The Overseas Cookbook Part Two

Since getting paid my meat, chips and chocolate bar diet has been supplemented by a number of healthier ingredients: herring fillet steaks, cabbage, Smetana pancakes and closed-cup mushrooms from posh people's shop Stockmann (because no matter how much they actually earn, most TEFL teachers like to imagine they belong to the solid middle class), Maxima organic onions, solyanka soup from Super Netto, and Rimi sliced salami, frozen diced-carrots and peas, Kvass (a very mildly alcoholic cola-like drink made with black bread) eggs, kefirs, honey, rye bread and pelmeni (a kind of Russian ravioli). I even eat out occasionally - at a Korean restaurant last weekend and a pizza place on Thursday.

None of the four supermarkets I shop at are Latvian-owned. Rimi and Super Netto (a kind of down-at-heel Lidl) are based out of the same Swedish HQ, Stockmann is the Finnish Marks & Sparks, while Maxima branched out from across the Lithuanian border. Sometimes, though, I still walk along to the Central Market to point at piles of fruit and mumble my way through Man ludzu, vienu kilogramu mandarinus, paldies.