Food Per Favore?

Never in my life have I felt so incompetent, and I felt very incompetent when I was in Nepal and India. I just had the chance to finally go explore the downtown area by myself, with the goal of coming back with groceries for the week. It is so beautiful, just the way you might imagine an Italian city might look like. Lots of small shops and restaurants, people sitting outside in the sun eating and drinking wine. I was just surrounded by beautiful things. Because of my complexion, many people assume that I am also a Swiss Italian which helps me to blend in when I am alone. However, this facade ends the second I open my mouth. Grocery shopping without knowing any Italian was difficult. The shopkeepers treat me like a local until it becomes obvious that I am struggling with the most basic tasks, like weighing my fruits and vegetables myself, which is what is done in Switzerland. Also, grocery shopping is quite a time commitment; between walking there and back and visiting several shops to buy all the products I need, at least three hours have gone by. However, this seems to be perfectly normal and acceptable here, as if time has slowed in Lugano. The people here are very leisurely; there is no rushing around or unpleasant attitudes, which seems to give people all the more time to experience pleasure. In Lugano, life literally passes by at a much slower pace. Despite it all, I think I will look forward to some leisurely grocery shopping every week. I'm sure it will get easier as I learn more Italian.

While shopping, I realized that it will be more difficult to feed myself than I anticipated. All the food sold here is very fresh, and by law all stores must label where the food was produced and shipped from, making it very easy to choose local products. I would like to take this as an opportunity to eliminate processed foods from my diet and cut down on my carbon footprint by only buying local, fresh foods. It seems like the Swiss do it, and I really want to figure out how to do it too. I'm even thinking about eating local meat from a macelleria every now and then when I am really lacking in protein, because beans aren't very common here. Right now in my refrigerator and pantry I have tomatoes, carrots, plums, grapes, lettuce, blueberry jam, a homemade loaf of bread, cheese, yougurt, eggs, pasta, olive oil, and "italian beans" (whatever those are). All of these products were either local or imported from Italy.