Since I arrived, part of my mission has been to fill the larder. Matt has been living like a bachelor and the freezer is full of dumplings–Chinese, Japanese, Nepali, Thai. The guy clearly can’t resist a dumpling. I’ve done what I can to cook them for dinner but there is a point at which I say, I’ve had enough dumplings.
So I have gone gathering at the grocery stores. Americans are spoiled in a lot of ways but one of the biggest is food. We take for granted the dozens and dozens of options we have of everything from yogurt to fruit to ice cream. It is hard for us to remember the days when blueberries were not available year-round, when asparagus was a spring treat, or when there was no such thing as chicken sausage.
Here in Wellington, I am living those days again. They don’t seem to be a stop on the South American fruit and vegetable train. Even though winter strawberries taste like cardboard, it is comforting to know they are there. I have not seen a strawberry except in the frozen food aisle. I have seen some very expensive blueberries. But it is autumn here and we are looking at apples and the beginning of citrus season.
I wanted to get some breakfast sausage to have on hand. I had no idea how important breakfast sausage is to me until I could not find it. They don’t have breakfast sausage here. Well, that is too categorical. You will find beef sausage, lamb sausage, and pork sausage, but none are “breakfast” sausage as we know it. They do have something called pork sausage that kind of looks like breakfast sausage, but it certainly does not look appetizing. Matt says it is terrible and I don’t want to try it. I figured they would at least have Irish breakfast sausage, something we could not avoid in our trip around Ireland. Nope.
I had a very long chat about sausage with the meat guy in the supermarket. He assured me that there is a breakfast sausage. They were just out of it. When I asked what it was made from he hesitated. He seemed to suggest that they eat the other sausages for breakfast. I was not clear on that. I had a hard time imagining beef sausage and then thinking of it for breakfast. Yeah, I’m not down with that. Some of their sausage looks like hot dogs and it is meant for grilling not as a side to eggs.
Nor is there Italian sausage as we know it—sweet or spicy. I have been told that I may need to go to an Italian specialty store for Italian sausage. (This topic will get its own blog post. There is no one-stop shopping. You have to go to individual stores to fill your needs.)
I am used to eating Italian chicken sausage that I would get at Whole Foods. There is absolutely no option for chicken or turkey sausage here. Lamb, on the other hand, is ubiquitous. If you can think of a dish that has a meat in it, there will be some version of it made with lamb. I don’t think that is a bad thing. I love lamb and we have had lamb sausage that was delicious. I made a pasta sauce with lamb sausage, mushrooms and tomatoes that was plate-licking good.
But someone needs to work on the breakfast sausage problem preferably with a chicken or turkey option. And no folks, you can’t ship it to me. It will not get through customs. We just have to soldier on.
Matt’s focus is the cereal aisle. In an American store, there is usually one aisle devoted to breakfast foods, with so many cereal choices it can be hard to even pick. Everything from Cheerios to granola to breakfast bars to oatmeal. And don’t forget the frozen foods breakfast section–frozen waffles and baked goods and breads. Not here. There is no breakfast section in the frozen food aisle. No Eggo waffles. The cereal aisle is limited. They sell Special K and a version of Raisin Bran. There is muesli and granola. That is pretty much it. The granola can be hit or miss. Some of it is pretty darn good. Some of it is like eating cardboard flakes.
Matt loves his cereal for breakfast, so this makes him very sad. Should he ship it here through Amazon? That would be some expensive cereal if he did. So he has to find what works.
None of this makes New Zealand a bad place. It just makes us aware of how spoiled we are in the U.S. We have choices that are unimaginable to others.
A Yank Among the Kiwis 