The Simple Life at Home

I can barely control myself.

As I went through the aisles this morning of my favorite grocery store, looking for pimentos which, hello? I don't even know what they are, I stumbled across the holy grail of my grocery list.


Kraft Catalina Salad Dressing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I know!! Can you control your excitement??!?!???!!! (Did you notice I made the words the color of the dressing? Well, as close as I could get. That's how excited I am. )

There were six bottles on the shelf. Not wanting to be greedy or anything, I took 4. I thought about taking 5, but decided to be magnanimous. I'm just like that. Snort!

Now why would Catalina dressing excite me so? Well, beside the fact that Hubby likes it when I marinate chicken in it and then bake it, it's the dressing for my ultra-yummy, favorite meal of all time Taco Salad. Which I've only made once (once!!!) since being here because I had to make my own Catalina dressing, which isn't hard, but it's a pain.

So you'd better believe that I'm going to be making Taco Salad at some point in the next week. That's IF I can find Doritos. They seem to have disappeared from the shelves lately. Sigh...

On a more somber note, I also had a little unhappy moment from my grocery shopping trip. We are having guests this weekend from the local military base. My friend's nephew is over here on a tour of duty and he's coming over and bringing a couple of friends. I'm planning on making Apple Enchiladas for dessert that night and it's just oh-so-yummy with vanilla ice cream on it. So the only vanilla ice cream I could find was a brand I'd never heard of before, but, hey, it's all the same thing, right?

Now, you have to realize that pricing over here is hit or miss. Some things are labeled, most are not. I just knew that the most expensive ice cream brands are your Baskin-Robbins and that other American brand that I can't remember, but it's in the black cartons. You know what I mean. They run about 35 riyals a carton. That's about $7-8. I rarely shell out for that, mainly because I don't like ice cream and the rest of the family doesn't really care about the brand. So I figured this is probably a regional brand and they run about 20 riyals.

Imagine my shock and horror when I got in the car and looked at my receipt and saw that the ice cream cost 60 riyals!!! That's a $15 box of ice cream, people!! And it was small, maybe half the size of a half-gallon box. It dang well better be the best ice cream I've ever eaten and maybe it should even get up and clean my bathrooms for me!