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“Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; … For life is more than food…’”  Luke 12:22a,23a New International Version

When Jesus gave these words, he was advising his followers primarily about worry. He was letting them know, in a sense “don’t sweat it, God will provide somehow.”  Their concerns may have been about financial means, or possibly the impact of crop loss or drought.  Fortunately, these are not issues for us here in the Czech Republic.  Food prices, in general are lower than in America, and there is no shortage of food supplies to be found.  But, unless we are to be fed by ravens (1 Kings 17), we need to go out and get it.

Anna and Chris on a recent shopping trip in the Czech Republic

What Aisle is My Food On?

The format of most Czech supermarkets seems familiar enough.  Produce (easily identifiable) is near the front.  Meat (also easy to identify) tends to be toward the back.  There are aisles of chips, and rows of soda.  There are refrigerators with cheese and yogurt, and freezers with ice cream and frozen potato products.

Differences in food processing can throw you for a loop when trying to find food though.  For instance, neither eggs nor milk will be found in the big refrigerated sections we are used to. Due to differences in food processing neither of these products require refrigeration in Europe.

Culture can also play a role in confusion too.  On a recent shopping trip, I scoured the aisles looking for something I knew should be very common: vegetable oil.   After countless trips through the baking section, I asked an employee and then found the oil, along with vinegar on the back wall behind the produce section.

Not to self: oil is associated more with salad dressings than with baking here.

Is That What I Think It Is?

Even if you are in the right aisle, how can you tell what items are?  When it is meat or produce – something you can see, it is easy.  But deciphering what is in a package by the image on the box, jar, or can is really hard.  I remember a guest speaker in a missions course long ago sharing about this exact predicament.

In Africa, he said, jars had pictures of what food they contained printed on the packaging.  This confused a missionary to the United States when he saw baby food which only had an image of a smiling baby on it.  Imagine the confusion caused by the small jars filled with texture-less orange, green, or tan paste.

Because of translating recipes for my cooking channel, I feel in my element reading Czech food labels.  My problem is that I like reading them so much, I can get lost in an aisle trying to figure out what everything is, even after I have found what we are looking for.  Chris and Anna take a more technological approach, using the Google lens application to translate labels for them.

How Do I Pay for This?

Checkout continues to be the most challenging part of the process for us and sometimes the clerks as well.  Imagine wheeling up to a cash register with a cart full of food, knowing that the clerk and you don’t share a common language and that problems will most likely arise from your payment.

One issue that we struggled with initially was weighing bulk items.  In the United States, most of the time this is done at the register.  For most Czech markets it is done where the food is stored.  In my first experience with this, the cashier (clearly upset), left her register to show me where the scale was.  Although I couldn’t understand her at the time, the message I got was clear: “don’t bring unweighed items to my line again”.  Noted.

With experience, we are learning this process for each of the stores we go to. Another issue that is more persistent though is actual payment.

While most Czechs use contactless payment (credit card, apple watch, etc.), Czech payment terminals don’t always know what to do with American credit cards.  After tapping our card, we must do something completely foreign here: sign our receipts.  Czechs do not need to sign after their payment, so cashiers may never have seen this procedure.  Chris is in the habit of carrying a pen to ease the process.

Wrap-up

So, what is God teaching us through all our food adventures (and misadventures)?  I think it goes back to the verse that I shared at the beginning of this post.  First, I need to not worry about the process of getting the food we are going to eat. God knows that we need it and has so far been faithful in helping us through every shopping excursion.  Second, life may be more than just food, but life with Christ can be found in the details and the mundane as we learn to trust Him more – even while shopping.

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