It is my turn to write the blog this week, so naturally there will not be any redeeming value in reading it. (Similar to the Stretch of No Redeeming Value on the original Hole-in-the-Rock Trail – it has no value but you have to pass over it to get to something interesting.)
I will start with my best story. On a recent Sunday, during a priesthood meeting I attended, the man who was teaching the lesson was unsuccessfully trying to find a scripture in his Bible. Another man in the class asked, “Would you like to borrow my iPad?”
“Oh no,” came the reply. “That would be like giving a strawberry to a pig.”
Speaking of strawberries, you may be interested to know about grocery stores in Northern Ireland. I am somewhat of an expert, as we seem to be in one every three days.
Apparently, we like to eat. I am always saying, “Why can’t we ever have a salad or something?” To which my wife replies, “Don’t you know I’ve had diarrhea since Easters?” (If you have not seen Nacho Libre at least 3 times, just forget the previous two sentences; all you need to know is Nacho Libre is Spanish for Cheese-flavored Professional Wrestling.)
Anyway, back to the grocery store. You have to wear your warmest winter parka and heavy snowmobile boots to keep from freezing to death in the store. They keep the temperature in the refrigeration & freezer cases at approximately 0˚ Kelvin (which is, incidentally, named after a Belfast-born physicist named William Thomson, who adopted the title, Baron Kelvin of Largs so his peers started calling him Lord Kelvin – because Lord Tiberius was already taken by someone in the Edgemont 8th Ward – and thus we have 0˚ Kelvin = Absolute Zero = -459.67˚ F). As this is way colder than the ice cream needs to be kept at, the extra cold air is wafted around the grocery store to keep shoppers from aimlessly loitering in the potato section. This maximizes footfall (a retail term referring to foot traffic in the store). So you get the idea. The grocery store requires heavy coats, scarves, boot and gloves. And you will still be so cold when you get out you will drive to McDonalds, buy a coffee and pour it on your lap to thaw out. Of course, Latter-day Saints do not do this. Instead, we buy hot chocolate and pour on our laps to thaw out.
The largest section in the grocery store is easily the potato section. This is an entire aisle dedicated to spuds. They have every kind of potato you can imagine, and some that you can’t. Potatoes come in all sizes, colors, shapes, country of origin, race and creed.
The net result of all this, is that everything costs twice as much as it does in the States, and you have to buy three (3) days worth of groceries at a time, so you can eat them before the expiration date. Now my sweet mother scoffed at expiration dates. For her, if it was good enough to put in the can in 1987, it was good enough to eat in 2010. In our own experience, we have found that dairy products expire exactly at midnight on the date of their expiration. You cannot go one minute past the date or it looks like that blue mole on the forehead of a famous teacher at an unnamed high school somewhere in Southeastern Utah.
My companion and I have, on the other hand, very happily consumed bread, fruit and vegetables up to 10 days after their Use By Date.
Here are some things we have tried: canned raspberries (because we could not find fresh), Yorkshire pudding (which, stupid me, I mistakenly thought to be a pudding), animal fat in a box (as a substitute for shortening), yogurt made from rice (which is excellent), every flavor of cheese imaginable (even nasty cheese is good over here), coriander (which is called cilantro in America and which my sister, Cathie, says you should always eat as little of as possible, but which my companion and I say, you should eat as much of and as often as possible), prepared dinners from the grocery store (which, in my opinion, were never intended to be consumed by humans), mince pie (see previous comment) and Irn Bru (a delightful Scottish concoction, which actually says on the can, “Bru’d in Scotland to a secret recipe for over 100 years” – we don’t know if the recipe is 100 years old or if they have been brewing it for more than 100 years or if it takes 100 years to brew one can, but it is good!).
When you go to the checkout, you can save yourself a wee bit o’ cash (Northern Irish for a shilling or two) if you use your own bags. Everyone has reusable bags and everyone bags their own groceries. Even little old ladies that can barely walk and cannot see over the counter bag their own. And, the checkers all wear warm coats, with the store logo on them and sit on really nice swivel chairs with armrests and high backs. The only people that stand in the store are the customers, but we don’t stand for long because we are in danger of frostbite if we don’t move it right along.
The stores are all on the second floor of a structure where you can park your car on the first floor. They have very long escalators (which are called travelators) upon which you take your trolley (shopping cart) and it uses some kind of magic power that locks it in place on the travelator so that a heavily laden grocery cart does not get away from you on the downhill trip and run over someone’s little old granny.
I could keep going, but how much do you really need to know about grocery shopping in Belfast?
We just spent our first Christmas in 34 years without any of our children in the house. It was a wonderful opportunity to focus on the Saviour. We didn’t even have a gift exchange between ourselves. But what we did have was a wonderful, Saviour-centered Christmas season. We definitely miss our family but we were so busy, we forgot to be homesick and so it was just brilliant.
We love you and Happy New Year.
Elder Blickenstaff
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