Things Are Looking Up...Way Up

Prizren has three supermarkets: Elkos, BenAf, and Abi Center. Elkos is down by the university and takes about 25 minutes for me to walk to. BenAf and Abi Center are roughly a block apart and approximately 15 minutes from my apartment. Yesterday, I was down at Elkos looking for whole wheat pasta and whole wheat flour (the only place that usually stocks these items) and I came across a find: button mushrooms. They were packaged in two-pint styrofoam cartons and were going for, oh, $3. I gazed longingly at the three lone packs and it didn't take too long for me to think lasagne! I didn't want to take the time to make the red sauce last night, so I plopped the mushrooms on my fridge and let them wait for me until today.

Fast forward to this morning. I made a list of all the other ingredients I needed to buy: diced stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, spinach, mozzerella, and an onion (I already had the noodles and ricotta is a total pipe dream). I decided to hit BenAf because they usually stock mozzerella. I picked up cans of tomatoes, cartons of tomato paste, chopped & frozen spinach, and the onion. I went over to the cooler to find the mozzerella and came up empty. I scanned all the shelves again with no luck (the organization of the shelves is pretty loose and stuff never seems to be in the same place twice). But what did catch my eye was bleu cheese. Bleu cheese! I didn't even look to see how much it was and I grabbed it and put it in my basket (as it turned out, it was 1 Euro for 100 g...cheap). I didn't want to do bleu cheese in the lasagne, though, so I also went for a block of emmentaler, which is similar to Swiss, replete with holes. Will it be good in lasagne? It's cheese. It'll be great.

I paid for my stuff (I have all the cashiers & baggers trained...they know I always bring my own bag) and started walking home. About half-way, I stopped to gaze across the street at a newly renovated smaller supermarket to see what veggies they had out front. The purple onions made me cross the street. The avocados, ginger, and orange peppers made me squeal to myself inside. I bought a few veggies and went inside to look around where I also found whole wheat flour (Elkos was out). The most expensive item was the avocado. At 1,75 Euros (a bit more than $2.50), I hope it's good. It feels a bit bruised, but I figured that mushy avocado that's been turned into guacamole will be better than a day without avocado at all. I'm not sure what I'm going to put it on, though. I haven't found anything remotely like tortilla chips, and the Mexican restaurant has gone out of business so I can't go down and buy tortillas. I'll figure something out (maybe I'll do bleu cheese and guacamole sandwiches...heh).

Bleu cheese! Avocados! Fresh ginger! Things never before seen by me in Kosovo (although I do hear that the UN commisary has a decent cheese selection but I don't have access to that so it doesn't count). Things are definitely looking up.