In each of the three countries I’ve lived in as an ex-pat – the USA, Mexico and Costa Rica – there have been new and, for me, unusual foods. Sometimes it’s not so much the food itself that holds the surprises but the packaging and pricing.

After a few months, you begin to get used to the differences and barely see them anymore… until someone visits you from the home country and expresses the same surprise you initially did. When my family visited me in Los Angeles from Canada, they could never find the sugar stored in the pantry. That’s because they were used to looking for a bag not a wax-covered carton that we were used to seeing used only for milk. I’ve since seen a similar carton used for fabric softener but can’t remember in which country that was: Mexico, I think.

In Costa Rica, neither my Canadian nor my American guests can find the condiments in the fridge. The mayo, mustard and ketchup don’t come in bottles – although these are available – but in bags with a built-in spouts for dispensing. These make a lot of sense, once you get used to the idea of the bags, as they require less space in the fridge and are more environmentally friendly than glass or plastic bottles.

Pricing is often shockingly low or shockingly high. I loved buying avocados (known as aguacates) in Mexico for about thirty cents each when these costs close to two dollars apiece in Los Angeles even though they were grown locally – that’s why I appreciated my neighbor giving me some from her backyard tree. I don’t even want to think about how much they cost in Toronto.

In Costa Rica, the weekly farmers’ market offers fruits and vegetables at low prices, with a lot of variety and the freshest flavors possible. The vendors will let you taste produce you aren’t familiar with to help you decide whether or not to buy it. The grocery stores here don’t seem to bother competing with the markets as the produce on offer is not attractive in either price or flavor.

Pretty well all American-style foods – breakfast cereal, canned soups, prepared foods, soda/pop, candy – are very expensive. For example, a one-liter bottle of Diet Coke costs $2.20 in San Jose and $1.60 at Ralph’s groceries in Glendale. Some things are cheaper in Costa Rica such as a loaf of whole-wheat bread in here sets us back $1.78 while in Glendale a similar loaf costs $2.79.

Gallo Pinto

Some pricing is hard to believe especially in name-brand, national grocery stores. Buying the ingredients to make rice and beans – or gallo pinto, the national dish of Costa Rica – costs: $1.69 for a pound of rice and $1.69 for the same amount of pinto beans for a total of $3.38. In the USA, cooks can make the same dish by paying only $.90 for a pound of rice and $1.00 for a pound of beans for a total of $1.90. When you consider that most Ticos eat this dish at least once a day and that they earn so much less than American salaries, on average, it is hard to figure out how they survive.

One of the first lessons of food shopping in a new country is to try to eat like the locals. That means minimal ‘American’ foods, less meat than we are accustomed to, very little prepared foods, almost no internationally-branded products and a lot of locally-grown and produced foods. The occasional chocolate bar or package of Oreo cookies make for a nice, but relatively expensive, treat.

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