The next few sentences are not complaints. They're just necessary statements to set off the conclusion of this story.
My resolution to shop at a new, very small grocery store that is seven minutes away from my house has been working out really well. However, most weeks I have to shuffle my meal plan on the fly because of ingredients that are not available. I'm not talking about fancy cheese (I already know I can't get it there) or American imports (ditto) - on a regular basis, this store is out of key vegetables, or fruits, or meats, or whatever. Once in a while, though they make up for it with a random bounty of amazing food, like pomegranates for 50 cents/lb., or whole pineapples for $1.50 each, or that one time they had seedless (!!!) non-rotting (!!!) grapes for...well, it wasn't cheap, but they were GOOD.
Today was a low day, though, because they didn't have milk. MILK. They had a few 4-packs of the milk powder UHT stuff, but that stuff is awful. We are UHT snobs and only buy the UHT milk made from milk, not powder. So I was in a defeatist mood by the time I got to the last aisle: pasta. That's when I saw this:
I don't know who made a mistake such that a whole flat of real American macaroni and cheese was delivered to podunk mini-Carrefour in Sharjah, but I love them. Not for my own sake, but for my kids...and possibly my husband. Thank you, mystery macaroni and cheese orderer. It was almost worth not being able to buy milk. Almost.
My resolution to shop at a new, very small grocery store that is seven minutes away from my house has been working out really well. However, most weeks I have to shuffle my meal plan on the fly because of ingredients that are not available. I'm not talking about fancy cheese (I already know I can't get it there) or American imports (ditto) - on a regular basis, this store is out of key vegetables, or fruits, or meats, or whatever. Once in a while, though they make up for it with a random bounty of amazing food, like pomegranates for 50 cents/lb., or whole pineapples for $1.50 each, or that one time they had seedless (!!!) non-rotting (!!!) grapes for...well, it wasn't cheap, but they were GOOD.
Today was a low day, though, because they didn't have milk. MILK. They had a few 4-packs of the milk powder UHT stuff, but that stuff is awful. We are UHT snobs and only buy the UHT milk made from milk, not powder. So I was in a defeatist mood by the time I got to the last aisle: pasta. That's when I saw this: