bejeweled

I have my own clothing line now.
  j/k

I want to write about everything. I want to write about our new electric tea kettle, about the tomato sauce we made the other night, and the amazing tea shop down the street and how I played bejeweled and euchre on the ipad the other night for three hours straight because I let the hard-times get the best of me. I have to come to terms with the fact that I am not going to write an amazing post every time I blog. I need to just let go and write or nothing will ever get done. And hopefully I will get lucky every once in a while.

Darkest window at the
bottom is ours.

Yesterday we finally took the time to stock our kitchen and now it looks as though someone actually lives here. We happen to live within walking distance of over a dozen different markets (yep, a dozen) super and otherwise. However, for this excursion we ventured simply to six.

In order of journey not preference.

Tesco - distance from house 500 m
This is your Safeway, Publix, or Ralphs of Ireland. Except it is not Irish, it's English. When we asked the store manager which brand of pork sausages he preferred he told us he would never eat Tesco sausages (full sausage brand to brand comparison coming soon). We figured we would get the most bang for our buck here and at this point that is what counts. While listening to 3rd Eye Blind over the store speakers we picked up sausages, puddings, rashers, milk and eggs. All of which we will be grabbing at our local butcher from here on out. We stocked our spice and baker cabinets as well as out Cadbury pantry :-) (told myself I wouldn't use smiley faces, damn). We also discovered you cannot buy more than one over the counter drug at a time. Not sure what they are afraid of there. Pro: large clear pyrex bowls for only 6€. Con: product navigation gets a F for no f-ing thought process taken

Best of Italy - 1.2 km
What? We are how far from Naples? 2 hours and 35 minutes as the jet flies.  Google-ing plane tickets now.  This market not only has amazing imported wines, cheeses and meat, but it also has high quality produce and homemade pastries and cakes. The staff was ever so friendly and knowledgeable. They recommended their favorite tinned tomatoes for sauces and flaky sea salt for cooking. We picked up a few bags of dried pasta, jarred pesto and a bottle of amaro (thanks to Lupa in NY Níall now has an obsession with amaros). We left our full basket with them as we popped over to Morton's for a few things and when we returned they had everything bagged and rung up. They even gave us a can of tomato passata on the house when we realised we forgot to add it to the mix. We will most definitely be back.

Mortons - 1.3 km
This is THE market. As soon as we reach our official Dublin yuppie status this will be our regular market, but for now the prices keep us at bay. We knew if we came here first we would blow our budget in one shot. This mini Whole Foods/Trader Joe's is situated on a street next to a home design shop, a beauty salon, a hardware store and the shop, Best of Italy. We only went here to take inventory for comparison purposes and for the Newman's Own salad dressing, Caesar. This is the market to hit before a dinner party to pick up some cheese and wine. I can't wait for our first dinner party!

Níall carrying groceries in Ikea bags through our awesome
secret back alley. 

Chinese Market -  450 m
We have been on the search for two things since we arrived in Dublin, and surprisingly neither of these things has to do with a pint. Saracha and chili garlic sauce. Both of which were, of course, available at our local Chinese market right around the corner. In addition to lemon grass, fish sauce and udon noodles we also found 1kg (2.2 lb) of frozen prawns for only 9€. It was here that we grabbed a bag of oh-so essential frozen potstickers, a staple in our kitchen, as it should be in everyone's. We told the shop owner Crystal that we just moved to town and will be regulars and then we both decided that that probably wasn't her real name. Bonus: we get to take the back alley way to get there which is always fun.

Tesco Off License - 500 m
For those of you who do not know, an off license is a liquor store.  You didn't think we would stock our kitchen without stocking our bar did you?  Cheap wine here is so much better than cheap wine in The States.  Your 5€ bottle of Bordeaux tastes like a $15 bottle back home.  So we bought a couple bottles of red to put in our handy dandy wine bottle shelf that came with the house.  And then we thought, what good Irish home doesn't have a bottle of whiskey in their press (cupboard)?  That's when Tesco scotch whiskey and gin caught our eye.  We are hoping for a hidden gem, kind of like Costco vodka.  I'll have to let you know how that turns out.

The big gold key is our flat key, it's called a chub key.

Dunnes Stores - 270 m
Which I really want to pronounce as doons. And yes, we are already valued members.  This store is just a block away in the Swan Center, a tiny indoor mall complete with a movie theatre and awkward trinket shops selling porcelain easters eggs along side kitchen colanders. We came here for an electric tea kettle (ha! looks like I did end up talking about my tea kettle after all) a coffee grinder, and wine key.  They didn't have the later two, but life is so much better with an electric tea kettle than without one.  First world problems.  Oh, we also grabbed a bag of potatoes because there weren't any in the other five stores we went into. Just kidding. Well, the off license didn't have any.


Six stores, four hours and two pints later we realized in the end we forgot a can opener. No beans tonight.