cultural differences, or snack food education

When I first lived in the UK a few years ago, I didn't experience too much culture shock, but I expect everyone around me got tired of hearing about the little differences there were. Now that I live with an English dude, I often find out about little differences that I didn't stumble upon on my own before. This seems to happen most often with food.

For example, this evening I read Smitten Kitchen's blog post about home made goldfish crackers. Remembering these cheerful snacks fondly, I exclaimed something to the effect of, "This blogger has a recipe for goldfish crackers! That's awesome!"



The outburst was met by a blank look from my fiancé.

"You know, goldfish crackers. They are cheesey and shaped like fish? Did you never have those as a kid?"

"No. Are they like Wotsits?"

"What are Wotsits?"

etc.

In a similar way, I've learned about eggy soldiers, Twiglets, jelly and ice cream, (ew, seriously, ew) and a host of other foodstuffs I can't call to mind right now. Likewise, I introduced him to poutine, beaver tails, and whatever rubbishy snacks I had as a kid. He put up with my moaning about the lack of readily available good peanut butter, until I found a suitably virtuous (no added salt, no added sugar) version at the health food store. Peanut butter is serious business. Anyway.

We're both a bit puzzled by some of the traditional Scottish things that show up on menus, though. Cullen Skink anyone?

(Not that there is anything puzzling about the soup in itself - it's the name that puzzled me!)

swag

I'm a big fan of John Allison's comics, and he comes up with some fun designs for t-shirts and other products. A while back, he came up with a crochet-genius character, the glamourous Margo Plodz, who saved the day through quick-thinking and crochet.

Today I saw the Knitting is Zen tote bag, now available from the Scary Go Round store. Awesome.


image copyright John Allison

Daisy Wooton from Allison's new mini-comic Giant Days is maybe a little less glamourous than Margo Plodz, the world's pre-eminent crocheter, but I suspect she'll kick ass in her own way!