"My Kitchen is a Virgin" and other US eating habits!

California being an agricultural state, I kind of expected agricultural produce to be more 'spontaneous', less manicured than I'd seen in places like New York or Washington. What I see when I go to supermarkets, however, is shelves like the ones below with a careful display of fruit and vegetables that almost resembles the shop windows of a jeweler.

What is not visible in these photos is the sophisticated water-spray system that is activated periodically and that makes sure that all the produce looks as fresh as possible.

Another display format can be found in gas stations were, again, perfectly simple and ordinary pieces of fruit are displayed in carefully tended shelves, trays and other containers.

The strange thing in both cases is the fact that the produce goes practically untouched. The supermarkets seem to be empty all the time, or at least  every time we've been there. In the case of the gas station, fruit is overlooked in favour of doughnuts, beef jerky, tortilla chips, etc.
So, you can't help but wonder where all this stuff goes. Does it go to waste? Does it get sold in some other shop at a lower price once the sell-by date looms closer? Does it get donated somewhere? Part of the answer may be the growth of online grocery shopping (go here for tips), but surely, that can't be the whole story (see below for some other options)

The other characteristic of the things on offer at these supermarkets is that for anything you want to buy (kitchen towels to sausages, pasta to spices) there is an apparently inexhaustible number of variations available: different sizes, different colours, with different extras added, in multiple packet options, for kids / adults, etc., etc.). Just to give an example: Oreos are a thing I don't eat (I don't like them) but my kids do. I've always thought there was but one variety, two black biscuits, with a white cream in the middle, sort of like a simplied alfajor. I may not like them, but I understand them. Not really! Here, in the land of plenty, there are many more types than you can imagine or indeed are necessary (e.g. thin, with extra cream, big and small, in different flavours, and I stopped counting).


How to choose then? Well, some may think you need to try them all to be able to pick the one you like, but by the time you do this, you would certainly be sick of Oreos and would probably not want to eat one ever again. Or may be you will start again at the beginning because you are now addicted to Oreos!

By the way, supermarkets, even those in a small town like Davis, are nothing short of humongous. Aisles and aisles of all sorts of products of every possible kind. All the supermarkets have some kind of loyalty programme and/or offer special discounts if you get their own credit card to do their shopping. So that you can shop at ease and in large amounts. Most loyalty programs now are managed, obviously, through the store's "App" which you can download to your device from iTunes or Google Play.

And, if we talk about large amounts, there is, of course, the wholesale supermarkets like Costco. Fortunately, I won't be here long enough to need to engage with these!

One of the sections of supermarkets that has a somewhat larger density of population is that of frozen, prepared and pre-prepared meals. You can get almost anything in this sort of format where all it takes is hot water or may be a saucepan at most to produce something resembling a meal.

Everything you need to make Chinese Fish soup

Also, supermarkets have large sections of what you could describe as rotisserie food including anything from soup to salads, sandwiches, sushi and whole chickens. Here are some photos I got from the internet because I don't want people to think I am insane taking random pics in the supermarket, but they reflect what I see no matter what supermarket I go to):

This further complicates the surplus problem because it is fresh food that has a much shorter shelf-life.  For more traditional groceries, places like the Grocery Outlet have sprung up to 'solve' part of the problem of surplus food. Here is an article from Forbes about them. They are, to all intents and purposes, an ordinary suppermarket with all the relevant sections but their prices are much lower than at mainstream supermarkets like Safeways or Trader Joe's or Nugget Markets. However, because they sell things they have bought from elsewhere or in bulk or whatever, you cannot always expect to find everything you want, for example, last week they had no sweetener, but this week they do. Alternatively they sell things only in one presentation (e.g. huge boxes of cereal) or of one kind (one particular flavour of Philadelphia cheese). Another option, of course, are the Dollar Stores, e.g. Dollar Tree. The range of products here is more limited in terms of brands and types of product, but for certain things, e.g. cleaning products, stationery, some kitchen utensils, even things like tinned foods, they are not bad. There is, however, a certain negative social perception about these stores and the clientele is certainly not the same as in some of the more upmarket supermarkets. Snobbery? May be. Clearly stratified clientele, certainly!

This outlet system is, I think, derived from the older, more expanded outlet stores concept. We have a huge Premiium Outlet Stores area near us in Vacaville. They tend to be out-of-town places because they occupy masses of space (this is the country of o mais grande do mundo, not Brazil!) More in-town alternatives are T.J.Maxx (if you are seeing this from Argentina, you may not be able to access the site because they have some block on it), Ross (this is even more extreme in the limitations: you typically only find one of each of whatever) and, as we discovered on our recent trip, Burlington's. In these shops, you can find designer labels at a fraction of the original price, again, they don't always have every size or every colour or whatever.

Invariably, I come out of these places with a sense of overwhelming exhaustion and unfulfillment, though. There is this ever increasing push to consume, more and more, whatever it is, that can never be satisfied. The more you get, the more you realise that there is an even bigger pile out there to consume. Perhaps it has to do with not being used to so much stuff being available, but a part of me wants to go back to a situation where the options are few and the amount of stuff available is more restricted. I know, very non capitalist of me, but I think it will be a relief. It also saves you a lot of time deciding which stuff (you don't really need anyway) to buy.

The related issue with food consumption (and the lack of shopping in supermakets) is the fact that people don't seem to eat food they cook. Popular TV shows reflect aspects of reality, but it is often difficult to ascertain how extended they are. One of my kid's favourite shows is the Big Bang Theory. In that show people only enter the kitchen to get a drink from the fridge or make, at the very most, a cup of tea, coffee, or get a bowl of cereal. When they have to eat (and they do this quite a bit) they do it in restaurants, get take-outs or eat in institutional contexts such as the cafeteria at the university.

And this seems to be pretty close to what people actually do. As a friend of mine once put it 'My kitchen is a virgin' (and this in a house where she had lived for at least ten years!!). Mind you, in her fridge, before I arrived, you only found several varieties of Coke and in her pantry (yes, she had a walk-in pantry) there were mostly energy bars of this kind:

If you've never tried one and someone offers, decline politely,
it'll be the best choice you evern make!

Interestingly, and as a total contrast to eating customs, there is an almost morbid interest in culinary tradition and habits as well as in cooking shows. This is a book I bought at the Tenement Museums in New York that retells the story of  of the families who lived in that tenement and focuses on the culinary traditions that the different immigrant communities brought with them to America. It even includes recipes (but when you read them, you wonder if anyone actually make these foods).

The cooking shows often take the shape of competitions akin to the 'American's Got Talent' or even 'The Bachelor' sort of thing. The emphasis is not usually on how to make what the 'chefs' make but on following the path of the competitors through (fairly predictable) successes and failures. One quite funny one currently on air is Worst Cooks in America (you can imagine the sort of thing that goes on, but if you can't you can go to this video and view!)