Dishwashers? Food Quality?

is to scald your dishes with very hot water. This will kill all bacteria and viruses,,,,Hep C you can catch by drinking from a contaminated glass, as you will with the flu and the common cold etc.

Scalding water drops the spread of these things very much,,,thats why restaurants and such places must use them.

so well with the hard sun. Can you garden in winter? I look forward to meeting up with folks in the know. Right now we are drowning in tomatoes that are so ripe and sweet and wonderful.

Getting ahead of myself-don't know if hubby has the job yet. I am a planner, can you tell?

- food quality as others have said is very good, and most villas will have a dishwasher.

You can have a garden, even if it is a container garden only, and there is a group of keen gardeners here.

This is picture is obviously NOT me, I don't smoke..

not working and my youngest is 9 would be kind of ridiculous! Then again, it would be part of the expat experience, I guess. . .

... and the gender, jack: male, female?

You could get a dishwasher....but you have to specify which nationality you want...lol

For the meat & dairy they are very strict about it,,You dont have to worry,,

As I don't have a job outside the home, I doubt I will be getting a maid. Heck I used to BE a housekeeper/nanny! I see some of the issues here regarding them and I am thinking I was a lot less trouble and I was a clueless teenager. I am busy trying to investigate all the implications of this move and I love to cook and hate doing the dishes, so that matters:) I think I will miss my garden.

The dishwashers here can be very poorly made - think: scraping the bottom of the line in the U.S., if that. We live in a very nice compound, yet the dishwashers don't even reach the underside of the counter - there's a good 2" gap. You really have to CLEAN your dishes before they go in. . .not just scrape, but clean.

I'm sure there are models out there that are good, but if you cut a deal with your landlord whereby he "will provide a dishwasher" then you'll want to know that he may very well give you something like ours.

It's so bad that we don't even use it. We do have a housemaid, but before we hired her I had gotten to the point of not using the dishwasher anymore.

Whether your accomodation has a dishwasher or not depends on the landlord - however, in the middle to higher end properties I'd say they were pretty much standard.

Food quality is excellent - it's also expensive compared to elsewhere in the GCC. A lot of the beef and lamb comes from Australia and New Zealand, lots of the frozen chickens come from Brazil and the bulk of the fresh chicken comes from Saudi, some from here or sometimes UAE.

One tip - always check the expiry/best before date on canned/packaged goods - the supermarkets here can be lax on how long something languishes on their shelves and the ministry inspectors don't pick up on it all the time

Signature line > "You can't fix stupid"