I was finally able to partake in my time-honored tradition of visiting a foreign grocery store today, on my last day in Adelaide. It wasn’t as uproariously hilarious as the ones in Finland and Pico – mind you, I don’t know that anything could beat those (mostly due to the company I was keeping at the time) – but there were still a couple gems.
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One of the first things I saw on the way in was a rack featuring various types of chips. I’ll give you that ketchup or dill pickle chips from Canada aren’t necessarily the most normal flavors of fried potato goodness, but I still question the logic behind the following: Twister’s chicken-flavored chips, Cheetos’ bacon and cheddar balls, and Burger Rings, the latter of which are purported to have “tons of great burger flavor…” or so I’m paraphrasing, because looking at the package was highly unappetizing. As such, I was unable to commit a lot of time to memorizing the upsell.
But seriously – Burger Rings? First of all, ew. And second of all, how is it possible that these don’t exist in the States yet? (As an aside, there were also the curiously spelled “Tasty Toobs.” I have no idea what they are but I’m rather disappointed that they didn’t take it all the way and call them “Tastee Toobs.” I mean, really – go big or go home.)
The bakery, cereal aisle and majority of dairy were fairly uninteresting, but then I encountered “Good Cheese.” This leads me to wonder: is there an accompaniment called “Bad Cheese” if I whish to have a matching set? Is there “Best Cheese?” Does this mean that their cheese is better than all the rest, or that it’s just simply good? And good by whose standards? What if their version of good doesn’t match mine? So many questions… and they just got compounded when I ran into “Leg Ham.” I’m assuming this was just your garden variety packaged sandwich meat, but the “Leg” qualifier threw me off. Is there also “Head Ham” and “Ass Ham?” Do the different body parts yield different flavors? I guess I will never know, as eating pork products mess with my body chemistry so much that I’m apt to go on killing sprees. Or I get an upset stomach. You know, somewhere in between the two.
I had a minor chuckle over the aptly named “Salt Rub For Food” (they apparently like to be very specific with their food labels here), but my absolute favorite Australian grocery store product was found in the pet aisle. It came in a yellow bottle with black writing, and it was created for cat owners who needed to remove kitty urine stains from carpets and various other fabrics.
The name of said product?
Piss Off.
Utter. Genius.
It’s pouring rain, and I need to go figure out what to do with my hair before dinner tonight. We’re going somewhere swish, so I need to find a happy medium somewhere between “completely frizzy” and “sleek updo” that will survive the walk to the restaurant. And then it’s off to bed in preparation for another early morning and 17 hours on a plane…
…and four days after I get home, I get to do it all over again.
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