food tips

My initial days here were a little nervous. never cooked before, never bothered with grocery shopping, and now I've gotta do everything for myself rather than have everything done for me.

My client Cyril, and another colleague from India, took me grocery shopping and I would have found it hard to survive without their help.

Well, for the benefit of any lost souls like me who come to the bay area, and fret in search of food:

India cash and curry in Sunnyvale: good for:
- Pavel's Lowfat Russian yogurt -- equivalent to our Indian curd -- almost the same really.
though personally i prefer, Yoplait's fruit yogurt - my favorite comfort food.
- vegetables and apples (cheaper here according to her, as they don't charge for the 'presentation effects' of Safeway) - carry small sachets of haldi, mirchi, jeera/ajwain, salt from home, chop and dice, slapdash with spice and cook. worked for me.
- Parampara chicken / fish masala mixes (buy the meats from Safeway, cut, and follow the instructions on the masala packs) -- worked well for me, both fish n chicken
- comfort foods : maggi soups and noodles
- Roti packs (quite thick, but they tend to fluff up like 'foolkas' if you do it right, though i only managed it with one or two :P )
- berkeley farms milk (vitamin d)
- Grimmway Farms cut & Peeled Baby Carrot packs (1$ each)

Safeways (miramonte and everywhere really): good for:
- deals on hershey's kisses and nuggets (chox)
- breakfast cereal (Post - Honey bunches of oats : delicately flavored), though I also liked a berry flavored mix from Trader Joe's
- eggs
- nestle nesquik chocolate flavored milk (Very good)
- Safeway's butter top bread
- frozen meats (chicken breasts and fish)
- fruits (bananas, apples, purple grapes -- really yum)
- veggies (quite a range)

Trader Joe's: good for organic produce (non genetically enhanced stuff)
- milk
- juices, etc...

Costcos:
good for all stuff in bulk and cheap,

I found (confirmed by cousin lancy), the cost of groceries for two weeks, per person comes to roughly about 100 USD... that's if you don't want to starve yourself.

And yea, Safeway's has something called a Safeway card, that earns you fair discounts on shopping (some products not all). So on a bill of 103 USD, I saved about 18 USD. not bad... Apparently, filling out a form gets you the card for free. I just used my colleague's card though.