Marjane

Today's adventure was the search for a wonderful paradise of culinary possibilities that I had only heard about from secondhand accounts. The name of this magical place John and I would discover is called Marjane (marjhan). This place, we had been told, was Fes' equivalent to an American supermarket. Unfortunately the food at home isn't always amazing and even when I do eat everything at meals I am still hungry most of the time. here. To understand the second goal of my mission, I need to regress back to the weekend when I was sick. As most people know I don't eat a whole lot of breads or sugars and while I was sick both of those things had a tendency to make me feel even sicker. I am still having a hard time getting bread down this week. But while I was sick I had this random craving for carrots and ranch dressing. Don't ask me why, but that would have been heaven on Sunday. I am guessing because the combination is not only delicious but smooth and refreshing as well. Even after on Monday, I still had this desire, so I made it my mission this week to get those two things. After yesterday I finished writing the days entry and John and I set off in our little red taxi hoping the driver understood what we said and that we would end up in the right place. After driving towards the outskirts of the city we saw what had to be it. A large concrete building with large 'Marjane' signs and a parking lot of cars meant we were at our destination. And it was much bigger than we expected.
I enjoy going to the grocery store at home in the first place and could be completely content just walking around and looking at food. When I go to get food it only adds to the fun. I like food, I know most of you are not surprised. The prospect of being able to see what more normal foods they have was exciting. We began at one end of the food aisles and decided we would systematically snake through the aisles so we wouldn't miss anything. I won't run you through aisle by aisle, instead I'll just hit the high points of the trip. Food in Morocco is relatively cheap, but certain things like cereals appeared more expensive even though bread costs next tot nothing in this country. Morocco has the same economic concerns with rising fuel and food prices just like in the U.S.. Unfortunately Morocco doesn't do big jars of peanut butter. There isn't much and in comparison to America the jars are tiny. I did run across a can of Pringles on the 'chip' aisle that was "Texas BBQ" flavor. I hadn't planned on getting any, but how could I say no? Later on I found the dressing and bottled items like ketchup and BBQ sauce. I scanned and scanned looking for my ranch. Apparently they do every salad dressing imagineable here except the one I was looking for. Unfortunately my mission would not be complete but that doesn't mean it couldn't be a success. They did have a gigantic wall of ketchup and mustard oddly. My last stop was the produce section where you can get a kilo of most vegetables for about 75 cents. The fruit and vegetables here are much cheaper than in the U.S. And the prices were similar for fruit. I also happened to see a swordfish head in the seafood section. Not something I usually run into at Wal-Mart.
At the end of the excursion, it turned out being a worthwhile trip. I will definitely be returning to the Marjane for supplementing my caloric intake between meals since I usually wait around eight to ten hours between lunch and dinner. Until next time.

~Andrew