Mmmmmm…jaffacakes. A friend in England made me want them, so I searched online and finally found a place I could order them from: http://www.ukgoods.com.
Living near the Canadian border (argh… so close yet so far away…), I sometimes get a few VERY canadian foods:
Poutine: Not the cheez-whiz imitation crap they have down here… Real Montreal or Real Ottawa poutine. That’s where it’s at.
Timbits: Ok, they’re donut holes, but you’ll quickly realize they’re the best damn donut holes you’ll ever eat.
You can get chicken tikka masala at the many fine Indian Restaurants in the Greater Boston area, don’t know about the rest of the country.
Doghouse Reilly you can get every type of tofu imaginable at the Chinatown in Boston, which is nowhere near as big as San Francisco’s or New York’s. Hell, they sell live frogs and turtles in some of the groceries there. Sticky rice I can buy at the supermarket, for God’s sake.
Mmmmm, Devon Avenue! It’s a 5-minute drive from here. Extra bonus: after you have your curry at any one of a couple dozen places, you can buy the ingredients to make it at home, and then you can walk a couple of blocks west to the Russian neighborhood and buy pelmeni to take home. Not to mention all kinds of smoked fish, European jam and chocolates, and most of the other stuff mentioned in this thread (at least the stuff that isn’t Canadian!).
McVitties Milk Chocolate Hob Nobs
We were able to get them at a local grocer’s just recently, but they’ve stopped carrying them. Much to my dismay.
Any more gadget stuff? Like I saw a 60 Minutes story on how Finland’s vending machines are tied into their phone system. You actually make a phone call to the vending machine, it dispenses whatever, and the dispensed item is put on your phone bill. Now THAT’S cool!
Well when I went to America about 6 years ago, as a then 11 year old kid addicted to the lemon soft drink ‘Lift’ from the Coca-cola company, I was shocked to find that whenever i asked for some at any store, everyone would give me a blank look and go ‘umm we have Sprite’ after i explained wat it was. Argh i hate lemonade, and the only time i got something that was close to the taste of ‘Lift’ or ‘Lemon Squash’ was a lemonade drink at a resturant.
However i don’t know if ‘Lift’ or similar lemon squash drinks are being sold their now, but if it isn’t then u r missing out cause its a better lemon drink than lemonades like Sprite, IMHO
You can get poutine at several fast food chains here in Canada (McDonald’s and A&W for example), and it’s actually not too bad. Do you guys in the States have the “lighter choices” menu at McDonalds, with salads, wraps and so on? Canada (and around the Vancouver area especially, it seems) is the “testing ground” for all new McDonald’s foods. We get everything months and months ahead of the US. Not that that’s something to be especially PROUD of, but hey.
There is one techo-thingy I have found in my travels that you cannot get in the US that is a wonder to behold. That is Japanese talking alarm clocks. These are alarm clocks in the shape of characters such as Ultraman, a samurai warrior, Godzilla, and Hello Kitty. When the alarm goes off the alarm clock yells at you in Japanese. I love them, have bought many back home to give as gifts, and cannot say enough good things about them. I have never seen them outside Japan
Boyo, when I was in Finland I bought a bus pass. You walk into the bus, press it against a machine (you can keep it in your wallet, it can read through) the machine beeps to signal your pass is valid. Don’t know if there are any of those systems in the states. I thought it was pretty cool and efficient.
Barrimundi
Cadbury’s Old Gold
Haigh’s Chocolates
“Real” Aussie Meat Pies
Sorbeline Cream
Weetbix
VB
Hmmm… I’ve never seen any HP Sauce stateside.
I usually get a blank look when I ask for to have with my eggs in restaurants. They’ll offer me A1 Sauce, but it’s not the same.
'Course, I haven’t been to the states in ages, so maybe y’all have discovered it by now.
Triss, maybe it’s regional, because I see HP Sauce in many, many stores.
Things that I get in the Detroit area that maybe aren’t available in other areas of the country:
Violet Crumble – SO GOOD. It’s a candy bar that’s this… honeycomb center (it’s kind of like taking nougat and aerating it, then making it extremely hard, and more sugary-honey flavoured instead of chocolate or vanilla) with a thin chocolate coating. The bar is much lighter in weight than other candy bars and is so yummy.
Drinkable Yogurt – I can’t remember the name of it, but most of the printing on the bottle is in Japanese. Tastes pretty good, they have original, strawberry and peach.
Toblerone – this is my absolute favourite chocolate in the world. It’s very smooth and very rich, without any funny tangy aftertaste I find in most American chocolates.
Kielbasa – I live near Hamtramck, Polish-central round these parts. When Christmas comes around, a family member goes to our “dealer” (I ain’t givin’ out names unless I can trust ya! ;)) where you stand in a line that winds around the block, just to get the precious, precious sausage.
And I can get a buttload of good Jewish/Kosher food around school; it’s in an area that has a huge Jewish population; hell, I can even get kosher Slurpees at the local 7-11 year round!
Melkesjokolade* from Norway. I know it’s only a chocolate bar, but it’s way better than the stuff here.
I can’t find Acorn Flour ANYWHERE. Much less pemmican.
Or primetime TV shows that have nudity, but that’s another topic…
Oh yeah, and phone cards that you can actually insert into a public phone.
Ah, Grasshopper, but I have been to Canton. I have seen for sale cats, rats, bats, snakes, bugs, dogs, and bunnies. Live and dead.
Not the kind that would please my mother in law, I bet.
Vegemite
Meat Pies
Sausage Rolls
Fish and Chips
zweisamkeit, I have been seeing the Toblerone chocolate at Target in the last few months.
I forgot to check and see who mentioned it, but Red Rose tea is practically all we had in my house when I was growing up. We lived in PA, and I don’t know where my mother bought it, but it was always around.
As for kielbasa, my father is of German descent (I say he is, not we are, because he isn’t my bio-dad.) and owns a meat processing plant in PA. They make bombdiggety kielbasa. It’s an old family process of making it, which I guess was brought over by my great, great, great grandfather or something. Supposedly he was the meat-cart guy in his village. At any rate, it is VERY good. And he ships.
Pickled locust. (hmmmm… crunchy!)
High-speed railways which leave and arrive on time.
Vending machines that actually accept bills.
Wireless network service. (For $50 a month I can get unlimited 32 kbps wireless access in most populated areas of Japan. $30 extra gets you 128 kbps.)
We don’t get a lot of the cars that are sold in Japan… Europe either.
Fiat? Nope.
Cosworth? Nope
Peugot? Nope.
Skyline? Nope.
Sylvia? Nope.
sigh
We can’t get Absinthe easily here. It’s becoming increasingly popular in the EU, but it’s still a grey area here.
More esoteric sports on TV would be nice. I’ve heard that kickboxking is pretty popular on TV in some places in Europe, but is fairly rare here. Same for Sumo. And Aussie rules football.
Next time I have free cash, I’m ording a bunch of things from that ukgoods.com website. Some of those candybars sound really really yummy.