Another kind of market

I just wanted to mention that I really like the food sold in Italian grocery stores. Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE the fresh produce markets like Saint Ambrogio, but the packaged products here are miles simpler and less processed than 98% of everything found in American grocery stores. The past several years I had almost completely avoided buying ANYTHING processed (i.e., products bagged, boxed, or frozen) from the grocery stores in the US. Our weekly groceries included milk, fresh produce, basic unsweetened cereal (like grape nuts and oats), dry grains and beans, canned vegetables, etc. Admittedly, we would often buy flavored yogurt and pasta sauce and occasionally ice cream, but that is pretty much it. I would willingly eat processed food if it were organic (or at least not full of ingredients I can't recognize), but those sorts of things are way out of our budget so we would keep things cheap and simple and cook from whole ingredients.

Italy, however, has spoiled me! You can pick up almost anything and it would use real sugar (high fructose corn syrup is almost exclusively an American thing), usually use real fat like butter or (natural) oil (although I have seen a couple productsthat use fully hydrogenated crap), have simple ingredients, and not be loaded in unnecessary salts and laundry lists of preservatives. As a result I have to be very careful when buying something to make sure I use it up asap, before it is taken over by mold. Though annoying, at least it reminds me that the food is NOT loaded with fake chemicals. Admittedly, this is not true of everything (coloring agents, some preservatives, and other strange ingredients do exist), but like I said, it still beats 98% of what you find in the US!

For example, we even let ourselves have frozen pizza every couple weeks, which I haven't eaten since I was in high school. If any country makes excellent frozen pizza, leave it to the Italians!

The ingredients: flour, water, tomato, mozzarella (milk, salt, rennet, milk enzymes), iodized salt, vegetable oil, extra-virgin olive oil, yeast, modified starch, basil, oregano. Also, this is kinda off-subject, but I really appreciate how this cream, chocolate, and whiskey colomba (dove cake) actually resembles the photo on the box.

After eating all these little snacks, I will seriously have to go on a diet when I get back to the US! Or at least go back to soaking beans...