1st of all, let me say THANKYOU to @alikoc07 who organize this official Steemit contest for the nice subject this round (I love the prompt), and @ainie.kashif who was a kind support and inspiration for me, while I was preparing the post. If you'd like to enter yourself, head for the rules and guides to this post.

NB. All images in the post are my own, first (exclusive) publication on Steemit - copyright (c) @qwerrie
NB. Post rewarding is set to 100% Steem power.
I never power-downed my account, and dont plan to. Steem on!

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The first things first, so I will start with the location. I live at St.Petersburg, Russia - its a large metropolis and the cultural capital of our country. Today it has a population of 5,400,000 people (its the northernmost city in the world with a population of over 1 million). In addition, it is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists... and all these people want to eat on everyday basis!

:)

Therefore, the city has a lot of bars, cafes and restaurants (perhaps even more than beauty shops!) and a huge number of supermarkets, large malls and a numerous small private stores.

In Autumn - a harvest time! - almost on every street there pop up a temporary outlets and kiosks, that sell melons and watermelons (see photo above).

Its no problem to find a store where you can buy any food supplies you need! The problem of choice isnt too important; to choose where to buy, I use the following criteria: lower price, quality of products, convenient location, (the last point, actually might be my number one criteria: the convenience of the store is the most important thing)... And, of course, I am pleased to buy products from the sellers I have established a good communication in the past; this is also a very important criterion for me.

There are 7 food stores at the 6-8 minutes on foot distance from my place (and a little further there are 4 large megamalls, where you can buy everything at all, including fruits and vegetables). As for the smaller green stores and kiosks... I find it difficult to count them all, three neighboring streets have a lot of them - 6? 10?

The greengrocery kiosk that I put on the cover (for its splendid visual side) is the closest to me, I think I can reach it in 3-4 minutes by foot. I don't really like the sellers there and the prices are much higher than average level, I never buy anything there. And here my story is approaching to the subject of the post!

The 'Fruits & Vegetables' store (a simple name, without any fashion-pretentiousness) is located at 12, Basseinaya Street, between the stationery store and the milk and meat store. Here is the address on the Yandex map (Yandex is the service all Russians are used to).

As you may see in the photo above, this is a simple store consisting of one big room only: everything is here. This is not a supermarket. I love simple things! The assortment is nor huge, neither splendid - I'd say it is sufficient, it has everything I need for simple everyday living and the prices are not much higher than average. In fact, I really like the owner of the store, she works as a seller herself. I like to buy goods from her, it is a pleasure to talk to this person. She is kind, smiling and does not impose anything unnecessary. Naturally, she has managed to remember me (I am "the person with the camera",- very often I walk into her store, having a DSLR camera with a large lens hanging off my neck :)

Another advantage is that next door another my fave food store is located, where I buy meat, milk, and some other products. Very convenient!

General view of the room with shelves, where stocks are laid out.

How often do I come here? Actually, my shopping is not regular, I usually go to the store when we are out of specific products and need to buy them. My wife writes a list and I decide which store I should go to.

This week I did not go to the store at all. And for the last month I remember buying ginger, red onions, carrots, cabbage and cauliflower, tomatoes, bananas, red apples, grapes, oranges and persimmons. To feed your curiocity, I bring here all the prices, in comparison, in rubles and in US dollars (the current rate of 1USD is about 80 Russian rubles, i.e. one rouble costs 0.013 US dollars):

ingredient	price, RU	price, $
ginger	300	4
carrots	30	0,4
onion	20	0,3
red onion	60	0,8
капуста	35	0,4
cauliflower	120	1,56
tomatoes	180	2,3
red apples	90	1,2
white grapes	170	2,3
bananas	65	0,8
lemons	105	1,3
oranges	145	2
persimmons	190	2

My wife never adds ginger or garlic to my list - she does not like to use these vegetables in cooking. But I make sure that there is always ginger at home - I like to add it to my tea and coffee. Ginger is one of my favorite products! (Although it has a non-cashy appearance...) It perfectly enhances the immunity, and everyone knows that it's better to be treated in advance than when you're already sick and the body is fighting the infection... Ginger is my first assistant, and I try not to buy medicines in pharmacies. By the way, last summer (in 2019) I even tried to grow ginger myself in our office, all summer I rejoiced looking at green stems and leaves. But in the autumn, when I dug it out in the hope of seeing a great result, it turned out that the result is so small ... that it does not even deserve the slightest attention. Alas. It is better to buy ginger in a green shop!

My macro shot of the ginger (the one I've got from the store).

We always replenish the stock of apples and bananas too - it is good to have a bag in which you can stick your hand and pull out something edible and delicious. Such a necessity often happens in our family in the evening, for example, when dinner has long been left behind, it's time to go to bed, and suddenly our child claims that he can not sleep and is hungry! I often offer her a glass of water (little children often do not understand their feelings, and tend to mix up thirst and hunger), or I offer her an apple / banana.

The king of our kitchen is onions and carrots, not only because they are the cheapest vegetables, but partly because of this too. I like to add onions and tomatoes to "wet eggs" (yes, I am the only one in our family who adores tomato eggs, not bacon eggs, and sometimes cook them for myself), but as for carrots... No soup can do without carrots, and my wife has in her portfolio a delicious cake I carrot. If you ever organize a competition on "homemade pies", I know what I will talk about in that case.

What is not in this shop is exotic tropical vegetables - such as mango, litchi, duriana, or yam - nothing that requires special storage and will wait for a special rare buyer interested in such exclusive rarities. All these fruits can also be bought, but in another store - for example, in Auchan Mall (25 minutes on foot from my house), there are refrigerators. You can buy pineapples, avocados, kiwi - they are well tolerated without problems. But we do not like these fruits and do not buy them.

On the general photo you may notice there are watermelons and melons in the assortment, but in fact, there are very few of them, 5-6 copies - they are present, I think formally, only for the assortment... because around, as I wrote above, there are a lot of temporary kiosks that sell only melons and watermelons - customers are certainly much more comfortable to buy these heavy (6-10 kg!) things in a convenient place near their home. This year I did not buy melons at all, although they are very tasty. I like seasonal food very much! but melons are quite expensive and our budget does not allow such purchases... So I just took a picture of melons.

On the photo above you can see that the shop has a wide range of grapes - 7 different varieties, as well as 6 varieties of pears, 7 kinds of apples.

At the right edge of the photo - near the door leading outside - you can see a chair, on it there are two boxes of discounted fruits and vegetables. In general, I haven't noticed in this store a rabid game on the subject of "have time and catch a discount" (what is the difference between large trade chains). This store prefers to offer a good price for a good product, which I personally like more. I like low prices, but I do not like to play discount games :)

Tangerines, oranges, grapefruits, lemons...

What I also love about this green shop is that it's all in the public domain, it's very convenient to evaluate the quality of the vegetables and to choose the pretty copies that suit you best. There are plastic bags hanging on the shelves, in which you put everything you need - all you have to do is pay at the cash desk (a small counter, near the exit, enclosed by a crowd of buyers) and bring to the car, which can be parked near the entrance to the shop - the whole street is at your disposal, parking is allowed. (But I don't have a car, but only a few bicycles - that's why the pedestrian accessibility of the store is so important for me, I carry all the shopping bags on my back).

In a cold closet, you can find greens and herbs, sometimes I buy dill, parsley or cilantro, basil, most often when we prepare summer salads. Another cupboard (its contents are poorly visible in the photo, but I haven't taken a separate photo) offers a range of dried fruits, nuts, spices, and the like. They are quite expensive, so we plan to buy such things in advance, and we buy them in other places - not where it is closer or more convenient, but where it is much cheaper. A couple of times a year we visit fairs, where you can replenish the stock of nuts and dried fruits, and treat yourself to all kinds of things that will meet and attract your eyes :).

Separate spices, as well as vitamins, household products, and much more, we buy online (!) on the American site iHerb. (Please do not consider this an advertisement). On the photo below you can see beautiful jars of spices, they come from iHerb.

This photo presents a typical dry foods store at annual New Year Gifts Fair, I attended back in December 2019. There were a few stores like this there, with more or less same foods assortment. A few times a year my wife and me visit such spots to obtain what we need, to replenish our stocks, and simply for the pure joy of shopping - one can develop the idea his household is missing something only when you look at it directly! Nuts, peanuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, cashews, several kinds of currants, dates, figs, dried persimmons, dried peaches, melons, pears, several kinds of raisins - dried grapes, halva, churchkhela (Georgian sweets made of hazelnut and grape juice), and much much more you can get here... Those are rather luxury dessers that we do not need on everyday life, and soing to such a Fair is more like a festive event, then household shopping.

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I possibly could round out my story about this grocery shop here, as I have told almost everything I planned. I want to mention just two more special purchases. The last, but not the least.

...In October, my wife got sick with the C-19 virus, fortunately her lungs were not affected and she didn't have to go to hospital, but she suffered very hard from the disease and was completely exhausted. After her well-being began to improve and the appetite returned, she started to eat again, she wanted to eat a lot, but the body did not accept food. She listened to her body, thought and ordered me to buy "a light food" - cauliflower. This is a very simple and delicious diet food, our favorite recipe is: precooked (boiled) cauliflower a bit fried in a pan in breadcrumbs, so that there appears a light crust - and you can serve it, with or without mayonnaise or other sauce.

I ran to the store several times, as soon as I bought a big head of cauliflower (3 kg), we ate it in 1-2 days and very soon I was running there again, to buy a new one. The saleswoman soon recognized and started welcomming me: "You come again for cauliflower, right?"

This may be the most pleasurable thing for me in the store - a kind personal attitude of the saleswomen.

And the last thing. I also wanted to add the persimmon photos to my post. Persimmons of course are being sold in the grocery, it is a seasonal product, in November it is being on sale everywhere, at every corner! I must confess that I love persimmon very much - but I love only its appearance, its outlook, I love to photograph it, and I absolutely do not like its taste (I simply have an idiosyncrasies to pears and persimmons, to their taste). Below I put a photo where you can see what the entrance to the store looks like. I was shooting the persimmons, tho.

:)

Three boxes of seasonal fruits and berries stand at the entrance to the grocery as an extra makeshift display (they do not stand on the ground, but on a small elevation, at the height of human height) - passing by, it is impossible not to notice and continue walking without having at least one look. This is a very simple and cheap advertisement - excluding the cost of printing banners, handouts, eye-catchers who dress up in stupid suits and persuade you to come to check and buy something... this is exactly the kind of advertising that existed hundreds of years ago: the display of the product itself. Yes, probably this move is not too wise in contemporary world, i.e.it isnt effective ... but I love this old-fashion way. In addition, it is eco-friendly and good for the environment, mind it.

Here we go. For a photographer (I am an amateur photographer) it is very important to have a good light..... and inside the store, the walls are painted in beautiful green - it turns into a good background in my photos - but to be honest, the lighting is very poor, at least it is unsufficient for taking good pictures. It is impossible to take a beautiful macro shot without a good light. And I wanted to take macros of persimmons. That is why I was especially grateful to this special "outdoors" display - twice I awaited for good lighting on a sunny day, and came here with one purpose: arranging a photo shoot with persimmon. I was pleased with the results. And of course, each time I walked away with some extra shopping :P

:)

My wife loves persimmons, and I regularly come to this greengrocery till the persimmons season is finished - and then at home I arrange a photo shoot with them. A worthless production!

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I hope you enjoyed my story and visuals.

Thanks for visiting my blog!