Interesting. No blood, no offal. We Americans are well and truly fucked! 
The Wal-Mart in my town carries duck and lamb in the meat section. Nobody in the States, though, seems to carry jelly babies (which I’ve never had, but have been itching to try ever since I saw Dr Who).
Not sure if yer average English grocer has all these “exotic” meats I listed
It varies. Major supermarkets have duck, venison (the latter usually as burgers), and diced farmed rabbit. Anything more exotic tends to be in the territory of small upmarket butcher shops. Oh, and goat depends where you live. It’s easy to find in markets in areas such as Birmingham where there’s a significant Afro-Caribbean population, but not otherwise.
For years, my mother had a hard time finding Turkish Delight or Jelly Babies.
Meijer now has an international food section that carries both, at quite high prices.
I’ve never seen eel here, as a food. In all my life, I’ve only had Yorkshire Pudding once. In a pricey restaurant in California, it was served with prime rib of beef. Pudding, here, is usually a thick, sweet stuff sorta like what you’d get if you made a chocolate gravy, thick enough to stay on an upside-down spoon. The exception is bread pudding. That’s made from stale bread, hard sauce, and raisins.
I believe the reason we don’t eat organ meats and rarely eat bread pudding is that they’re regarded as “poverty” foods. Folks like my parents, who lived through the Great Depression, vowed never to eat like that once they got back on their feet again.
I’ve never seen haggis here, and hope I never do. I’m one of the brave souls who forced myself to swallow one bite, and still can’t get the taste out of my mouth. They even have vegetarian haggis, which is just as bad.
And I’ve never seen crocodile steak, which I bought in an Aussie store in London (tastes like fish, but with a “bite”). And of course crumpets.
This may not be the case today, or throughout the whole of the US, but I do remember from when I visited Florida that flavoured chrisps (or chips) didn’t seem to be widely available. There were a few variations on the theme of cheese, but nothing like the bizarre vareity we enjoy in the UK.
Sharopolis: like vinegar and dill? Ugh. Mainly, though it is cheese. We Americans like our artificial orange cheese dust that coats various foods.
Twiglets.
Jelly babies.
Hedgehog flavoured potato crisps. When I saw those, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought I’d walked through some sort of space warp connecting Heathrow Airport with the alternate reality Britain that exists only in old Monty Python sketches…
The lack of chip/crisp variety is endemic to the whole US… although they have added barbecue, sour cream/onion, and salt and vinegar, they still dont have cheese and onion, prawn cocktail, or any of the other stuff Walkers’ does so well. (Possibly because they don’t have Gary Lineker here?)
Anyway, I have seen those Barber Foods Kievs, (thanks Rex), but in Orlando and Cocoa at any rate they don’t stock the garlic ones.
Incidentally, it took me ages to find a deli that stocked really good pate (sorry, I’m using the normal text entry box so I can’t add the accents)…
MLS… I was referring to the actual chain you saw them in 
Can’t say as I’ve seen it in the grocery store but eel is on most Sushi restaurant menus I’ve seen. If they can get it I’m sure you can too…somewhere.
Add another person who sees Chicken Kiev all over the place. One of my favorites!
As to ‘organ meats’ I always hated going to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving dinner as she’d chop-up all the nasty organs from the turkey into her stuffing. Stuffing is my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner and having the heart and liver and god knows what else mixed in ruined it for me. The turkey came with a bag of the bird’s organs inside but frankly I don’t know if this is done anymore.
I guess I should’ve put a 
after my post.:smack:
Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, Foodtown… Just about any supermarket. It may be just one of those regional things, that the markets in your area don’t carry them. Try asking the manager in your market if he’s ever considered them.
Yes, they usually do. I was the only one in my family while growing up who didn’t like the liver. Blecchhh. Fortunately, neither my husband or my children like it, so we just throw it out, now that we don’t have a dog any more. Even the cats don’t like it. But now that you mention it, I always did like the gizzard and heart of the chicken or turkey.
I did… he didn’t know what they were, and suggested that there was no market for “garlicky foods” around here. Then I asked “so your salami is produced with some kind of garlic substitute?” and he got really cranky…
And I’ve never seen any of those chains around here… in Central Florida we have Publix, Albertsons, Winn-Dixie, WalMart, Food Lion, and Goodings’ (although I think they are now out of business…)
I drove up to South Carolina a couple years ago, and the only strange supermarket I saw was Piggly Wiggly.
I was watching “Are you being served?” on our local PBS station
and they mentioned “Spotted Dick”…What the hell is that?!!
Someone jump in here and correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t ‘beef suet’ just…lard? If so, then that’s available in pretty much every grocery store worth its salt - though you may have to do a bit of digging. (My local one stocks it over with the Mexican food ingredients. 
)
Has anyone ever seen Dandelion & Burdock in diet or light? I can get it at a British store here in Oklahoma, but only the fully loaded stuff.
The bane of my childhood existence. Mom used to make it for my grandparents on occaision. I think it was suet pudding with raisins in… none of us kids wanted to go near it.
I take offense to that :). My wife’s family is the largest importer of high-end specialty cheeses in the U.S. They sell over 2000 different kinds to supermarkets and specialty food stores all over the U.S. Right now, she is at the New York Fancy Food show marketing and buying cheese that the average afficiado has never even heard of.