Shopping in India...

It is quite an adventure to grocery shop here in India. 

First of all, there are very few choices on the shelves and often mostly things that I do not recognize. They sell sunflower oil in small bags, have only about five different cereal choices, and the power will randomly go off, then pop back on...hopefully within a minute or two.

I have to find the price in rupees and then figure out exactly how much it is going to cost me in dollars.  I am actually getting pretty good at that part.  Each week, I spend between 1500 and 1800 rupees which is roughly 25 to 30 dollars. (We have bread, milk, eggs, and some fruits and vegetables provided for us at the school.)

The things that are native foods are usually quite cheap. The one thing they have an amazing and confusing variety of are these "biscuits".  They have only slight differences in taste, but we have definitely decided we like the Oats variety because it is a little sweeter. The green package costs 30 rupees...which is only 50 cents!  

 They taste like an animal cracker with a little more sweetness. My kids like to break them up and put milk over them like we did with graham crackers at home.

They have a drink called Appy Fizz. It is similar to our Martinelli's in the States. 

This large bottle is only 80 rupees...$1.30! So we buy a couple of these as a treat every week. If people don't sneak into it (that is a big IF around here), then we can all enjoy some four times through the week.

They also have this DELICIOUS drink called Slice. If you can read the bottom of the bottle, it is not kidding...it is PURE MANGO PLEASURE!!

We are ready to try making some American food, so this week I hunted down noodles and red sauce. This is the only red sauce they had. This tiny bottle was also 80 rupees. We have not tried it yet, but it looks much more like pizza sauce and less like the Ragu we are used to at home.

You can tell this is only produced for foreigners and that is why the price is so high. 

The only thing that is totally recognizable to us and yet still totally cheap is OREOS!! 

These tubes of Oreos are only 30 rupees (just 50 cents!) and so far has always been on sale...buy 3 get one free. So we have been consistently buying four Oreo tubes a week. They have at least 15 Oreos in each tube, so it is an amazing deal at 50 cents each. 

They also have four flavors of Oreos here.  Regular, Chocolate cream, Strawberry cream, and Orange cream (which is a new favorite of Cohen's).

We found two kinds of beans in the store...one is similar to a pinto bean and the other is more like a kidney bean. I cooked up plain Basmati rice and a pot of beans last night and I have to say it was delicious. I really enjoyed the break from Indian spices for one meal. Good-old onion, garlic, and chicken bouillon flavors....mmmmm!