Disclaimer on this blog post: some of the nicest recipes I’ve been given in recent months have been from Americans. The food is far from all bad. Yesterday’s lunch of Calamari steaks was simply delicious, and cheap! However, in a funny kind of way I’ve come to realise that food=home. Here are some things I’ve noticed that are different:

• The bread is sweet, like a bagel. All of it. And all of it contains preservatives, sometimes many.
• Last night I had ice cream, and it was salty. Granted, I later re-read the label, and instead of “strawberry ice cream” I’d chosen “strawberry CHEESECAKE ice cream”, with graham cracker crumble swirled through it. But still…salty.
• Where Aussies would go to the corner shop on a hot day and buy an ice cream on a stick, here at the 7-11 they sell small tubs of gourmet ice cream. Small meaning a litre or so. Sometimes 500mls.
• It’s easier to find the alcohol in the 7-11 then it is to find the milk. Actually there’s a whole wall of alcohol as soon as you walk in. I thought 7-11s were like Milk bars, not bottle shops. Maybe I was wrong.
• Our Cadbury’s chocolate is better than THEIR Cadbury’s chocolate. Ours has real chocolate flavour!
• Apparently people don’t put butter or margarine on their bread, just the filling, and mayo or sauce or cheese or whatever. This feels wrong to me still. No wonder they don’t like vegemite, they don’t know how to do it properly. I just had breakfast at the hotel and they had bagels and marmalade and toast and stuff, and I was pleased to see little tubs of butter too. Turned out to be the whipped, sweetened stuff that you get at McDonalds when you order hotcakes.
• My stomach still feels bloated and full, like it’s still trying to digest the baloney sandwich I ate three days ago. Actually…I think it is. Dinner last night for me was leftover lunch with a tiny tub of salty ice cream. The room service menu looked divine, but that was all I had the room (or stomach) for.
• And speaking of the room service menu, I’ll leave you with this quote. Trust me, this IS the fine print on the bottom of the menu:

 “Chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm may be present in foods or beverages sold or served here.”

This is the view from the restaurant where I had lunch yesterday. It’s called The Virign Sturgeon, and the place, the food, the people and the prices are all wonderful!

I think I’ll stick to my leftovers and salty ice cream…