That's a whole lotta cream cheese: A study in contrasts

One thing I didn't tell y'all is that Jason and Nate left for California on Monday. The girls and I will follow tomorrow--we stayed behind to give Ava one more week at school. So it's been a lot quieter around here. This morning Ava said, "Mom, I miss all the noise." Me too!

I didn't mention it sooner cause I didn't want any of you guys to try to stalk us. C'mon--you know you would have! But I should mention that our house is surrounded by a moat of poisonous funnel web spiders and rabid koalas. And my neighbor Andy is a kung fu master. Mean as a snake. So watch your backs, would-be stalkers.

Anyway, Tuesday morning my mobile phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize and when I answered it, there was a several second delay. Then the connection kicked in and I heard a voice exclaim mid-sentence, "...a three pound tub of cream cheese for 8 bucks!!" "Who is this?", I said.

It was Jason of course, and as soon as I realized that, I knew right where he was calling from.

Costco! Whenever we go home, Jase loves to visit Costco and wander the aisles. He looks at cheap DVDs and electronics and zones out for awhile. His relationship with Costco is similar to mine with Super Target. We each have our happy place.

I think we've been in Australia long enough, though, that some of the stuff at Costco--and the sheer volume of it--strikes us as extreme. The cream cheese being a prime example. Three pounds? Of cream cheese? O-kaaay. Maybe if you're opening a bagel shop.

This morning, I checked my email and found that he'd emailed me pictures he'd taken there. Neither of us could get over the ginormous containers of food that are sold at Costco. I mean, we knew it was like this, but it was a bit of reverse culture shock going on, I think. Where you "re-enter" your home country and it is the place that seems strange and foreign to you.

I thought it'd be interesting to do a price/size comparison to what we'd pay for that stuff here. So for starters. The 3 pounds of cream cheese for 8 dollars. (Jase didn't get a picture of that one.) Here at our local grocery store, I would pay just under $8 for 500g of cream cheese. (500 grams is about 1 pound.) So one-third of the amount costs the same.

Okay, so this is 3 44oz bottles of Heinz ketchup for $6.49. That's nearly 3 liters total of ketchup. Here, the biggest bottle of Heinz I can get at Woolworths is 1 liter. It sells for $4.95. Contrast that with 3 liters of the stuff for $1.50 more. Um, dang.

Are y'all Americans filling your swimming pools with this stuff? Is ketchup the new bath water?


Here's a 20 pound (nearly) box of Tide Detergent for 30 bucks.

I found a special at my local grocery store: a 5 kilo box of detergent (that's about 11 pounds) for 30 bucks. Again, at Costco you can get almost twice the amount for the same price. And the price at my store is the sale price--normally that detergent is $38.

Sorry--this is probably not interesting to anyone but me and Jason. It's just that, when we lived in the States, we didn't really think twice about the sheer volume of stuff you could get for a comparatively low price. And now, it is just funny to us to see things like this:

My peoples, that there is a gallon of mayonnaise. I am agog. A gallon (almost 4 liters). I honestly did not know you could buy a whole gallon of mayonnaise. That's kind of amazing. This picture makes me giggle, truly. I can also feel my arteries clogging just by looking at it. And I like mayo! So it's $9.50. Here, I pay about 6 bucks for a jar of Best Foods Mayo that is about a tenth the size of that monstrosity. So by paying about 50% more at Costco you can get almost ten times as much. (Not that I'm saying you should unless you want to mayonnaise yourself into an early grave.)

Okay, just one more. Now, we can all laugh about a gallon jar of mayonnaise. Cause who really needs that unless you're hosting a potato salad symposium? ( I would totally go to that.) But this is the sight that I'm pretty sure made Jason lay down on the aisle floor in Costco and weep softly.
A 40 inch Sony HD LCD TV for $849. I looked it up at the place we got our TV in Sydney and the same Sony TV sells here for $1699. My poor husband. That is a bitter pill for him to swallow, I know. Be strong, honey. You are doing good work here. And doesn't the Eric Clapton song say, "And I know, there'll be more...TV's in heaven." Something like that.

Let me be clear. I am neither scolding Americans (of which I are one!) for having too much stuff nor berating Aussies for charging too much for food (even though they do!). It's just that seeing these pictures made me realize how used to that kind of stuff I once was. And how when we first came to Oz, I was just flabbergasted at the cost of food. And now, well, I guess I'm used to it. And we do okay without 3 liters of ketchup.

But I'm not so sure I can be so noble when it comes to Super Target. Then it will be my turn to handcuff myself to the homewares aisle and vow to live there forever. That's okay. Jason will have the light of his giant TV to keep him warm.