The Challenges of Feeding Ourselves in Albania
I miss all-in-one supermarkets with ready-made options
We flew home to Tirana from Budapest the evening of January 2. I thought we were in the clear from New Year’s and that stores would be open again. Nope! New Year’s is a big holiday in Albania and one of the few times in the year when just about everything closes. That meant our food options at home were relegated to whatever I had hastily tossed into the freezer before we left on our holiday trip. Joy!
We figured out some odds and ends and made it work. But we definitely needed a grocery trip, stat. I assumed the stores would reopen on Friday, January 3, so I got up in the morning and started meal planning. I needed enough things to get us through the weekend, plus lunch stuff for the girls for Monday (back to school). Seems simple enough, but that’s at least 2 meals per day times 3 days, plus Monday lunch, all mostly from scratch.
I spent 1-2 hours scrolling through Pinterest picking a combination of new recipes plus tried and true ones and then translating everything to a shopping list. I needed options that were in season and that I could likely find ingredients for. And just in case I couldn’t find some ingredients (which happens), I needed a backup plan. When I was done, I gave the list a final look and tried to evaluate whether I could carry everything home, assuming I even found everything on the list. Maybe. It was definitely ambitious, which means I’d have to make decisions while shopping about what might not make the cut due to weight or bulk or both. When you have to walk your groceries home, you look at what you buy through a different lens.
Before I could go shopping, we needed breakfast. Fortunately, we had some boxed milk in the pantry (shelf-stable milk is super common in Albania as in many parts of the world). I made coffee and then mixed up some chocolate pancakes. I’ve been making the same version for years. Since I had no eggs, I used two bananas instead of the one the recipe calls for. Fortunately, we had two pretty dead ones in the fridge I was able to leverage. We were out of syrup but we had honey to top them. That, plus a dollop of peanut butter got the job done. In Albania, necessity requires substitutions and creativity.
After a quick shower, I was ready to shop for groceries. But before I left, I saw C’s text: The butcher was closed. (He had headed out before me to shop for meat.) Shoot, now I needed a plan for getting chicken. Without it, my meal plan would go out the window. I texted someone in town about what supermarkets were open. There are a couple that have fresh meat and produce within the market itself. (This isn’t the case in many of the local supermarkets.) Their food is nearly all imported, so the prices are higher, but it would mean getting chicken, and I might even be able to get everything within one store versus having to go to a separate market. She confirmed that they were open, so I decided to go there.
The sun had partially popped out and the temperature was so much warmer than it had been in Budapest, so I decided to walk all the way, about 25 minutes. It was lovely and I needed the exercise.
Amazingly, I was able to get almost everything at the first supermarket. But some of the produce didn’t look good and they didn’t have a couple of items on my list. I carefully distributed the weight of what I bought between two different shopping bags, balanced them on my shoulders, and then headed toward a second store, where I was able to find the rest of what I needed. Wahoo! Only two stops. That’s amazing! The tricky part was going to be getting it all the way home.
The bus stop was just up the street, so I walked there, waited, and then climbed aboard. I rode a few stops and got as close to home as possible, but I still had a 15- to 20-minute walk, 2/3 of which was up the big hill. Just before I started up I noticed something that made me jump for joy and text C:
Once I made it home, I had to put everything away, which required organizing what I had pulled out of the freezer into the fridge the night before. I also needed to sit down and relax! Those grocery bags were heavy.
For dinner I made a new-to-us recipe: Moroccan-Spiced Chicken with Sweet Potatoes & Cauliflower. It was surprisingly tasty, especially because of the sauce, so I’m glad I made it. Often I skip sauces because they seem like extra work. The dish definitely took some time to prep, but it was good enough to make again. It’s always nice when a new recipe works out.
Saturday morning I made Orange and Cardamom Muffins but in a loaf pan. We had leftover oranges that had been given to us before the holidays which I had stored in the fridge, so it worked perfectly. I’ve made the recipe a couple of times now. It’s not the most amazing—the flavor could be punched up—but it was fairly quick to get into the oven and we had all the ingredients.
I also prepped another new recipe — or a version of it, anyway — and got it into the crockpot before heading out to walk around the lake. I had to make a number of substitutions since poblano peppers and canned green chilis aren’t possible to find in Albania (at least as far as I know—I’d love to be wrong!). You might be wondering: Why make a dish with key ingredients like that if you know you can’t get them? Sometimes I just miss certain types of dishes and stubbornly think I can create a version of them that could be decent. So I use the recipe as a jumping off place and invent from there using what’s available. That’s what I did here and it kinda sorta worked, only not totally.
Before I headed out to walk the lake, I also got some flank steak marinating for beef bulgogi tacos. The girls love these but I can only make them once in a while because finding flank steak cut the American way is tricky. Albanians eat flank steak, but they cut it in strips and slow cook it; they don’t broil or grill it. I found a butcher across town who speaks English and can occasionally get me the cut I’m used to. I had gotten two smaller flank steaks from him prior to our holiday trip and froze them for when we got back (good thing since all the butchers were closed!). I also picked up flour tortillas in Budapest (at a random corner grocery of all places). The only flour tortillas we’ve found so far in Tirana aren’t very good, so this meal was going to be a treat.
It was finally time to head out! Kitchen stuff always takes longer than I think it will. C and I walked down to the lake together to look at a gym we’re going to try. Then he headed off to find somewhere to buy ground beef, since the butchers were still closed (and at this point wouldn’t reopen till Monday). Meanwhile, I walked around the lake. N messaged me while I was walking:
C then texted me to say he had found beef and asked if I needed anything. I asked him go ahead and pick up more chicken breast so I could throw it in the freezer to have on hand. We’ve always got to be thinking ahead here food wise; it’s just part of how we make things work.
After walking around the lake, I stopped by the supermarket on my way home for the items that got added to the constantly running list. We never waste an opportunity to stop by the store if we’re already out and about anyway. In this case, we needed more milk, some apples and bananas, more pasta sauce, and olive oil. I knew we needed these things when I was at the store the day prior, but I simply couldn’t carry the extra weight then. It was all part of my calculations. I grabbed a mediocre sandwich from the bakery in the supermarket so I could eat it on my way home. All I had eaten were slices of the orange cardamom bread.
After I got back, I finished making the chili. [Click to see the video short.] It was edible but not amazing. I’d rate it 6.5/10. I added crushed tortilla chips on top, which provided a nice textural contrast. It was a bit too spicy and yet somehow lacked depth of flavor. Clearly, the missing poblanos and green chilis would’ve made a difference, LOL. If I were to make it again (debatable), I’d add less chili powder (maybe 1.5T instead of 2T), more smoked paprika and cumin, less of the fresh red pepper, and maybe some garlic. I’d add even less broth or maybe none at all. I might add black beans after I’ve blended the soup (which I would have to make from scratch). It definitely needs a generous squeeze of lime on top and some avocado. All of that might take the dish to a 7+/10, but it’s nothing I’ll rush to make again. Still, it’ll be fine to eat.
The worst is when new recipes aren’t salvageable and I’ve spent time, energy, and effort into sourcing ingredients and making a dish. That does happen and it’s so dispiriting, but I can’t make the same 10 recipes again and again; that’s so boring.
Fortunately, the bulgogi tacos were a hit, as predicted. I only wish our oven had a better broil function; it’s really hard to get things to brown well and I’m not sure why. I made a spicy cucumber salad to go with them (too spicy for N) and S cut the cucumbers all fancy into spirals. I ended up cooking only one of the flank steaks so the other could marinate more overnight.
On Sunday I made homemade chicken stock and beef stock to have on hand for the future, Korean marinated soft boiled eggs (as a way to elevate ramen), and energy bites and apple muffins for snacks. I ate some leftover beef stew that I had defrosted when we first got back from holiday. (It was mediocre and I might toss the rest, as I don’t think anyone else will eat it. Sigh.) And I cooked the other marinated flank steak. I feel like I spent the whole weekend in the kitchen and I kind of did; prepping, cooking, and cleaning is very time consuming.
If we lived right in the city, feeding ourselves would be easier, to a degree. This is one of the tradeoffs of choosing an accommodation farther out with space and a view. And while I love our view, the lack of ease when it comes to feeding ourselves has been a pain in my side.
But the way we have to shop for food (even if we were closer in) is different from the US and even other parts of Europe. That’s because for the most part we shop for meat, produce, and all other groceries in separate places. When I say supermarket, I’m referring to where we buy “all other groceries.” We mostly have to purchase produce separately, though typically there’s a vendor in front of supermarkets, but butchers are entirely separate and the good ones are nowhere near where we live.
Stores don’t have pre-prepped ingredients (e.g., chopped onions or pre-cut or seasoned chicken), meal kits, or any other kind of semi-prepared meals that we can quickly throw together. It’s not a concept that’s arrived. Hence, most everything is from scratch.
We do eat out some, but it’s not convenient based on where we live. And about once a week I’ll order delivery in because I’m so tired of cooking. But I learned the hard way that I can’t necessarily order delivery when it’s raining, as drivers may not be available. So I watch the weather because the last thing I want to try to do when it rains is go grocery shopping. If I see a storm is coming, I try to get a head of it. That means another round of meal planning and usually multiple trips to buy everything and get it home.
Sometimes we’ll do a really big grocery run (more akin to our old US trips) at one of the bigger all-in-one supermarkets and then get a taxi home. We do that when we also need a lot of household goods like soap, shampoo, and toilet paper, and heavy things we can stock up on like sparkling water and shelf-stable milk. But it’s not practical to do these too often and it requires C and I to go together so we have enough arms and hands to carry all the bags to a taxi. And taxis are hard to come by if it’s raining, so we have to go on a non-rainy day. Whew! It’s a bit complex.
My goal is to find some ways to lighten the load. Theoretically one of the butchers we like can deliver, so we need to explore that. And there’s a place that’s kind of like a CSA (community supported agriculture) that delivers once a week that I’m going to try, despite its higher prices. (It’ll be worth it for the time and sanity saved if it works out.) And if/when the supermarket at the bottom of the hill opens, that will also help a little.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing the conveniences of large supermarkets with pre-prepped items like pre-made salads, ground turkey, pre-seasoned chicken, boxed soups (not to mention fresh ones), and ready-to-heat meals. Don’t even get me started on Trader Joe’s. What I would give for a spatchcocked lemon chicken, ready-to-heat mashed potatoes, and pre-made salad! This is why I was so excited to have an amazing, full-service grocery store around the corner during our holiday stay in Vienna. I could’ve happily lived there (both at the store and in Vienna, LOL). Alas, it’s not possible.
If this post sounds like I’m complaining, well, I am, a little. But here are some things I’m thankful for:
The view from our villa
The fact that I have built-in exercise when getting groceries
We’re eating a lot less processed food
I have time to be creative with what and how I cook
No one in the family has food allergies
We have an oven (that was not the case in Penang and it’s quite uncommon in SE Asia in general)
We have an Instant Pot (it helps sooooo much)
We have a microwave (that was not the case in Denmark)
I remind myself that this period of time in our lives will, at some point, end. This “struggle” to feed ourselves will not go on forever. And while it is a lot of work compared to what I’m used to, we have abundance available to us and we are not going to go hungry, which is more than many families around the world can say, so I try to keep it all in perspective.
What challenges have you had in feeding yourself outside of your home country?