Imagine my joy when Mr T came back with a whole suitcase full of all my favourite junk food, my old cupcake carrier and some new vege peelers (I became such good friends with the ones I had from kmart I just had to have more....)
This is totally my version of being Charlie in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, check out my table full of awesomeness!
(By the way, can you tell what the food outlier is? There's only one variety of non-Australian food in the picture. Check out my post here which talks all about it!)
Tim Tams - Perhaps one of the best known Oz favourites, every single expat I know puts packets of these in their suitcases each time they go home. I like the plain old no frills milk chocolate ones. When I was little my mum used to buy them only if they were on special at Woolies or Coles for $2. Now you're lucky if they're on special at 2 for $5! and they reduced the number of biscuits in each pack. A few years ago they came out with mint flavour, cherry, caramel ... but personally I think these were a bit try hard. I will mention Mint Slice which is my other favourite. Its a chocolate biscuit with mint cream on top and the whole thing is then dipped in chocolate, and there's nothing like it here (if you know something similar, give me a shout!)
Other confectionary - Minties, Fantales and Freddo Frogs, I am so sorry I ever took you for granted and from this day forth, I promise to never ever walk past a charity box selling $1 Freddo Frogs without buying one. Or two. Or three. And I also promise to savour every single bite. Violet Crumble, you are my favourite shade of purple and it is truly the way it shatters that matters. Cherry ripe, so coconutty and lovely, you make my whole day brighter.
Flavoured tuna - This sounds weird, but I was reliably informed by Mr M that this is an Aussie thing - he found flavoured tuna on the Australian shelves of the World Food section of the supermarket... in San Francisco. To further support this, I have one English friend whose mother in law in Brisbane posts flavoured tuna to him (true story!). Chilli is definitely my all time favourite.
Savouries - Nacho Cheese Shapes are actually a Mrs A favourite and not mine, so these are mostly for her. Annoyingly, this particular flavour of Shapes does not tend to be sold in the inner city supermarkets besides the IGA in Pyrmont so one has to drive out to the suburbs (think Castle Hill Coles or North Parramatta Coles) to get them. Personally I don't think you can beat the big burger taste of Burger Rings though, and my life has tended to be pretty straight with Twisties. I did once see chicken twisties for sale at the Oriental Costcutter in Bayswater (I think they were made in Malaysia) but I've never seen the cheese ones for sale anywhere here.
Now this is just a sampling of all the wonderful junk food from home - Mr T could easily have brought back several suitcases, and there's also stuff that can't be carried back like golden gaytimes ... Other things that spring to mind (in no particular order) are chicken salt, BBQ sauce, Smith's chips, Pavlova Magic - the Aussie Food Shop I think has a lot of it covered. Yes I could just buy all my supplies from there but a) I'd be the size of a house from eating all the junk b) I'd also be broke since everything there is obviously imported. So for now, when my lovely expat friends ask if I want anything from home, I'll be picking one or two select items and savouring those for a long long while. For now, back to eating and dreaming.... till next time!
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