What’s Cooking? What’s Your Favorite Foreign Treat or Snack?
Hello, and welcome back toWhat’s Cooking? , a weekly open thread where you can share your brilliant thoughts, tips, recipes, and opinions on anything edible. This week, I want to talk about all the delicious snacks, candy, and other foods you can only get in a place other than your home and what you stock up on when you travel.
Late last week, when I was trying to get back from the United Kingdom to my comfy bed, I (naturally) ended up at customs. “Are you announcing food?” the agent asked, looking at my bulging Tesco bag. “These are candy,” I said, “these are all candy.” “No oranges?” – he asked. “No,” I explained, “we have oranges here.”
What we don’t have here, my friends, are Malteaser bunnies and crunchie bars and the Tesco brand of strawberry laces. We don’t have marmite flavored potato chips or Pringles shrimp cocktails that never made it to this side of the pond because I ate them in my hotel room. We don’t have this particular gin truffle brand that will change your life. When I travel, my souvenirs are always edible, usually candy and chips. Sure, we have Starbursts in the US, but we don’t have Blackcurrant Starbursts. Americans may just now be discovering the joy of Oreo chocolate bars, but the British have them in peppermint and peanut butter, which doesn’t seem right since we’re a country with all the crazy Oreo flavors. I could go on and on, my friends, but I want to hear from you. Here are some questions to help you get started:
- Is there a foreign country chocolate bar that you dream of? Is that a Crunchie bar?
- Is Hershey chocolate as bad as they say in the non-American part of the world? How do you feel about Mars products?
- Which country has the best cheap chocolate? I noticed that the British are very confident in Cadbury.
- Which country tastes best for chips?
- Can you send me some more Tesco strawberry laces?
- For ex-emigrants: are there any candy, cake or chips from home that you miss?
- For my non-Americans: what do you stock up on visiting America? I have a friend who picks up jars of peanut butter and the other loves Swedish fish.
As usual, feel free to shy away from these questions and bring up anything that you think is at least indirectly related to this topic. I just want to talk about snacks.