Shopping Locally

We live in a very rural area and, as the two big hypermarkets on the island are about 20 kilometers away, we depend very much on the small local shops for fresh produce and the odd thing we've run out of, or forgotten to pick up, when we do a big stockup.

The closest village to us is just a hamlet consisting of a bar with a small shop attached, a one-room school, and funnily enough a very good restaurant serving delicious vegetarian food. I haven't been into the shop for years because they never have anything except real basics like bottles of oil, jars of olives, and for some reason loads of loo paper!- nothing fresh. The next village in the opposite direction is fairly big and there we have two small supermarkets, one with a very good butcher counter, and the other with one of the best ranges of health food items on the island. They started to offer these products some years ago after a lot of cajoling and my putting them in contact with a supplier. It's obviously a good business for them because the shelf space they now devote to dietary and health food products is quite extensive and people come from far and wide to buy there.

I remember the small colmados (grocery stores) that existed on the island when I first moved here over thirty years ago. There would be sacks of beans and garbanzos stacked up along the wall and milk was sold from an urn ... you had to remember to bring your own bottle! They are all long gone now but there's a little one that does still exist in a nearby village and is to be found in the tobacco shop! Not so long ago el estanco (the tobacco shop) was the centre of village life. Here you would collect your post, have a drink at the bar, get your smokes, and do a bit of shopping.

On the road there are also some grocery shops and I often go to Es Cruce to buy fresh vegetables. They have quite a good selection of other foodstuffs too and right now you can buy tomato and lettuce plants for the kitchen garden there also. It is also helpful that they are open seven days a week and don't close at midday.

Further away there is another place on the road where they have a tremendous selection of fresh vegetables, basic foodstuffs, and all kinds of imported items. I always have a look in there when I'm after some hard to find ingredient. I suppose this would be the closest that we have to a Asian shop. What I like too is that I can buy nuts of all kinds loose by the kilo.

In summer we also have stands on the road selling fresh vegetables and fruit but they are all closed at the moment.

This post is particularly for Ilana and Jody who expressed an interest in seeing some photos from my surroundings. My intention is to intersperse purely foodie posts with some local snippets that I hope will be of interest to all. I was lucky enough to arrive here in time to witness the harsh reality, yet beautiful simplicity, of an agrarian culture and a peasant way of life that was common throughout Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. I remember old people were still wearing the traditional dress and only able to communicate in the local dialect. They were poor but had beautiful manners and a great tradition of hospitality.