniently located only about 1.5 hours away from our house (okay, so I am using my New Mexico definition of convenient location). There we can almost pretend that we are not in a foreign country. We can buy the tastes of home - like canned pumpkin. Strangely, lots of pumpkin are grown here. You can even buy them at the grocery, but only fresh.

Now, maybe I haven't explained that the Dutch prepare a bunch of things up front. The luncheon meat is presliced and packaged when you arrive (no asking for special thickness or amounts). The vegetable mix for the stir fry is cut to the right size -- except the hot pepper that they let you cut for your taste -- or potatoes that are right for boiling or frying are pealed and appropriately cut or sliced. There are soup mixes of veggies that are preselected and cut for you. They also have bagged salads of various sorts. The meat comes pre-seasoned and ready to be cooked. In fact, it took me a while to find raw ingredients that were not pre-packaged and sliced, so that I could cook in my own way.

That said, their canned goods seem limited to the exotic (coconut milk, green curry paste, bamboo shoots, etc.), the pickled, and the fruit varieties. They do have some canned veggies, but they look dusty on the shelves where I shop. Most people get either fresh or frozen. They don't have canned pumpkin.

In fact, the reason I started with the commissary in this post is that we are likely to have at least one more trip down there for 1) cheap(er) frozen meats (okay, more like poultry, knowing me) in bulk, 2) canned foods: tomatoes, pumpkin, chicken broth and possibly treats for the cat, chocolate chips,...