My wife keeps saying that if somebody took care of the trash, roads, and air conditioning, Ukraine would not be a bad place to live. To that list I add greatly imporoved healthcare and a basic set of laws regulating entrepreneurship. I also keep saying that everything is more expensive in Ukraine than in the States, except for storebought food and most services.

Today I’ll elaborate on the grocery situation. We bought a few food items we normally buy in the States:

• Lunch meat
• Bread
• Milk
• Cereal
• Cheese
• Mineral water
• Alcohol
• Yogurt
• Frozen meals

We also buy lots of fruit and veg, but this time Grandma, and not the store, supplied some garden-fresh produce. By the way, lots of pimarily older people have their own gardens and plots of land designated for produce.

They cultivate their land very much like this weird two-legged creature seen here:

They sell surplus fruit and veg directly off the sidewalks near busy intersections, subway stations, or just wherever it is convenient for them. Because they have no money to invest into pesticides, you can bet your ass their produce is 100% el naturel (organic).

This is the beautiful spread we picked up at a local grocery store, which, by the way, looks exactly like your neighborhood American grocery store with only one difference – it’s very unorganized. Booze takes up 3 isles AND there’s a guy upfront selling more expensive varieties of liquor from a glass case. Some milk is refrigerated along the wall in coolers, but some is sitting on the shelves next to cat food and cookies.

In this small town grocery store we had a hell of a time finding standard items like yogurt and juice, which were also scattered around the store in odd places like fish stands, soda cases, and candy isles.

Here are the prices for the groceries in U.S. dollars:

• 1 lb. of cheese – $1.40
• 1 liter of 2.5% milk – $0.47
• 1 lb. of frozen pelmeni (meat ravioli) – $1.67
• Light flavored cottage cheese – $0.54
• Cereal – $2.28
• 0.8 lb. of fancy assorted chocolates (like Whitman’s Sampler) – $3.22
• 1 liter of currant/orange juice (with pulp) – $0.99 ea.
• 1 lb. of lunch meat (Doktorska Sausage) – $2.99
• 1 bottle (17 oz.) of Coca-Cola Light – $0.49
• Tequila Sauza Golden 24 oz. – $27.62
• Two big reusable bags – $0.08 ea.

Total grocery bill with 20% tax – $44.38. Considering we’d probably never buy fancy tequila or candies for ourselves and only bought them now as a present, our grocery bill would have been around $14. To save our dwindling cash reserves, I paid with my trusty 0% interest forever MasterCard.

Because I keep a very close look on the transactions online AND the store lookied like it was professionally rigged up to take credit and paycheck (debit) cards, I am almost certain my account number is not going to get jacked. However, I will de-authorize the card for foreign purchases as soon as we land in Chicago … just in case.

So what do you think? I thought the food was much cheaper. I didn’t even mention the very delicious Ukrainian bread for $0.30 per loaf, or 1.5 liters of Ukrainian mineral water for $0.40.

Cheese, candies, soft drinks, bread, milk, cereal, are all undoubtedly cheaper. Imported stuff is, of course, more expensive because it’s been on a boat … nothing you can do, really.

Now those who don’t believe in Ukraine you can have an omelette breakfast for 6 pepole for under ten bucks can just read this post.