#ThirdWorldProblems

Blackberry Marble Cheesecake

I may technically live in a third world country, but it really feels closer to fourth or fifth and 'developing' may be a stretch. Okay maybe that's a little unfair; even in the last year there have been small improvements, like people actually removing ice off the roads once they freeze over. Take the cheesecake above, however. Cream cheese is found at a large market that sells quite literally EVERYthing food related under one roof, and we pay roughly $20 for a kilogram. Philadelphia cream cheese? I wish. It's about $20 for 8oz, no kidding. And that's when you can find it, which is about once every three or four months. I don't even eat cheesecake so there's no way I'm spending that much on cream cheese for other people, I'm really not that nice. Luckily most other ingredients are available - except fresh berries. The only time I've seen berries here, they were the small boxes that you get in grocery stores in the US (you know, the plastic ones that have just enough berries for a small snack and leave you still-hungry), and I kid you not, those blueberries were $40. Forty goddam dollars. And yes, of course I'm converting to USD. So fresh berries in my cheesecake? Fuck no. Frozen it is. The chocolate and this were the crowd favorites, but of course the empty bottles of cabernet and whiskey makes for a very complimentary crowd either way.
It's pretty interesting living in a place where you can only get certain items at certain times of year. And I don't mean mango season for mangoes - I mean everything from cereals to walnuts. If you find a cereal you like, you better pick that shit up right then and there, and stock up too. The way food items are brought in is in bulk - in fact the most common brand for anything American is Kirkland (yup, I'm talkin Costco here) - and once the shipment comes in, the city is flooded with that item for a month or so. Honey nuts cereal the latest shipment? You will find it EVERYwhere. But the second it runs out, so does your luck. You have no idea when it will be available again, if ever. It's fun to try and bake/cook with substitutions though - keeps life interesting in the middle of nowhere. You know what we never run out of though? Check it out ->

No, this isn't a liquor store. This is every supermarket in the city. The part that really tickles me though, is that the alcohol is the only thing that has security tags on it. And a part of the supermarket, on the second floor, is a proper shop that sells furs that cost up to USD 1000...those don't have security tags. Only the booze does.