smells, tastes, impressions

i am a supermarket girl. inbetween job and university i need to do my shopping as fast and as cheap as i can.

strolling through a market is something i hardly ever do. there is a tiny litte "grünmarket" in linz urfahr right where i live and there is another bigger market right across town called "südbahnhofmarkt". my parents are here quite a lot though it is an hour drive for them to get here. i sometimes take the opportunity to join them and i always enjoy these mornings with complex smells, tastes and impressions.
though i tend to to squander all my money on healthy and unique local specialities and food from abroad i never regrett buying speck (bacon), schnaps (hard liqor), bauernkrapfen (some kind of donut) or ziegenkäse (goat cheese) to restock my larder and to support local farmers.

see some impressions of today right here:

is it still common in other countries to use scales like this?

falls bounty of the region i live in. take a look:

i guess potatos have been the most common vegetable for hundreds of years round here. cheap and filling and easy to produce for the countrymen

parasol mushrooms are easy to find this time of year. as a child i've been looking forward all year to eating them in autumn

wallnuts: collecting them in autumn - storing and peeling them all winter

root vegetables are also very common in my area

booooah! honey from the woods is terrific!!

can't wait to smell roastet chestnuts on the christkindlmarkt

kumquats, litchies and avocados have only been available in rural austria in recent years.

paprika is way more common here than chili

you do not get sweet potatos in supermarkets. they are really exotic in austria! even at the market you really really have to look for them and there are only very few stalls selling them

delicious: handmade pasta

even more delicious: marinated olives. i loooooooove olives!

of course you don't eat the handmade bars of soap. but they are still pretty to look at

what a heavenly treat! handmade chocolate with fillings beyond your imagination (greaves! cheese! safron! and this is only the tip of the iceberg) from zotter. you just have to check this out

this is what i miss the most when i leave the country for longer than a holiday trip. really good brown bread ...

... and "gselchtes" (smoked bacon). you just can not get good meat and saussage in other countries *ggg*

after all this running around i deserve a litte hot chocolate in a tiny litte café