Gatorade - Yup, it’s your basic sports drink, intended to replace electrolytes lost during long periods of exercise. I have no idea why any sane person would want to drink it otherwise.
Twinkies - This is one of the nastiest excuses for a cake I’ve seen. As I remember from my one experience of them, it was a yucky sponge cake-like exterior wrapped around a dreadful shortening based “cream” filling. Bleah! I’ve always wondered about why these have been around so long and remained popular. Haven’t those poor people who eat them ever been exposed to GOOD junk food?
Oreos - An all-time classic cookie. Not my absolute favorite, but a very good stand-by. People tend to be varied on how they like to eat them. I’m of the take-a- bite-of-the-whole-thing-at-once school. (Not the whole cookie at once, but eat the cookie and filling together, in the original proportions.) There are quite a few who obsessively twist them apart, and scrape the white filling off and eat that part first (or put it aside and save it for last) because they consider it the “best part.” I’m with you on this — I could do without the filling (or perhaps only half as much of it.) However, I think we are in the minority. They actually make a special variety of these called “Double-Stuffs”, with twice as much of the white creamy filling.
American Milk chocolate- I like Hershey’s, but definitely Cadbury’s is far superior. It just has such a smooth flavor and mouth-feel. Absolutely wonderful. As far as candy bars go, I loved Penguins and Clubs, and those huge chocolate bars with liquor fillings in them (especially the Irish Coffee) — Yum!
I spent about a month living in a residence hall at Oxford (St. Benet’s)and a long weeked with some family friends in Stafford in 1983. Based upon that experience, here are some of the differences I noticed. I’m generalizing from these two sources of food; they may have been unique to those cooks instead, and certainly may have changed over time:
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Man, you guys are serious about your potatoes! We had potatoes at every meal at St. Benet’s — sometimes two types.
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Blackcurrants are wonderful. I loved anything with them. Gooseberries ---- were quite an experience. We always had wonderful desserts at St. Benet’s, so that even if something looked new to us, we had gotten to the point where we trusted the cook (Jane). One night, we were served chocolate ice cream, with this stuff that looked like mutant grapes on top of it. Holy cow! What a bizarre experience, to have something as rich and sweet as that wonderful chocolate ice cream covered in that evil, bitter fruit. (I never got a chance to try them separately. Perhaps on their own, expecting the bitter flavor, they could be quite interesting. But topping a bowl of chocolate ice cream? Jane must’ve been laughing her head off, watching us.)
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In general, when eating out, I found it harder to find much in the way of veggies (other than potatoes) served than I do here at home. I wasn’t the healthiest of eaters then, but even I got veggie hungry after a while. It seemed like you had to go for Chinese or Indian food to find them. (Incidentally, I was amazed at the number of Chinese and Indian restaurants, too. In the early 80’s, I think there might have been one Indian restaurant in each of the 2 major cities of my state. It has increased dramatically now, but I could still count all the Indian restaurants in my city on one hand.)
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You guys know your way around sweets. Besides the wonderful chocolates, I loved the toffees and biscuits. (McVitie’s Abbey Crunch Creams, Hobnobs, and Digestive biscuits were some favorites. I can find Hobnobs and the Digestive biscuits here now, as well as some of the chocolates at a gourmet store nearby. They bring back lovely memories.)
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Americans like drinks served cold, with ice in them (particularly in the South, where I’m from.) I found myself lusting after ice in my drinks over there. You could tell the places that were used to catering to the American crowds, because they were the few places you could find it. We thought it was hilarious when we asked for ice in our drinks, though, and our waiter would carefully bring out ONE CUBE. (Over here, restauranteurs realize that ice is cheap, drinks are expensive. They always fill your glass with ice first, then the drink.)
Some things I think you may not have, or at least not commonly available.:
Peanut butter? Actually, our friends in Stafford did find some in a “gourmet” store there, tried it, and hated it. This is the absolute staple of the American children’s diet. If children will eat nothing else, they will eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (That’s what made it so laughable that our friends paid an arm and a leg for it at a gourmet shop. This is the cheap protein source here.) And is it true that Marmite is a staple for your kids? I found that stuff absolutely vile, and could not imagine a kid eating it.
Do you have corn on the cob (maize on the cob?) I seem to remember our friends in Stafford saying that they saw it in movies all the time, but had not had it.
And now, perhaps you can solve a mystery. In 1986, I went to Scotland for about 10 days with my University’s pipe band for several competitions. On our next-to-last day there, in Ayrshire, I think, one of my fellow drummers saw a banana milkshake on the menu and ordered one. What he was expecting was an semi-frozen drink, with real banana, milk, and maybe ice cream — something like a drinkable ice cream. What he got was some nasty concoction which appeared to be just milk with a flavoring added that made it a sort of nuclear yellow color, and tasted absolutely foul. Was this milkshake just representative of our particular lunch spot? Are your milkshakes frozen, or just flavored milk?
Man, I’ve got to get back to England sometime…
If you find the filling too sweet, then you will never understand the zen of Oreos - the cookie is merely an excuse for the filling.
Chocolate milk is nature’s perfect food (and a damn fine hangover cure, too, if your tummy’s upset) I’m not a huge fan of pre-made chocolate milk - true chocolate milk must be made from scratch.