[Kara] Adventures with Food in New Zealand & Australia

We've been happy so far on our trip that we've had a kitchen (or at least a refrigerator and microwave) in every single place we've stayed.  So we've been to a lot of grocery stores and mostly eaten food we're familiar with.  But we've had some surprises along the way.

Toffee Pops

These are the best store-bought cookies EVER.  They taste exactly like Twix candy bars . . . but with a more perfect ratio of chocolate and caramel to cookie.  Unfortunately, they are only available in New Zealand, and we discovered them just three days before we left that country, and there are 12 cookies in a package (not easily divisible by five!). 

We found them completely by serendipity.  My kids were begging for a treat and Seth was already in the checkout line so I ran to the cookie aisle and grabbed the first thing I saw that I didn't recognize (because if we're going to have a treat, it should be a cultural experience, right?).  Such a surprise!  Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have had a Toffee Pop at all.  Sigh.

Anzac Biscuits

Australia had no Toffee Pops (believe me, we looked).  But Anzac Biscuits were our favorite cookie in Oz.  They are crisp oatmeal cookies with a bit of coconut in them.

Ketchup Packets

We Americans, heavy ketchup consumers that we are, have been missing out on a brilliant ketchup delivery device.  It looks like this, and it's hard to tell from this picture, but there's a dimple on top of it.

You turn it upside down and bend it slightly to snap the seal, then squeeze the two ends together and the ketchup squirts out beautifully and with no mess as demonstrated here by Cannon:

Pancake Mix in a Jug

Another brilliant improvement!  When you buy this jug, it is about one quarter full of just-add-water pancake mix.  It has a line on the back and you just add water to that line.  Then shake for a few minutes and pour into your pan!  So easy.  So smart.

Glitter Jello

We found this--and a second variety of glitter jello--in a relatively small grocery store in downtown Sydney.  If they carry it in that small store, it must be a common thing.  Of course we bought it!  It was a little underwhelming.  It tasted like Jello and the glitter pieces were very small--more like glitter dust than identifiable glitter--but there were lots of them and they were visible.  (Not that you can tell that from my picture of the finished jello.) The marketers of All Things Princess in America are definitely missing out on a product opportunity here.

Kiwiberries

I promise we do eat healthy things!  Here's a picture of kiwiberries.  Each one is about the size of a cherry tomato.  We ate them whole and they had the texture of a soft cherry tomato or a large blueberry.  Their taste was mild and slightly sweet, sightly tart, also similar to a not-quite-ripe blueberry.  I liked them a lot.

Crocodile Spring Rolls

While we were staying in Cairns in Queensland, Australia, we visited a fun place called Hartley's Crocodile Adventures.  One of the adventures available at the cafe there was eating crocodile.  Everyone else in my family opted for hamburgers or chicken nuggets, so of course I had to order something with crocodile in it.  I'd tried crocodile meat one before, years ago, and didn't love it. But I hoped that crocodile spring rolls would have enough other ingredients and flavors that I wouldn't notice the crocodile.  Ehh--they were pretty bad!  The Hartley's recipe for spring rolls might just be one I don't care for and so maybe they wouldn't be good to me no matter what protein was included.  But I'm done eating crocodile for the time being.