Swiss Supermarket Discoveries Part III: Take a hike!

If you actually want to hike in Switzerland (and of course you do!), there are all levels from hikes for flatlanders to experts to alpinists (See Swiss Alpine Wanderlust Packing List for Serious Hikers).

View on the Eiger. Image courtesy of Dominique Schreckling

So don’t let those enormous Alps intimidate you because you can do a lot at the lower levels. A hike for you may even be around the Swiss vineyard areas or even in town or on one of the relaxing cruises on Lake Geneva! Whatever the activity you will need a picnic lunch and the best place to find the ingredients is the Swiss Supermarket!

: Alpine Picnic image courtesy of Olivier Bruchez flickr

The Importance of Carrying around Swiss Food Snacks and Picnics

There are chalets and cafés in unlikely locations in the Pre-Alps and Alps (even at 6’000 feet and higher), but you should still carry food and water. It is imperative if you are traveling with children.

Even if you do not plan a strenuous day, you should always pack more than you think you will need in terms of food (although as light weight as possible because the altitude makes it heavier!). For one thing you can make friends if you have food. I have shared my energy food-filled backpack with many a desperate tourist half way up the mountain who had nothing to eat and who underestimated the effort of the hike and the time involved in order to reach their destination – almost always uphill!

This is not to say that there is not a wonderful choice of restaurants in Switzerland if you “hiking” around town. Au Contraire! But as a traveler like me, you may find yourself hungry at odd times and lunch service is usually over at 2:00 PM. Dinner does not start until usually 7:00 PM and it’s almost impossible to get served after 10:00 PM. There are exceptions and you will find them in the list of NileGuide restaurants. The reason behind this is that most waiters, chefs and owners work split shifts and need a break between lunch and dinner. You may also want to buy food items for breakfast if your hotel only serves Continental Breakfast (bread and coffee or tea). But some hotels have excellent breakfast buffets with muesli (a mix of raw cereal grains to which you add milk or yoghurt and fruit and nuts), fruit, cheese, meats, and even eggs and other hot dishes. Load up on that and you won’t be hungry until 3:00 PM!

The “Lac Leman” boats and Belle Epoque paddle steamers are wonderful, but the food onboard (depending on the boat) usually leaves a lot to be desired, especially the sandwiches! Most locals take their own picnic. Except in the inside restaurant which usually has fairly good food, you can eat at any table on the ship. There are however, some special cruises for lunch and dinner that have superior cuisine

Swiss Food Choices for Visitors on the Go

There are now a lot of practical choices to carry around that are found in prepared high end specialty delicatessen stores. However, they cater more to local people taking it home or high school students eating it there in the store. So head for the big orange M (Migros) or the Coop supermarkets for snack supplies.

Valaisan Fleury Jambon Cru (smoked raw ham) image courtesy of LeShop.ch

Make your own sandwich. Swiss French speaking regions tend to sell what they call a sandwich which is a baguette with butter and a slice of either (not both) ham or cheese. Choices are improving but the concept of Sandwich is not yet fully understood in Switzerland except at rather expensive gourmet food stores. You will always probably be disappointed with ready-made sandwiches but they are improving.

Or just get the ingredients and eat them separately. You can never go wrong with fresh bread, hard or semi-hard cheese, and dried Valaisan air-dried meat (a specialty with many varieties and easy to eat as well as delicious). Other good choices are ham (it comes cooked or raw “cru” which really means it’s smoked), fruit such as apples, bananas, or kiwis which travel well and nuts (for the salt that you will lose walking or hiking) or Swiss trail mix. So what is Swiss trail mix? Sorry but there are no M&Ms; just excellent healthy dried mix of fruits and a great variety of nuts (no peanuts). A little log of “pate en croute” is also a good choice and easy to carry and you just slice it with your new Swiss Army knife.

Viande Seche from Gruyere (air-dried beef) image courtesy of LeShop.ch

It will be difficult to decide on which Swiss cheese to travel around with as there are 100s of local varieties of cheeses in Switzerland. Sometimes while hiking in the Pre-Alps you run across little summer chalets where they make it. You can never go wrong with those homemade cheeses but just in case you don’t find any, take some with you. It’s less important if it’s cold out, but in hot weather, it’s better to buy hard cheeses such as Emmental (the one with the holes), or Gruyere which are both named after their region of production.

Emmental cheese (you know it as Swiss cheese) image courtesy of LeShop.ch

Babybel minis in a sack in the commercial cheese section (regular and now low fat “light”). As many of you know, it tastes something like Gouda but according to Swiss (and certainly the French) standards, it’s tasteless. I like it.

Babybel Mini Cheese Light image courtesy of LeShop.ch

Be sure to read the labels on cheese at the supermarket. The ones just mentioned are pasteurized but there are cheeses that are not and even though they are delicious and there are only rare cases of food poisoning, your vacation is not the time to experiment with this unless you are with someone who knows the cheese. Look on the label for “Pasteurisée”. If you are unsure, ask a store clerk. Someone in the store will speak English but perhaps not everyone.

Our Daily Swiss Bread

Bread is especially important to buy daily here and they do not sell day-old. This is because it is not full of chemicals in order to preserve it and furthermore, the climate is dry here. If you cut slices and leave them out, you will have toast. I use a bread sack to get it from drying out so quickly but I never cut the bread in advance. Bread is always sold whole, not sliced. So if you buy bread and ingredients for a sandwich make sure that you wrap it well so that it does not dry out and I’m talking about minutes, not hours. Since you will no doubt buy a Swiss Army knife here, you will be prepared for this. There is sliced bread available in packages (with preservatives) but that’s called in French “toast” and it’s used to make canapes. You won’t like it in a sandwich (I don’t like it even in a canapé unless it’s toasted and served with butter and Norwegian salmon). Switzerland is a paradise for healthy bread lovers. France is catching up but the banquette is still omnipresent which is delicious, but not as healthy as a staple. In Switzerland we are able to buy fresh bread full of a mix of whole grains (called “cereale” in French) and then varied by mixing the dough with fresh nuts, sunflower seeds, or pumpkins seeds which are also put on the top of the loaves. In addition there is delicious potato nut bread and olive bread that is abundant with olives.

Swiss Nutbread (not a cake) image courtesy of LeShop.ch

The choice is unlimited. In the supermarkets, unlike the bakeries which only put the bread in a sack when you buy it (if you ask), the bigger stores where they bake the bread in-house so the smell is enough to help you find the bread section, just in case you don’t know. They also have the fresh bread on the shelves in the wrappers which are partly transparent so that you can you see what’s inside.

From the Green Swiss Pastures

In the produce section of the supermarket, you can usually buy prepackaged items or buy bulk. For the bulk produce, look for the number listed by the price and go to the nearest set of scales, enter the number that you find near the produce item and your pricing label will print out and you stick it on the sack (saves a lot time at the checkout and money for the store!). Plus you realize how much you are paying and may change your mind.

Regular or organic food (which is called “bio”) is readily available but the regular produce is also very healthy even in the supermarkets here because they use a lot of “natural” fertilizer which has its own prevailing seasonal aroma in the air out in the pastures (which are quite close to the city!). There are small food shops and dietetic shops that sell gluten-free and other specialty foods but there is still not a lot of choice of those products in the supermarket.

By law, all foods in supermarkets must have the origin of the produce or other product information on the label (or the near the price tag on the display) so that you know where the food is coming from and what’s inside. Local Swiss food is excellent and usually (but not always) less expensive.

Kiwi Gold image courtesy of LeShop.ch

Give Me Some Swiss Sugar!

I know that you’re going to want to carry Swiss chocolate and it’s excellent for quick energy to be sure, not to mention that it is some of the best in the world. Before you start feeling guilty about loving and indulging in Swiss chocolate, remember that cocoa (and especially dark chocolate) has very concentrated amounts of iron and is in the first iron-rich food group! You can verify that with the Red Cross blood donor units. If it’s summer, you already know the probability of melting but if you wrap your chocolate in paper and do not put it in plastic, you have a better chance. Actually, newspaper is the best but of course, you will cover your chocolate with a clean paper napkin first. More and more of the chocolate bars are packaged in paper carton which is helpful. They are also bigger and more expensive this way! Perhaps a little too much iron for you!

Chocolate Bar Filled with Kirsch Liquor Boxed image courtesy of LeShop.ch

Some of you may already be familiar with the famous Swiss breakfast drink Ovalmatine which you may know as Ovaltine, the product name that was exported abroad in 1905. There are many snack variations now.

The Swiss Army recommends OvoSport (really!). It’s a chocolate covered high energy power bar with Ovalmatine inside (of course) and provides you with 13 vitamins, calcium and magnesium.

Ovo Sport Chocolate Bar with Extra Energy Malt Inside image courtesy of LeShop.ch

Another Swiss sweet to top off your picnic or to carry as a snack (sorry no chocolate in this one) is the very traditional Bischofberger Baerli-Biber – an authentic Swiss classic! It’s a round shaped large “cookie” made of gingerbread and filled with sweet hazelnut or almond paste. Easy to carry and most appreciated at the end of the afternoon. Stick with the Swiss sweets such as any of the above and forget about cookies which are usuallz dry and bland.

What to drink? Stay tuned. Bon appetit!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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