The first reply mentioned grits, but I haven’t noticed “turnip greens” yet.
[ul]
[sup]Pass the corn bread, please.[/sup][/ul]
True, but oooooohhhhhh wouldnt it be worth the gamble if it arrived in good shape! Theres no way the crisps would go bad, unless they were man-handled pretty bad.
So no more excuses from you Brits, I need my fix!!! 
Oh, and don’t forget the:
[ul][li]chittins[]Brunswick Stew[]Jambalaya[]buttermilk biscuits[]and sweet iced tea.[/ul][/li]
[ul]:o [sup]Shut up, Bubba, nobody eats possum any more.[/sup][/ul]
How 'bout Crab Cakes? Of course, in the US they’re difficult to come by unless you’re near the Chesapeake Bay, or Pamlico sound, or some such, but I believe they are something truly “american” in origin.
May I jump in here? You guys got me thinking about what we have in South Africa that is fairly unique and can sometimes be found in the UK or US. We sort of choose between the US and the UK for brand names, so you’ll get plenty of both countries’ brands here. Some of the list below is obviously not branded products, more like traditional style foods:
Mrs Ball’s chutney: There simply is NO substitute for this sauce! I’ve heard of ex-pats selling their birthright for a bottle of mrs Ball’s.
Rusks/biscuits: in various forms, like dried, savoury bread. Dip in your coffee makes a real slurpy treat early mornings. The best-known brand name is Ouma.
Tex chocolates.
Simba potato crisps in all sorts of flavours.
Bunny chow: hollowed-out half-loaf of bread filled with a yummy curry.
BILTONG: The nearest (very poor) substitute is jerky or pemmican. Essentially dried meat preserved with spices. We have it in different varieties according to type of meat (venison/beef) and the spices used (from traditional salt/vinegar/coriander) to super-hot chili flavoured.
Pap (pronounced as pup): made from maize meal. Your closest equivalents would be polenta or grits, but they’re not very close. We can have it a number of ways with milk and sugar in the morning for breakfast (also with butter i.s. milk) With some tomato/onion-based sauce at a braai (pronounced bry - to you infidels that is more-or-less a barbeque) Consistency can vary from sloppy to stiff, can also be crumbly and dry steamed (called putu-pap). A very coarse grained variety exists (really just the corn skin has been broken) called ‘samp’. A favourite dish at SA braai’s is called a pap-tart, made of layers of pap (the fairly sloppy variety) interlaced with all sorts of tasty goodies like bacon, cheese, mushroom, tomato, onions, ets and baked in an oven.
Boerewors. (Goodness, how am I going to describe the pronunciation?! Try this: booruvoss) Literally: farmer’s sausage. Coarse ground beef and/or mutton with bits of pork larder and spices. Comes in two sizes: thick and thin (thin=about as thick as my thumb). Quality varies, but a good quality boerewors is very nice at any meal. Often found at braai’s.
Castle lager. For a mass-produced beer, not bad. Other brands of beer include Carling Black Label, Zambesi, Windhoek (Now THERE’s a BEER!)
Rooibos tea (literally: red bush tea) Very healthy and fairly tasty substitute for Ceylon/Assam tea.
Sorghum. Eaten as a wheat substitute or ground into a fine flour and cooked for breakfast like pap. Also used to make a very tasty sorghum-beer.
Mopani worms: traditional African fare. Dried or fried. Very nutritious and (some say) tasty, but they look like hell.
Marula: fruit of the marula tree. We make it into jelly and preserves. Also used to distill mampoer (pronounced mumpuhr), a liquor with a tremendous kick! (varying between 60 to 100 proof)
Venison. Obviously you also have venison, but not the same varieties as we do: kudu, impala, warthog, bushpig, buffalo, eland, rehbuck, duiker, blue wildebeest, gnu, blesbuck, etc.
Ostrich meat/eggs.
Guineafowl.
Somehow, we also managed to not only end up with Marmite, but other brands of the same type of stuff (!) called Bovril and Oxo. Yechh!
On the muffin side: we have (English) muffins. I.e. the ‘cupcake’ variety. Also crumpets/flapjacks. And delicious pancakes (crépes). Do the US have banoffy pie or sticky-toffee pudding? I had that in the UK and I’m hooked! And I agree with a previous post: English fish & chips is tops!
Regards,
Dries
I can’t imagine Americans ever getting into Cheezy-Peaz.
Which is nice.
i do remember eating some beef and cheese long pepperami type thing which I bought from a gas station(*) out there.
White Castles haven’t conquered this country… I’m not holding my breath…
*It’s been a while, I think thats what you call the places where you buy your gasoline…
I suppose we’d have to compare recipes to be certain but all varieties of fish cakes, including crab, are widely available here. You’re talking about a sort of thick hamburger patty made from crab meat yes? The best are home-made of course.
Hallo, venterap. Welkom by die SDMB (I hope I got that right). You’ll be please to hear that quite a few of those items are available in London if you know where to look these days. Perhaps if London-based South African poster grimpixie reads this he may be able to offer further comments.
Mrs Ball’s chutney – you can get that in major supermarkets (my local Tesco has it).
Beer – Castle and Carling are also on sale at my local supermarket, and all the brands you mentioned can be found in pubs if you look hard enough, especially at The Springbok, in fact Carling is harder to avoid than to find.
Rooibos – increasingly easy to find, even in provincial towns.
Marula – haven’t seen the fruit here yet, but Amarula liqueur is easy to find.
Ostrich and guineafowl – are both farmed here and the meat is easy to find, but not so much the eggs. Last time I had ostrich was at a restaurant in Ermelo.
Bovril and Oxo – aren’t like Marmite, they’re made from beef. You’re supposed to dilute them in hot water to make beef tea or add a little to enrich beef stews.
I’ve had boerewors, samp and impala sausages at a braai in Rayton, near your neck of the woods. You see them for sale here occasionally – I got some home made boerewors at a butchers’ market in a little Derbyshire village for example. Haven’t eaten the other game you mentioned, just took photographs. If you know who to ask you can get bush meat here too, including chimpanzee, but it’s illegal.
Rusks, biltong and other items are all available from any of these places or by mail order from the South African Shop in Maidenhead.
mascaroni: petrol station, mate, petrol station. Now, where’s me washboard?
Whoops, sorry mascaroni, your location didn’t appear in Preview.
venterap: a Nando’s chicken place has just opened up round the corner from me.
To quote Alan Partridge:
“Dr. Pepper? It tastes like fizzy benylin!”
Sorry I just had to do that…
I know that they have Guiness on tap, while we have to settle for the bottles or the cans (Cans preferred).
I do wonder something though. How in the WORLD can Europeans drink beer warm?
Also have whipped-cream in the same way.
We don’t. Why is this so hard to understand?
Our brains have become addled from all that kidney pie and boiled beef that we eat.
Twinkies - I have yet to see these for sale in the UK. I believe St. George chased them out about the same time St. Patrick chased all the snakes out of Ireland.
Do you have wild rice over there? It’s frightfully expensive here, though well worth it. Or Mad Dog, which is booze made from wild rice. In my drinking days, I loved the stuff.
Yep, we have wild rice … I’ve never tried it 'cos apparently it’s a b*gger to cook …
Julie
Balderdash. Just boil it in a lot of water for about 45 minutes. Similar to regular rice. Or pour boiling water on it, let it sit covered for half a hour, drain, and repeat about six times till it’s done.
You can also pop it by putting handfuls into a strainer and popping it into boiling oil.
I rest my case. 
Gimme easy-cook rice any time - done in 20 minutes!
Julie
My poor college roomie is living in Middle of Nowhere, Kent, which is not the land of culinary diversity. To top it off, she is Salvadoran, so the soul food of her youth is largely unavailable. When I went to visit her last year, she begged me to bring pigeon peas, achiote (annatto seeds), and a few other things. I ended up with half a suitcase of Latin groceries, including
4 different kinds of dried chilies
Pigeon peas
Membrillo (quince paste)
Achiote
Mexican hot chocolate, which she says is pretty much the same as the Salvadoran version
Various dried beans unavailable where she lives
There would have been more fresh stuff, especially jalapenos (available where she lives, but only canned) if I hadn’t spent 2 days in London before heading out to Kent, and if I hadn’t been afraid of Customs confiscating something like plantains. (Also, her brother had visited not long before and brought her some masa harina, also unavailable where she lives.) She also desperately missed cornbread, and didn’t realize how easy it is to make. I also brought her a couple of cookbooks; her mom wasn’t much of a cook hen she was a kid, so she didn’t realize how simple it is to make some of her favorites with staple ingredients rather than buying processed stuff.
If any UK Dopers know a place for mail-ordering Latin groceries (or Indian; there is some overlap in ingredients) I’d be very grateful! With 2 small kids and no driver’s license, my friend doesn’t get around much.
She could try this listing. The Latin American mail order company is based in Scotland, but I can’t see why they wouldn’t deliver to Kent or offer advice about a more local supplier.
Or this one:
HomeworkersExpats.com – “Ethnic Food: from Mexico - Europe - Delivered to USA - UK and World Wide”
For Indian staples, any of the big supermarkets offer online ordering and home deliveries these days.
Tesco
Sainsbury’s
ASDA
Waitrose
Somerfield
Safeway (not sure whether they deliver)
Morrisons (ditto)