food, food, food!

When I got back to Moscow from London after the summer, I mumbled on quite a lot about the lack of access from where I live to supermarkets and food markets. There is a produkti on the very corner of my block, a shop which has inside a number of small counters, each run by different people and each selling relatively random combinations of foodstuffs and alcohol. Produkti are pretty common in Moscow and the experience is not unlike Soviet times - although with slightly more produce and without the need to get a ticket from the seller and pay a cashier first, before collecting the goods. In fact, some of the women who work in my local have come to treat me and my bizarre Russian accent with (I hope) affectionate resignation. Others, though, would still serve someone - anyone else - first; and like to be particularly sullen in handing over items and accepting money.

But - joy of joys - the supermarket that was in the nearby shopping mall basement and closed down has now been replaced by another one. And - weirdly, so that I keep feeling I am hallucinating it - my favorite (because very cheap) supermarket from where I lived before has now opened up another branch just opposite the selfsame shopping mall; looking for all purposes as if it has been there for years and I just failed to notice it in my increasingly obsessive food hunts.

So, finally, I am eating proper vegetables again.