Weetabix!

silja

I have Weetabix!
Non ex-pats have no idea how happy that makes me. They sell them now in my local Walmart, together with Tetleys Tea, and McVitte's chocolate covered digestives.

ProudDUB

Tetleys Tea?

TETLEYS ?????

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Get some Barrys or Lyons into you, or get lost !

iusedtoknow

ProudDUB wrote: »

Tetleys Tea?

TETLEYS ?????

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Get some Barrys or Lyons into you, or get lost !

Barry's on sale in the supermarket across the road from my house....granted in Ireland it could buy me three boxes, but now I don't have go 10 blocks away to get it.

silja

ProudDUB wrote: »

Tetleys Tea?

TETLEYS ?????

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Get some Barrys or Lyons into you, or get lost !

Hey, I takes what I can get- Tetley's is $2.99 for 80 tea bags from Walmart, Barry's is $11.98 for 40 bags from the local specialty shop.

spideog7

I've been getting my Weetabix at Trader Joe's for a while now, haven't seen it at Walmart yet though.

ProudDUB

silja wrote: »

Hey, I takes what I can get- Tetley's is $2.99 for 80 tea bags from Walmart, Barry's is $11.98 for 40 bags from the local specialty shop.

Excuses, excuses...somethings are sacred and the cupan tae is one of them. Jeez, next, you'll be telling us you eat Jimmy Dean sausages, and you don't pay Mexican drug lords thousands of dollars to smuggle Superquinns finest into the country for you, like the rest of us do ! :eek:

#Slacker

él statutorio

silja wrote: »

Hey, I takes what I can get- Tetley's is $2.99 for 80 tea bags from Walmart, Barry's is $11.98 for 40 bags from the local specialty shop.

Pretty sure that World Market have Barry's for cheaper then that. I think it's about $7 for 80 bags near me.

*edit* $48 for 480 bags on the website (6 x 80) which isn't horrendous. They sell them by the box in store.

Linky

ProudDUB

Be careful when you are buying your Weetabix silja.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057386964

Then again, 135,000 smackers would buy you a lorra lorra Barrys tea !

dave2pvd

ProudDUB wrote: »

Tetleys Tea?

TETLEYS ?????

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Get some Barrys or Lyons into you, or get lost !

^ I agree!

Might be time to amend the forum charter. Can't be having this kind of carry on.

silja

Looks like I need to step down as moderator for the forum :P

spideog7

silja wrote: »

Looks like I need to step down as moderator for the forum :P

Ah it's alright, I don't drink tea at all (unless I'm visiting someone's house of course!). I still have about 150 Barry's tea bags in the house though, I hope they don't go off...

cena

Whats wrong with the american cereals

iusedtoknow

cena wrote: »

Whats wrong with the american cereals

everything

High in sugar, bland tasting and uh...high in sugar

silja

iusedtoknow wrote: »

everything

High in sugar, bland tasting and uh...high in sugar

It's not even sugar, it's corn syrup.

cena

Ye are ex pats for a reason. Its odd when Irish people leave Ireland they can't stay away from Irish things. Enjoy what ye have in america. Ye wouldn't have left the country if really enjoy all things Irish.
This is just my view.

I don't like anything Irish at all and I live here.

iusedtoknow

cena wrote: »

Ye are ex pats for a reason. Its odd when Irish people leave Ireland they can't stay away from Irish things. Enjoy what ye have in america. Ye wouldn't have left the country if really enjoy all things Irish.
This is just my view.

I don't like anything Irish at all and I live here.

I've lived out of Ireland for nearly 10 years and I still like my Lyons tea , denny sausages and a bag of tayto's every now and then.

Conversely I love my Spanish food and comforts that I got used to when I lived there. And now there is a lot of american things that I like that should we ever leave i'll want to find.

A lot of us left Ireland for so many different reasons - I left because of a relationship and life eventually led me to the states. If I hadn't met my GF that day walking down the street, I'd probably still be living in Ireland and perfectly happy.

Don't begrudge people a bit of comfort just because you would sell your own family to get the american dream.

cena

iusedtoknow wrote: »

I've lived out of Ireland for nearly 10 years and I still like my Lyons tea , denny sausages and a bag of tayto's every now and then.

Conversely I love my Spanish food and comforts that I got used to when I lived there. And now there is a lot of american things that I like that should we ever leave i'll want to find.

A lot of us left Ireland for so many different reasons - I left because of a relationship and life eventually led me to the states. If I hadn't met my GF that day walking down the street, I'd probably still be living in Ireland and perfectly happy.

Don't begrudge people a bit of comfort just because you would sell your own family to get the american dream.

I'd sell my soul. Want to buy? I get what your saying. Not the american dream I'm after in a way. It feels like I belong there when I am over on holidays

iusedtoknow

cena wrote: »

I'd sell my soul. Want to buy? I get what your saying. Not the american dream I'm after in a way. It feels like I belong there when I am over on holidays

Oh I get you as well, life here is good. My point was that you also can't erase where you come from. You see it here all the time. I live in a neighborhood with mainly cantonese and vietnamese inhabitants - the food is predominantly asian. It isn't just Irish people that have this. People from spanish america live the same way, a lot of mexican and peruvian cuisine everywhere in california.

The other thing...I'm not an expat - i'm an immigrant to the US and an emigrant from Ireland .

cena

iusedtoknow wrote: »

Oh I get you as well, life here is good. My point was that you also can't erase where you come from. You see it here all the time. I live in a neighborhood with mainly cantonese and vietnamese inhabitants - the food is predominantly asian. It isn't just Irish people that have this. People from spanish america live the same way, a lot of mexican and peruvian cuisine everywhere in california.

The other thing...I'm not an expat - i'm an immigrant to the US and an emigrant from Ireland .

What an expat than?

iusedtoknow

an expat is what irish and english people call themselves when they are abroad to make themselves feel better about their status in whatever country they're in.

Let's face it - in ireland you hear "foreign nationals" and immigrants when talking about Eastern European/African immigrants. You'd never hear someone talk about a "Polish expat".

silja

For me, an expat is someone who intends to return- who is abroad for work or study, but plans on going back "home" in the short to medium term. An emmigrant/ immigrant has no plans to return.

As to cena's point: I enjoy grits and fried okra, but I enjoy European chocolate and Irish tea too. I think we are entitled to like what we like, no matter why we are not in Ireland. That being said, in my own case, I didn't really want to leave the island, but my American husband simply could not adjust, and we could buy a 4 bedroom home with a garden here for half the price of our one bedroom flat in Dublin city, so once we had kids, we moved.

Wompa1

Every Fresh and Easy store I've gone to has had some European stuff e.g. Crunchies, Toffee Crisps, McVittees, Flakes and a few other random things

ProudDUB

Trust me cena, if/when you are successful in moving the US, there will be plenty of things that you miss from home. You just don't realize it yet, as right now, you take them for granted.

"Them" may be decent tea, Irish whiskey, sliced pan that doesn't have a lb of sugar per slice, proper rashers and sausages, Cidona, Easter eggs, chips & curry sauce, decent Guinness, Selection Boxes on Xmas morning, proper batch bread, black & white pudding, Superquinn sausages, soda bread, proper Cadburys chocolate, baked beans, a kebab at 2am, Tayto crisps, chipper fish and chips, lemon bon bons, Heinz salad cream, proper cream eggs, sijla's beloved Weetabix,Terrys chocolate orange, mushy peas, Ballymaloe relish, Bisto gravy, red lemonade, jam donuts, chocolate digestive biscuits....and probably loads more things that I am forgetting.

Once you don't get to consume any of those things on a daily basis anymore, you'll realize how much you miss them & took them for granted when you lived here. And you'll be perfectly willing to sell your soul to get your hands on them, just like the rest of us.

iusedtoknow

ProudDUB wrote: »

Trust me cena, if/when you are successful in moving the US, there will be plenty of things that you miss from home. You just don't realize it yet, as right now, you take them for granted.

"Them" may be decent tea, Irish whiskey, sliced pan that doesn't have a lb of sugar per slice, proper rashers and sausages, Cidona, Easter eggs, chips & curry sauce, decent Guinness, Selection Boxes on Xmas morning, proper batch bread, black & white pudding, Superquinn sausages, soda bread, proper Cadburys chocolate, baked beans, a kebab at 2am, Tayto crisps, chipper fish and chips, lemon bon bons, Heinz salad cream, proper cream eggs, sijla's beloved Weetabix,Terrys chocolate orange, mushy peas, Ballymaloe relish, Bisto gravy, red lemonade, jam donuts, chocolate digestive biscuits....and probably loads more things that I am forgetting.

Once you don't get to consume any of those things on a daily basis anymore, you'll realize how much you miss them & took them for granted when you lived here. And you'll be perfectly willing to sell your soul to get your hands on them, just like the rest of us.

DAMN YOU VILE DUB....i'm sat at my desk salivating right now, it also doesn't help matters that my own manager is talking about stuff that he misses from Switzerland

The only upside is that I just got a jar of ballymaloe relish - i know a guy (actually an irish deli a few blocks from home) - so when I get home..the teaspoon is coming out.

ProudDUB

No problem...just in case you aren't drooling enough.....Custard creams, Yorkshire pud with yer mammys Sunday roast dinner, Frys peppermint creams, After Eights and OMFG AFTER EIGHT VIENETTA STYLE ICE CREAM !!!!!

Sorry, where I was I? Oh yeah....club milks, Cadburys drinking chocolate, Dennys ham, cream eclairs, rasher sambos made with Kerrygold & Vienna roll, coffee slices, Birds Eyes potato waffles with your Sunday morning fry, Gubeen/Dubliner/really good n'stinky Cashel blue cheese, The Holt Trinity aka the purple, pink and yellow Snacks, pickled onions, tins of Roses & Quality Street, King salt and vinegar crisps, Wexford strawberries, proper daycint flowery shpuds, a breakfast roll in a freshly made bap, spiced beef, Galway bay oysters with your pint o'plain, Yorkie bars, coddle, trifle, potato croquettes with your turkey on Stephens Day, Scots Clan sweets, Calvita cheese sambos in your lunch box, cocktail sossies & rice Krispie cakes at kids parties, club orange WITH BITS, mince pies, platters of egg & tomato sambos at funerals.....ok, I'd better stop, as that last one was a bit weird....:p

You can kiss them all goodbye when you move cena.

cena

ProudDUB wrote: »

No problem...just in case you aren't drooling enough.....Custard creams, Yorkshire pud with yer mammys Sunday roast dinner, Frys peppermint creams, After Eights and OMFG AFTER EIGHT VIENETTA STYLE ICE CREAM !!!!!

Sorry, where I was I? Oh yeah....club milks, Cadburys drinking chocolate, Dennys ham, cream eclairs, rasher sambos made with Kerrygold & Vienna roll, coffee slices, Birds Eyes potato waffles with your Sunday morning fry, Gubeen/Dubliner/really good n'stinky Cashel blue cheese, The Holt Trinity aka the purple, pink and yellow Snacks, pickled onions, tins of Roses & Quality Street, King salt and vinegar crisps, Wexford strawberries, proper daycint flowery shpuds, a breakfast roll in a freshly made bap, spiced beef, Galway bay oysters with your pint o'plain, Yorkie bars, coddle, trifle, potato croquettes with your turkey on Stephens Day, Scots Clan sweets, Calvita cheese sambos in your lunch box, cocktail sossies & rice Krispie cakes at kids parties, club orange WITH BITS, mince pies, platters of egg & tomato sambos at funerals.....ok, I'd better stop, as that last one was a bit weird....:p

You can kiss them all goodbye when you move cena.

I'm not a chocolate eater, so I well be on that side. One thing I have noticed is lack of curry chips in new York. Not sure its like elsewhere?

él statutorio

What I really miss is proper post pub food. Like a kebab shop or a proper chipper. Organic burgers or burritos after a few pints just aren't the same. It's not that I even go to the pub that often but the last one or two times I had a serious hankering for a spice burger and chips.

Most of the stuff on the above lists I can get hold of (Amazon has almost everything) or have sent to me by the Mammy back home.

iusedtoknow

cena wrote: »

I'm not a chocolate eater, so I well be on that side. One thing I have noticed is lack of curry chips in new York. Not sure its like elsewhere?

ah ha! everyone has an achilles heel - even you mighty cent

No - it is almost impossible to get "proper" curry chips anywhere in the US - i've tried!

However...I used to work in a chipper and make a pretty good approximation at home. However..no one can replicate the post pub goodness that was supermacs garlic chips and cheese.

ceadaoin.

iusedtoknow wrote: »

ah ha! everyone has an achilles heel - even you mighty cent

No - it is almost impossible to get "proper" curry chips anywhere in the US - i've tried!

However...I used to work in a chipper and make a pretty good approximation at home. However..no one can replicate the post pub goodness that was supermacs garlic chips and cheese.

I brought back some of that chip shop curry sauce you can buy in the supermarket. It's decent enough but there is no substitute for a proper chipper chip

ProudDUB

cena wrote: »

I'm not a chocolate eater, so I well be on that side. One thing I have noticed is lack of curry chips in new York. Not sure its like elsewhere?

The majority of the things mentioned in my two posts, were not chocolate related. So there are plenty of non choccy items for you to miss, be it the curry sauce or something else. No, you can't get curry sauce (as we know it) in the States. You will get a curry sauce of sorts in Indian restaurants, but it won't be like our curry sauce and it certainly won't be available all over the place, the way it is here. It is also hard to get on its own, you generally have to order a curry dish, to get the sauce. You'd also have to go to an Indian restaurant to get it & and they are fairly thin on the ground compared to others styles of restaurants. There are also very few Indian takeaways, as we know them.

cena

i prefer lipton tea to barrys tea etc

dave2pvd

ProudDUB wrote: »

You will get a curry sauce of sorts in Indian restaurants

Well that's good to know

ProudDUB

I did say " of sorts". You'll get them in Thai and Vietnamese restaurants too. But they also, will be "of sorts".

I'm not a big fan of "of sorts" to be honest....not when you are craving the ridiculously fake, hybrid, pale imitation "real thing" on your imaginary chipper chips at 3am.

Novella

When I moved to the US (and it was only last summer), I never in a million years thought that I'd miss anything about Ireland. Now my mam sends me Cadbury's Whole Nut bars regularly, I buy Lucozade online from the UK at a crazy price and I think I'd sell a kidney for a bag of chipper chips.

I miss my mam's Sunday roast dinner and watching GAA live with people who understand. The first time my husband (American) saw hurling he was appalled, he said it looked barbaric.

I miss silence. I lived in a house in the middle of the Irish countryside. Now I live in an apartment complex outside of Sacramento. There is always noise - traffic, sirens, people yelling.

I'd like to go shopping and not have to talk to anybody. American stores can really grate on my nerves sometimes.
"Hello and welcome! What are you looking for today?"
"Just browsing."
"We have some new shirts in, come take a look!"
"I'm fine, thank you."
"Okay, well I'll be right here if you need anything."
Five minutes later:
"You finding everything okay?"
"Yes, thank you."
And on and on.

It sounds nice, good customer service etc. and maybe it's just me, but all of that OTT optimism and bubbliness... ugh.

Wasn't expecting to go on that rant! I love America, living here is great but I will always be Irish and my long term plan is absolutely without a doubt to return.

iusedtoknow

Novella wrote: »

"
Five minutes later:
"You finding everything okay?"
"Yes, thank you."
And on and on.

That sort of stuff grinds my gears. Even in the supermarket at the checkout, they ask "did you find everything OK".

The sarcastic irish person in me wants to say "NAAAAAAAWWWWW" in the north cork city accent, but knowing them they'd think I was having a fit and call an ambulance, they are that nice.

However...instead - if i'm feeling mischievous i shake my head and say "no, but it's ok, really" sadly.

My wife on the other hand, at the end of a 48 hour shift/on call and had gone in to get some food snapped and asked..."well i wouldn't be at the checkout if i hadn't". Spanish people are many things - polite is not one of them.

ProudDUB

Ah but you are conditioned to only know the typical Irish sales assistant who has no idea what being a "sales" person really is. So of course, anything else just feels off.

Give me the in your face (oh ok, over the top) US customer service any day of the week, over the typical surly Irish sales assistant who clearly couldn't give a fcuk about your or your shopping experience. They will be all sweetness and nice when you go to pay, will comment about the weather, call you 'pet' and 'chicken' etc, but they will do sweet eff all to help you out while you actually shop.

I have 2 weddings coming up. I was out in Marks and Spencers today looking for some new threads. I must have passed about 4 or 5 staff members doing nothing much, or standing around chatting, while I staggered around for about 20 minutes, with about a dozen outfits over my arm, making it harder and harder to shop. Eventually, I just gave up and headed towards the changing rooms.

If I was in your bog standard Macys, Sears, Gap, Express etc etc, I would have had a member of staff approach me when I picked up the very first item & ask if she could start a changing room for me. She'd whisk away my stuff & hang it neatly in a changing room, leaving me to browse some more in comfort. She would quite possibly....*gasp* suggest cardigans, shoes etc etc to go with the outfits I had already selected. Imagine some one here doing that? They may if you are in a small boutique where they give good one on one service, but forget about it if you are in a larger shop.

The US model may be over the top and annoying if all you want to do is be left alone to browse, but I'd still take it any day of the week, over the Irish model.

Ranting works both ways ya know !

Novella

I would love to be like your wife, iusedtoknow!

Reminds me of being at Target about two weeks ago. The checker asked the lady in front of me if she'd found everything okay. She said no, that she really wanted some Squirt but not in a can, she needed it in a bottle and it had to be refrigerated.

The checker didn't know if they had any so she called a colleague to go look. Meanwhile I'm just standing there wanting to pay for my few items and leave. There's quite a line forming behind me so I'm kind of trapped.

Guy comes back with a bottle of Squirt and the lady takes it.

"This is not cold! I told you, I only like it ice cold!"

My blood is starting to boil. I'm thinking, take it home and put it in the fridge or even the freezer for fifteen minutes, buy some ice, just my god, pay and leave!

The checker apologizes and asks the guy to go see if there is any in the fridge.

Off he goes again.

Wait for a few more minutes.

Then the lady announces that she doesn't really want it anyway so she'll go ahead and pay.

Why ask that kind of question at the check out!? If somebody can't find something, the time to talk about it is not when they're about to leave.

lil_lisa

I'm shocked with you people! Chef has not been mentioned yet. Oh what I would do to substitute Heinz with Chef in every restaurant.

It's amazing the kind of things we enjoy, like Monster Munch and Freddy bars. I honestly think they wouldn't taste as good if they were freely available here too. There's a bit of nostalgia and hype included I think. That being said, and I don't want to get into the Irish/British vs US chocolate debate again, there is a big difference in flavour.

iusedtoknow

lil_lisa wrote: »

I'm shocked with you people! Chef has not been mentioned yet. Oh what I would do to substitute Heinz with Chef in every restaurant.

chef is implied! I actually have a pot of the ketchup in reserve for home made chips.