Score 1 for Joel and Mara, 0 for expensive grocery stores!

So this is the haul that we picked up this morning at the fruit and veg markets. NICE. I'm so excited! It's such beautiful looking food, and 99% likely organic (just because people can't afford to buy chemical fertilizers). The best news though- that whole lot of food cost us 2500 Kwanza- which comes out to about USD$24. What did we get? 5kg of potatoes, 13 onions, more tomatoes than I care to count, a few lettuce plants (roots and all!), a BIG bunch of cilantro/coriander, 5 giant soft avocados, 5 apples and an eggplant! I think I'll make salsa to eat over rice and beans. And I wanted to make some kind of sliced, roasted potatoes- like au gratin but not (I need a recipe that doesn't need cheese! Anyone?).

Now, what makes it interesting to go to the market here is that it's not an all in one place market like you have in Riga, or probably most other cities. It's just a dirt road that has a bunch of ladies set up all along. And you just walk up and down looking for the nicest produce, and asking the price (one place was selling 5 onions for 500 Kwanza, another place was selling 1 bucket (25 onions) for 1,000 Kwanza, and we ended up buying a bucket for 800), and then making your purchases.

Another interesting thing is that unfortunately, you cannot choose how much you want to buy. That is, you can choose a large amount, but you cannot choose a small amount. In this next picture you see how the apples I bought were stacked.

The avocados were stacked similarly- in piles of 5. The minimum you could buy was 5. Of course you could get 10 if you wanted, but not 4, 3, 2, or 1. So, when it came to the onions, tomatoes and potatoes, we bought buckets and split it with another teacher, because yeah, you have to buy a whole bucket.

Oh, the other really good news, is that the tomatoes we bought today look good- nice and juicy and not horrible like the ones you get at the store.

And yeah, the next good thing is that you do feel good going straight to the person on the street to buy stuff, most of 'em were really smiley and nice and appreciate of our business- not exactly the treatment you get in most grocery stores (anywhere in the world). And you just feel good contributing directly to the locals like that.

Here's another shot from another angle of our loot. :)