Dove Chocolate? OMG!

Oh my god, just having a cuppa, flicking the channels and there is an advert for ..... wait for it..... Dove CHOCOLATE !! So it's not just your average bar of soap or bottle of shampoo or body lotion, as we all know it, but it's now a Chocolate Bar !!! You have to hand it to the Americans! the advert was just as appealing, if not more so, as the ones for the creamy body lotion and soap.

And that's not all..... they have added their all reliable ingrediant - da de daaaaaa..... PEANUT BUTTER !!! Well i never. Must get one of those for a taste, although i never liked peanut butter, or do i and i just "think" i don't like it! It just was not the snack of choice in Ireland when i was growing up and still is not. It was Jacobs Cream Crackers for me, with a dollop of Kerrygold.

And i learned something new, that "P-B-J" as they call it, is short for........ have you guessed? Answers on a postcard to this blog LOL !

These are the things i would only hear on Sesame Street as i grew up, oh how i'm reliving my youth here :-)

Amazingly accurate Weather Report - Wow!

Unbelieveable..... so there is a storm comming, a proper Texas Rain storm with added effects of lightening too ! The Americans are brilliant with the weather update......i mean, there we are enjoying a leisurely lunch time and the Munchkin is watching Barney and this little pop up comes up on the corner of the screen saying storm warning !!! .....and then the programme breaks to tell us the storm will be in our area in 19 minutes, yes 19 minutes, not a few hours or later today but 19 minutes in our area.


And might i point out, our area means our suburb, not the city or the State. How accurate are they??? ......, 19 minutes later - hey ho!...the storm arrives blasting into the garden, needless to say the Munchkin nearly lost her life it arrived so suddenly "Mammy look at the rain!!!" she yelped.

It was proper tropical rain too. It came, it saw and it went. In 20 minutes it was all over. So the grass, trees and flowers got their drink and the sun came back out to brighten our day and warm us all up again. My kind of rain i tell ya!

Our first week !

So here we are just over a week now and settling in nicely, i think ! I have been to the US so many times, but always as a tourist. Now i am a resident, or "Resident Alien" as the wonderful people at the Visa office like to label at us. However, i do kinda like saying "i'm a Resident Alien". Has a certain "ring" to it, don't you think?

So how is it different now?.... well everything is bigger and even bigger, Bigger, BIGGER..... "Texan style". The latest Dallas modern motto is "Think Big, live large!", quite fitting i think.

 

 

I notice in particular the food portions are bigger! OMG we went to the Olive Garden (Italian Restaurant Chain) the other eveing and ordered 2 standard main courses and a pizza for the Munchkin and they give you free salad (a huge bowl enough to feed 4) and free refills on drinks !!! it just kept coming and coming. The whole lot was just $35. That's about 27 euro's - you wouldn't even get a sniff of a steak at home for that. And we were rightly stuffed i tell ya - the BIG plates of pasta just couldn't be finished. The salad would have been a meal for the Munchkin and i alone, that is.... if she ate bloomin salad, ha.... not a chance..... toddler feeding - don't get me started, maybe that's a post for another day.

 

 

Anyway, so BIGGER is where i was going with this. BIG cars for example too. So we needed a rental car while we settled in and the smallest the Soldier could get from our buddies at Hertz was a Toyota Camry, jaysus !! I saw it and immediately said to him, "you have to bring that back", he said "I can't, it's the smallest they've got, we're in Texas now baby!", he was only short of the Cowboy hat on his head to go with the big grin on his face. So i got in and gave it a go, was dead nervous, had never driven automatic before, but it actually went OK, and there were no domestics in transit either. Munchkin was in the back and just kept saying "Mammy's driving, Mammy's driving", so cute ! As for the left foot, it's bye bye clutch for-e-v-e-r! When i get back home, i'm immediately changing over to automatic, my god what was i doing all those years when i could hav ebeen relaxing in a "bumper car" navitaging Irish roads and traffic. Hilarious! :-)

First trip to the Supermarket

I went food shopping the other night to have a nosey. It was a Saturday night too, wow how life has changed in 10 or even 5 years. My Saturday night highlight is a trip to my new American neighborhood Supermarket!

Well, the Munchkin was snoozing her head off in bed. Soldier was busy hanging pictures to make our apartment more homely and there was nada on the TV so i thought, it's open 24 hours, might as well and go to avoid the rush ! ;-)

So there i was with my trolley, better known as "cart" over here moving  up and down the ailes with a fine tooth comb to detect if brands i know maybe have different packaging and yet the product is still the same. Badly need to find some Barney beans or Dora beans or even Shrek beans for the little Munchkin, but do you think they had them? Not quite, but something similar and i got away with it yesterday when i gave them to her for lunch.


I learned that the Fruit and Veg section is better known in these parts as the "Produce" section.  And low and behold, as i'm driving the cart round the Produce section what happens but a wonderful spontaneous water fall, all over the greens - cucumbers, kale, cabbage etc.   Yes at regular intervals the automatic sprayers come out (did i say waterfall) to pour a nice fine mist on the fresh food.  Great idea as long as you don't get your nosey head caught under it.


Was also looking for Chicken and White Wine soup that i buy all the time in TESCO, well they had 50 million different types of Campbell's soup but do you think they had that flavour? No sireeee, so had to settle for just Chicken or just Mushroom to make my old favourite......"Chicken in White Wine Sauce".  Of course i can just throw in half a bottle of white wine for flavour - YUM! Problem solved :-)