GROCERY SHOPPING AT THE MALL

Imagine this scenario: You need more groceries, so after dinner you and your husband decide to go to the mall. You park in the underground parking lot and take the escalator ramp (ramp not stairs) up to the mall level. You walk through the mall to the last store (this mall is not that long) and it looks like a department store. You keep walking to the back of the department store and there is the grocery store. My husband wanted to take me to Dunnes to go grocery shopping so I could compare it with the Tesco store. I will take Dunnes, hands down any day over Tesco. Compare it with shopping at Smiths or Raylees, compared to Wal-Mart. I know there are lots of you Wal-Mart shoppers out there, but I am just not one of them. I agree with Amber - the Wal-Mart greeters need to be handing out Paxil for me to shop there. Anyway, I liked Dunnes lots better. Here are some things I couldn't find at the grocery store: 1) Paper Napkins - actually we could find them on the Party Aisle, but who wants to pay E2.50 (that's 2.50 Euro) for like 12 napkins? L says he hasn't been able to find any paper napkins anywhere. They are big on recycling here, so maybe people just don't use them. I guess I'll have to buy cloth
2) Straws - I did find straws on the paper aisle. I paid E1.99 for them. Yikes. But I drink my diet coke with a straw so it won't stain my teeth. :0) 3)Peanut butter - I'm not sure if they don't have this, or if I just can't find it. Of course I couldn't find the jam either, and I know they have that. 4) I found the pickles, but couldn't find relish. 5) I still can't find measuring cups or measuring spoons, and I know they'll be different, but I still need them 6) I found orange juice in the carton, but not frozen orange juice 7) I still can't buy bacon because of the Pork Ban 8) Ranch Dressing - we don't eat that many salads, but we like it to put on potatoes. They did have Honey Mustard and the regular dressings though. 9)I bought some stick butter, but it didn't come in the kind of packaging we have which is one stick = 1/2 cup butter. Imagine putting about 4 sticks together to make one big cube and that is what I bought. Only problem: there are no markings on the package like we have to cut it into measurements. 10)I can't find 2% milk. There is either Low-fat or Full-fat. Period. 11) Their oatmeal is weird. I bought Oat Flakes in a package. It looked similiar to what I buy at home. The other oatmeal I saw was Pin Oatmeal. ???

There was a girl and a lady bagging my groceries. She absoutely LOVED my shopping bags. I bought them at Albertsons before I left the States. She wanted to know where I got them. She said she'd never seen such colorful ones before. When Albertson's first put them out, they were only green. Then later they started offering them in all colors. I got lt. blue, black, green, yellow and pink.

The weird thing was when we finished shopping. We pushed our shopping trolley full of groceries back through the mall and down the ramp to the parking garage, where when L took it back to the trolley back to the trolley return, he got his Euro back. I told him the States should do the same thing. He told me why the States don't charge for their carts. Think of it. We don't have $1 in coinage. If you only charged a quarter, people wouldn't care about a quarter and wouldn't return the carts. It's only because they charge a Euro, which is equal to $1.39 in the US. That's enough for people to make the effort to return the trolley to get back their money. Ah, greed!