When you move internationally, for the first few days, your days take on a very surreal lens. Time becomes elastic thanks to a losing battle with jetlag. Whenever you wake up, your world is shocked into kaleidoscopic technicolor. You develop a very real and sudden sense of empathy for Dorothy when she crash lands in Oz for the first time. Abilities to read, write, and get around town are dubious at best. Everything that felt solid, anything that you could once rely on, is now deemed suspect. 

As a child in Indonesia, it often felt like I had slipped through the gastronomical looking glass. Going to the grocery store reinforced what I was already beginning to suspect: everything was different now. Fresh, white deli counters filled with perfectly uniform, tickled pink chicken breasts, juicy ham hocks and salmon filets were no longer a guarantee. Access to fresh cow’s milk could be occasionally precarious. Now, the ingredients were bloody, fresh, weird, and wild, verging on pulsating. 

These foods were different and I liked them, but I knew they weren’t strictly mine anymore. When I went grocery shopping with my mom as a kid in suburban California, it was a bland and unexciting experience. As a baby, she’d sit me in the cart and I’d gnaw through a plastic-wrapped brick of cheddar cheese. That’s as good as it got because before moving overseas, food was strange and unexplored territory. Our grocery cart was a reflection of Main Street, USA. Once my parents decided that post-communist dictatorships were optimal places to raise a family of five, that changed real quick.

nothing I ever saw in my grocery cart dared to look me in the eye to ask if I knew just how g-rrrrreat their product was. 

I had to come to terms with my new circumstances: When all of my cousins in California were getting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, I was red-faced and sweaty from Indonesian ramen with only rambutans and guava juice to cool my tongue. 

And it only got weirder. Grocery shopping had evolve into a madcap game and a gastronomical Where’s Waldo experience to find the familiar. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. At Ranch Market in Jakarta, the American candy was scattered around the shelves but the magazines were sequestered away. After hunting for boxes of slightly stale Nerds and the rare Fun Dip, I would skip to the end of the store to the pharmacy counter. Right next it, there were several wooden shelves filled with plastic-wrapped American and Australian magazines. If I begged the bored teenage attendant, they’d let me slip the magazine out of the plastic sleeve to read it without paying the 50,000 Rupiah. I would have as long as it would take for my parents to grocery shop to devour Teen People and troll through Mad Magazine. It didn’t matter if the issue was 4 months old, it was like a slug to the brain of the rawest, purest American pop culture that I could get my tiny little hands on. We later found out that if you wanted the taste of home, be it the sickly sweet corn syrup of Wonka candy or the smacking sarsaparilla of an A&W rootbeer, you either had to have a connection to the American embassy or you were guaranteed to overpay twice the going rate due to customs markups. We had to step our game up.  

So, like all good Third Culture Kids, we adapted. Over time, we had more local products on our kitchen shelves. No matter the country.I was able to slowly ungrasp my death clutch on the Easy and Familiar because I learned that not every grocery store is built the same. Each time I would move to a new country, I’d have to adapt to a city’s local shopping practices. There is a precise ebb and flow, no matter where you go. 

In Moscow, it was considered acceptable practice to park your cart in the middle of the store and deposit items. The idea was that you’d be able to jet through the aisles unencumbered by a big, hulking cart. Interestingly, there was also a customer hierarchy. You better not get in the way of any of the babushkas, or those tiny, wizened old women would mow your ass down. They stood in bread lines and beat the Cold War. You don’t think they were going to let you stand in their way, staring at the pallet full of good carrots like some sort of slack jawed yokel? Stand aside, man! These tiny Soviet grandmas were ruthless in their efficiency. 

Jordan had their fair share of ferocious grandmothers battling for territory while shopping at a local market. It’s not quite as an intimate affair, but there’s echoes of the Spice Trade that made Amman thrive. Grocery stores in Amman mimic souqs in the older quarters of town. The spice section is prominently featured where sacs of saffron, zatar, turmeric, and cinnamon presented for the public at large. There is a gorgeous dairy counter with yogurts and halal soft cheeses. However, the deli counter is severely lacking, so we had to resort to more nefarious tactics. Every few weeks, before my mom leaves for Jordan, she would go to Ralph’s and loads up on at least 10 pounds of bacon. She smuggled all of that pork into Jordan because going without an egg and bacon breakfast sandwich for any duration seems interminable. She did it for well over a year and was never caught — personally, I believe she’s blessed by our Appalachian bootlegging ancestors. That crafty devil invested in a Trader Joe’s $12.99 cooler bag so that the bacon will stay cold during the 24 hour flight from San Diego to Amman and she puts her bras on top so the TSA agents don’t get too nosey. Stratospheric import fines combined with Islamic law banned alcohol and pork from entering Jordan. You gotta do what you gotta do, man.  

Grocery stores are the first stop whenever you want to make a house feel like a home but they forced me to reckon with a unique Third Culture Kid predicament: my food and my home weren’t just mine anymore.

Even though I was on unfamiliar territory, one singular, universal fact remains: everyone needs to eat.

Everything from the language barrier to the lack of aggressively large-headed cartoon characters on packaging signaled that I had to continue changing with not just with the times, but my location too. If I didn’t, I was going to starve and I wanted to thrive, damnit. 

Grocery stores can be turbulent territory when you first come back to America. After over 15 years of jetlagged 3 AM Walmart trips, I’ve learned that the American mega box store is an excellent place for an identity crisis. More than once, I’ve been caught jaw agape, standing smack in the middle of the cereal aisle, staring at the dizzying array of lurid looking boxes.  The choices are boundless and infinite, much like the American dream or a black hole. When I would wander around the double cart wide lane, bizarre questions would take hold.

Why is there a manic, oversized bee inquiring about my cardiac health? What exactly is a razzleberry? 

I’m of the belief that all grocery stores should look like Italian deli counters or Arab bodegas. If it’s small, intimate, and stuffed to the gills with artisan treasures and gastronomical mementoes, I’m thrilled. I’m also fond of a good $1 barrell. While American candy, Russian vodka, and French cheese are generally welcomed everywhere, now when I grocery shop, I look for something different.  It’s not the ingredients anymore that necessarily herald homecoming for anymore. It should feel like you’re enter the Alexandria Library or Ariel’s Grotto with shelves higher than the sky of nothing but treasures untold. The smell should take your breath away, but in a good way. 

There’s secret signs of upcoming goodness to look out for. I’m looking for cured meats hanging from the ceiling, an overwhelming spice section, and a witchy old woman that has one specialty that she makes from memory over and over and over. It’s a swirling, intoxicating whirlwind of smell, intimacy, culture and that warm, exciting feeling deep in your belly that says Oh shit, I’m about to eat something really fucking good. Honestly, it’s anywhere stuffy, confusing, and smelly that has a cranky old man barking at me to order in a language I don’t confidently speak always reminds me of my childhood and that was warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging — that feeling of Yes, this is where I should be, I’m home.