Ireland: the island nation of premature expiration

Every morsel of food in Ireland has an expiration date it seems, and it's always two days from the date you are standing in the store, but 3-4 days from when you expect to get around to eating it. Expiration dates are starting to control my life. I roam the Tesco aisles for an hour, calculating dates and planning out meals precisely because anything perishable I buy is going to die within 48-72 hours. I feel like Jack Bauer in the kitchen, racing against the clock every day, trying to cook that chicken and boil that broccoli before times runs out.

I have no idea how the Irish do it. I watch women in the store, buying six jugs of milk, five cartons of eggs, four sticks of butter. How many men does it take to woof that down in less than two days? Our tiny refrigerator here barely holds a week's worth of groceries for two people. One of my U.S. comrades who's living here shops for a family of four. She goes to the store at least twice a week because her fridge only holds enough food for three days of meals, and of course, everything would expire if she did all her week's shopping in one day. Every thing is smaller here: the fridge, the milk jugs, the cartons of juice. People buy less on each visit and just shop more frequently each week.

Damon says the food doesn't last as long because they don't use as many preservatives here, which frankly is probably healthier for us. But that still doesn't explain why the fresh tomatoes are moldy and splitting two days after purchase.

Every now and then we see a side-by-side refrigerator in the newspaper or on TV, which is referred to as an "American Refrigerator." This society would hiss at the concept of Costco, don't you think? Maybe Americans should go back to the old days where everything was smaller, food perished sooner and daily life just wasn't so convenient.