Everybody eats.

I just ate a cup of fruit pulp. Sounds pretty gross but it is really just frozen pieces of fruit put into this machine that churns it up real fast and pumps it out looking like icecream. It was quite good but some hot fudge, or even Nutella would have made it better.

I bet you don't even know what Nutella is. It is a brand name for hazelnut spread...like peanut butter but made from hazelnuts instead of peanuts. It is dark brown and so it looks like chocolate and also manages to taste like chocolate. It is as common around here as a topping for toast as butter. Another common toast topper is vegemite. Don't know about that one either? In england it is known as marmite. Oh wait, you wouldn't know it by that name either. Vegemite is a vegetable extract turned into a paste. It looks the same as hazelnut spread but tastes VERY different. I have not actually tried vegemite out here since I had a lovely introduction to it during the New York Cares Staff Day blind fold taste test in July 2007 which was rigged to favor the english staff members (How can you guess a food you've never tasted or even heard of, escpecially while gagging? Haha, just kidding, Mel!)


Anyway, it seems people either hate or love vegemite. But enough people despise it that the crew of Spank Me used it as a punishment for breaking the rules of the boat. Any plastic bags, papers, beer cans, cigarettes, clothing, etc blows or slides overboard, becoming a death trap for turtles and dolphins and you receive a vegemite fine -- a spoonful of vegemite to be eaten by itself. Stand on the stairs and block traffic -- vegemite fine. Put on Jack Johnson or U2-- vegemite fine. Knock over the skipper's coffee -- vegemite fine. Wave to your friends while snorkeling using the universal distress signal -- vegemite fine and a very angry wet crew. Anyway, those few that do enjoy the vegemite claim it is best on toast with butter. I've also seen it with eaten with butter AND melted cheese.

Speaking of butter or margarine, it has recently come to my attention that the whole world puts margarine on their sandwiches except for maybe me. Am I crazy? No one in NJ does this, right? NY? The whole east coast? Have I forgotten? The aussies do it, the europeans (all kinds) do it, even the canadians do it. If you purchase a sandwich it will have butter. I don't get it. Aren't there enough other flavors on your sandwich that you don't need butter too? On the last day of our fraser island trip we had no more margarine left. I said, "No more butter, now you all have to eat your sandwiches like americans!"

The grocery stores here are like scaled down versions of our. Makes you realize really how much excess we have. In Australia you can find anything you might want. You just might not find it in every single store, or in 17 different varieties. Unless we are talking about kitkats... they have tons of different kinds of kitkats. There is a cookies and cream kitkat that is amazing. Cookies are called biscuits, unless they are chocolate chip, in which case they are cookies. There is a "biscuit" here called a Tim Tam. It is sort of a square chocolate covered waffer with an oreo like cream on the inside. Other than Tim Tams I have been too impressed with the cookie selection. There are a lot of plain type cookies that are type people like to dip in tea. They do "tea" here, like england.

I still can't believe how many people have watched me make a sandwich and put jelly on top of my peanutbutter and say, "Peanut butter AND jam!? That's weird." I had no idea PBJ was really so american. I mean I knew it was a quintessental American food but I would have thought the idea would be so simple that it would easily spread. It's even more of a shocker to see how many people think that the combination is gross. I mean I'm sure they have sung about "peanutbutter jelly time"...

The fries here are called chips and the chips are called crisps, unless the fries are the big fat kind, then they are called wedges or if they come from McDonalds then they are called fries. There is a sandwich at McDonalds right now that comes with avocado. I got a breakfast wrap with avocado. Are they adding avocado at home too or is this just because the avocados here are abundant and perfect? There is also a limited edition sandwich called the McAustralia. In case you can't make it out in the picture, the description says, "Traditional damper bun, 100% Aussie beef, premium bacon, juicy pineapple, and bbq sauce."

Oh but back to those chips fries crisps. They have meat flavored potato chips. I mean bbq flavored is one thing. But there are chicken crisps, and roast beef crisps and steak crisps. Apparently these are also common in Europe. Do we have this and I just not noticed? I was quite amused to discover this snack.


There is one ingenious item that has been a regular in my diet. They make small single serving cans of tuna in a flavored sauce. These are awesome for a traveler because it means you can make a sandwich out of just the loaf of bread and the can of tuna (both of which travel and store well) without needing an mayonnaise or anything else to flavor the sandwich. You can also make a salad and add a can of tomato basil tuna and you won't need to buy any salad dressing because the sauce with the tuna is enough for the whole salad. This is also crucial since you can buy a single serviing of salad dressing and since the remaining bottle would have to be refrigerated, which is not an option on long bus rides and days when your bag is locked up in a locker at the zoo.



-Bell peppers are called capsicums.
-Bagels are almost non existant.
-The closest thing to a tostito is a plain dorito.
-Pizzas only come in small sizes, ie personal pizzas or dominos type pizzas. I have yet to see a large slice of pizza.
-Peanut butter is not as good.
-Granola bars suck.
-Organic is hard to find. (I miss kashi)
-All the produce is perfect and delicious (maybe this is just compared to JC).
-Ground beef is called mince.
-Dishes referred to as curry are quite common and are not what I would think of as curry expect that they are spicy.
-The bloomin onion was invented by Outback and exists only at Outback.
-Ketchup is often called sauce.
-Salad dressing is often called sauce.
-Cheddar cheese is sometimes called tasty cheese and sometimes called cheddar cheese and i've yet to figure out the difference.
-People will put cheddar cheese on their spaghetti dishes.
-There is no "american" cheese.
-The english love their beans on toast and spaghetti on toast, and although that idea is quite foreign in the US, you can find it on menus in Australia... along with plenty of fish and chips.
-I haven't yet been able to find any black beans... just baked beans, red kidney beans, and chickpeas.
-Raisins are called sultanas.
-I think coronas taste different, but there is no reason why, since they are all bottled in Mexico.
-There is no hershey chocolate. But there are many varieties of Cadbury and kitkats, and anything made by mars.


- Burger King is Hungry Jacks.
- Pretzels are not easy to find.

I've given up taking the nutritional value of foods into account when making my purchases. I consider the price, I consider the protein to carbohydrate ratio in my meal, I consider the potential leftovers and if I can hold on to them until my next meal; but if I turn the package over, the nutritional information means nothing. This is because most items don't list calories, they list energy using kilajewels (kj) I believe. I have no scale on which to judge this measurement. And everything seems to have more fat than I am used to seeing on the package. At first I thought the unit was different for this as well but then I remember we also measure our fat and protein in grams. It probably always seems higher because there are not so many low fat and lite varieties for food here.

I have heard that Australia recently passed the US for the fattest nation. And yet people keep asking me"is everyone in America fat?" Dude, are you looking at me? If EVERYONE was fat, and I walked around looking like this, don't you think I'd be reduced to a pancake by now? And so I carefully explain that Australia actually now has a higher percentage and so if they walk around on the street in Australia they can assume to see a similar sort of ratio of fat to thin in America.

Speaking of pancakes... Australians love their pancakes. I even saw a pancakes stand in the food court at the mall in Maroochydor. But they seem to like them with things like lemon and peanut butter and jam on top. Not with syrup. Or maybe syrup is just to expensive to be included in a free backpacker pancake breakfast.

I probably average about $13 a day on food. Many hostels have free breakfast -- which is really just toast. But when it is available I always eat it. Some hostels also have a $5 meal each evening (one option only) available for about 1 hour. Common $5 meals would be barbeque (sausages, onions and potatos), pasta, pizza, chicken snitzel, or burritos. I have one square plastic box that I frequently carry around with a sandwich in it for lunch -- that is whenever I have access to ingredients for making a sandwich. However, my major weakness to keeping the food budget in check is icecream. Gelato, frozen yogurt, sundaes and even fruit pulp that looks like icecream is everywhere, and I just can't resist.