Grocery Shopping in Liège

Salut mes amis! 

This week I finally remembered to take my phone with me to the grocery store so I can give everyone a little taste of what it's like to go grocery shopping in Liège. 😀

The grocery store we have been going to is called Carrefour express. The one we live by (about a 3 minute walk from where Matt and I are currently staying) is pretty small, thus the "express". Interestingly, it's closed on Saturdays but open every other day.

Matt and I have had a lot of fun going to the grocery store as it's one of the only places we're allowed to go to during our quarantine so I thought I'd highlight some of our favorite/interesting things from the Carrefour. 

The first thing I found really interesting is that while I already knew that Europeans do not refrigerate their eggs, Belgians at least apparently do not refrigerate their milk either! 

I tried asking our landlord if you refrigerate the milk after opening it, but he could not understand my question. We ended up putting both the milk and eggs in the fridge. Belgians please forgive us. 😆

It's a small grocery store but they had a pretty extensive collection of wine and beer in the back. The prices are very reasonable on the products so Matt and I are excited to try some of them in the future. Maybe we'll buy a bottle of wine to celebrate moving into our new apartment...?

I also want to point out that for being a small store, they still had 2 whole fridges dedicated to cheese. Belgians know their priorities! And a special shoutout to the 2€ brie.

As you can see, Matt and I really suffered while eating it. 😉

The food here has been such incredible quality. It's really rich in a way that food in the States is not. It actually gave me a little bit of a stomachache (kind of felt like I was on antibiotics) for about a week because I wasn't used to the richness of the food. It also really fills you - I could only eat about 2/3rds of a sandwich before feeling full! But the food is delicious. 

Just look at these tomatoes! 

Something that's also fun is that Belgium is known for having good waffles, particularly in Liège. At the grocery store there were lots of prepackaged waffles for sale. Matt and I bought chocolate-covered ones, and they are delicious! 

And the prepackaged crepes are tasty too, and also only about 2€ for a pack of 10. I feel spoiled. 😇

A couple of silly/fun things we found at the store: 

I had heard that peanut butter is an American thing, so I was surprised to find out that they do have peanut butter here. But they sell only 1 brand of it while they have a whole shelf dedicated to Nutella-type chocolate spreads (that was half empty), so I guess that fits. 

Also, I've never thought of peanut butter as a "pâte" (paste) before. I'm trying not to think about it too much. 

Another honorable mention was the "American" sauce we came across at the store. We're not sure exactly what type of sauce it's supposed to be but we think maybe BBQ? We'll have to try it at some point. 

Last, but not least, were the "natural" flavored Doritos. It has literally NEVER occurred to me that Doritos, are in fact, tortilla chips with flavoring on top of them. I've always thought of them as their own separate type of chip. Mind blown! 

So that was a quick tour of our little grocery store. Hope you enjoyed! 

Until next time!

-Zoe