It’s midday on a Monday and I walk across the street to my local self-service verdulería to buy groceries. 

The shop vendor (verdulero), with whom I am on a first name-basis, asks me how I am and about my favorite president in U.S. history as I hand select my cuarto of cherry tomatoes from a wooden pallet, along with a couple school bus yellow plantanos, a seran wrapped package of hongos, and other random, miscellaneous vegetables I’ll transform into the week’s meals in my little studio apartment kitchen in Buenos Aires, the city I have called home for almost a year now. 

Admittedly, today I am in a rush. But I reply to my verdulero’s previous question with “Obama” and make small talk as I hand him the vegetables to put on the scale and ring up a bunch of espinaca. 

I appreciate the curiosity — an ever present aspect of life in Argentina, this connectedness, these small yet significant exchanges that represent more than just a transaction. 

I am someone who loves grocery shopping. Perhaps my love of gathering ingredients to make into something spans from childhood afternoons spent with my mom in the aisles of the Costco superstore, eating free samples of random packaged foods. 

Maybe it was running errands with my father, stopping at the supermarket to buy sheets of dried pasta, jarred tomato sauce with oregano, tubs of ricotta cheese, and mushrooms that would later become trays full of lasagna for our family’s dinner. 

In Buenos Aires, though, the way you buy groceries can seem a world apart from how you do in the U.S. 

Navigating a new scene

In the name of convenience in the States, you can often find everything you need all in one place and often in large quantities. 

There were the economical one-and-a-half liter bottles of wine I’d buy in my early-20s, the five feet of shelf space featuring a variety of brands and flavors for something as simple as a bag of granola or nostalgic puffed cereal. Or the spacious automated self-checkout stations, so you never have to speak to anyone if you don’t want........

© Buenos Aires Herald