Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

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Maiwenn
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby Maiwenn » Sat May 14, 2022 7:23 am

MaggieMae wrote:I also can't get anything peppermint here (Switzerland) except for tea or the actual plant, which is super sad around Christmastime. I don't know how many times my first year here I broke down crying in the supermarket because I wanted something they didn't carry.


Hey! Fellow peppermint lover here. :) I can usually find peppermint at Søstrene Grene here in France. I see that the store is in Switzerland, too, so you might be able to find it there as well. They are red and white peppermint hard candies.
In this picture, they are to the right of "confiserie", leftmost on the top row beneath the energy bars in glass containers.

(And of course there's always https://www.americanmarket.ch which stocks peppermint candy canes if you don't care about money. When I lived in Geneva, I went there to buy goldfish crackers.)
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby Kullman » Fri Nov 18, 2022 7:02 pm

A few years ago I visited Barcelona with some catalonian friends, and they took me to eat "calçots", which is a kind of onion rusted over the fire (you need to remove the churned cover), and served with two spicy sauces called "salvitxada" and "romesco".

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it's quite difficult to find out here in Galicia, so I never tried it again.
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:23 pm

Any chance of Feebo setting up shop in Australia? I'm sure it wasn't the healthiest food around, but I took to that Dutch (heavily influenced by Indonesian spices/flavours) junkfood like a Dutchie hoping for some serious health problems were I to continue living there as a kroket addict.

I miss you Dutch junkfood!!! :roll:

Don't ask me to bake/cook/prepare these things. No time = not happening!

Edit: Crumpets easily found here. Sarsparilla also found but less frequent/known.
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby iguanamon » Sat Nov 19, 2022 6:32 pm

rdearman wrote:...I grew up in the USA and I can't get cornbread for love nor money.

As someone from the Upper South, I am quite familiar with cornbread.

First, you have to have a black iron skillet- it's a must.
Second, forget the damned sugar! Cornbread with sugar is a sacrilege!
Third, you need Martha White Cornmeal (or you can cheat with the cornbread mix- you won't even need to find buttermilk!) with 'Hot Rize'. I once lived as an American Southerner in Northern England. I had to get my mom to mail it to me. I couldn't find ice trays or peanut butter in the grocery store either. Back then (20 years ago), you could forget finding flour tortillas or corn tortillas as well. Apparently coloring and hiding Easter Eggs is not a thing there either. We had the first carved pumpkin for Halloween on our street there! [sarcasm]Why you'd think they were their own country with their own traditions there, or something![/sarcasm]

I can't find sticky toffee pudding; Christmas pudding (don't even think about finding Christmas Crackers); or McVities Hobnobs over here. Being international has its disadvantages. You get used to this stuff. It becomes a part of your life... and then you move away.



For Martha White you can get it from several shops in the UK- delivered to your home.



edit: spelling
Last edited by iguanamon on Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Nov 19, 2022 6:48 pm

iguanamon wrote:
rdearman wrote:...I grew up in the USA and I can't get cornbread for love nor money.

As someone from the Upper South, I am quite familiar with cornbread.
First, you have to have a black iron skillet- it's a must.
Second, forget the damned sugar! Cornbread with sugar is a sacrilege!

A woman friend of mine, Texas born and Texas bred, adds creamed corn to her cornbread. She also heats the skillet before adding the ingredients. Tastes quite good! :D

Edited to remove link.
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby Iversen » Sun Nov 20, 2022 2:07 pm

Banana juice (or nectar). You can get it in several leading supermarket chains in Germany, including a couple of places just a kilometer or two from the border to Denmark, but unfortunately not here. And it has always been like that, so maybe my answer isn't in the spirit of the thread. But there are many traditional Danish foods which somehow have disappeared from the menus of anybody below 70 years of age, like "stegt flæsk" (fried wobbly pork fat) and "øllebrød" (a ghastly concoction based on soaked and cooked rye bread - beer optional). There is often a reason why stuff disappears from the menus of the general population...

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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby newyorkeric » Tue Nov 22, 2022 7:03 am

rdearman wrote:I can crumpets no problems. But I grew up in the USA and I can't get cornbread for love nor money.

I didn't grow up eating cornbread. I don't think I ever ate it until well into adulthood when I moved to North Carolina for a while. But my kids have tried it and like it so I bring back a couple of boxes of mix whenever I visit the US. Not the same but what can you do.
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby newyorkeric » Tue Nov 22, 2022 7:15 am

Most of the regional food I grew up with (pizza, bagels) I can get where I live albeit in slightly inferior form but I'm not that picky. But NYC/Long Island has a very popular breakfast sandwich which is simply egg, sausage or bacon, and cheese on a roll. It's hard to replicate it.

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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby Axon » Fri Feb 03, 2023 6:26 am

I was reading through this thread and thought of my own story from when I was living in China in 2019. A friend of mine made an impulsive plan to come visit, immediately buying his plane ticket for the very next day. He asked if I had any requests on short notice, and I asked for a bag of shredded cheese, the standard blend you can find in any supermarket in California (probably in most of the US).

In Kunming at that time, you could buy tortillas, but there was very little cheese to be found even in the expensive supermarkets, and it was all the wrong type for Mexican food. My friend threw a large bag of shredded cheese he had on hand into the freezer, it froze overnight, and it was still cold by the time it had crossed the Pacific in his backpack. We got it to my apartment and I immediately made and ate three quesadillas in a row, one right after the other. "You sure you don't want any of this? ... I think I'll make one more."
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Re: Regional foods you once ate, but now can't get...

Postby Iversen » Fri Feb 03, 2023 7:17 am

Milk and cheese may be rare in Eastern Asia because they mostly are bought by expats - it's a genetic mutation that allows some grown-ups in the West to consume milk I'm told, and I rejoice in being one of them. I remember that it was difficult to buy milk in Thailand during my first voyages there around 1990, but during my latest visits to that region I have relied on ultra-heat treatment milk with added tastes like banana, strawberry or vanilla to cover the deteriorated 'natural' taste - and lo and behold, I actually like those variants. The one special variant I still remember with fondness, but never have seen elsewhere was green UHT milk with spearmint taste, which I could buy in Alice Springs in Australia during my one and so far only visit in 1994. I have never seen it anywhere else, but it was delicious.

I also remember Inca Cola from Peru (and one other location - right now I don't remember which one). I participated in a walking tour to Macchu Picchu in Peru in 1995, and the day before we left Cusco the tour guide announced that the food would be vegetarian because there were a number of vegetarians among the participants. But I'm not, and I absolutely refused to eat the kind of hacked rabbit fodder in a large bowl which was served for the entire duration of the walk so I lived off bananas and Inca Cola (which is a yellowish ultrasweet fluid which nobody else in the company would touch) - except one meal where we were offered roasted chicken, and there I of course ate the all chicken pieces reserved for the vegetarians. The result of this diet was that everyone except the local guide and me got diarrhea, almost certainly from their damned unhealthy vegetables. I wouldn't say that I miss Inca cola, but it was an important part of my Inca Trail experience.

For some reason it is also difficult to find banana juice in Denmark - but just south of the border in Germany it is sold in all the supermarkets.
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