Gosh, I thought I hid it so well…

Still, we’re almost release-date buddies! We can do the hokey pokey to celebrate, all the while wishing we were actually eating it, because that definitely sounds like the best ice cream ever.

Nicola, now I’m really curious what “hot and bothered” means in Australia! And yes, we were all about the meat pies in Australia — such a lovely discovery! No, we don’t have sausage rolls either, at least not in any appreciable number. We have hot dogs. Street vendors sell hot dogs. Gas stations sell hot dogs. With buns. (Don’t eat the ones from gas stations, though.)

But I’m still in shock that you do not have meat pies. In Australia they’re practically their own food group! Do you have sausage rolls??

We enjoyed a lovely extended trip a few years ago roaming around Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji and quickly became addicted to Tim Tam chocolate biscuits. A friend of ours had the same experience, and after failing to find them here in the US, special ordered a huge case of them for her husband for their anniversary.

Tawna

I also miss that lemon soda! Oh, man. So much good stuff!

I remember an Australian and I playing a game where someone would hold up something from a box marked sultanas and something from a box marked raisins — they looked identical to me, but the Australian nailed the difference every time.

The meat pie thing is too bad, though. We can buy hot dogs and such in the same way, though I liked meat pies better.

Also, I was almost a month in Australia before I crossed the “o-REG-ah-no”/”o-reh-GAHN-o” divide.

Nicola, “sultana bran” is weird to our ears because we don’t HAVE sultanas here. We call them all raisins. And Sultana has this strange 1001 Nights vibe, so it seems odd to display it on breakfast cereal next to a be-sunglassed sun cartoon.

Capsicums = bell peppers.

There is probably some place to buy a meat pie here in DC — I know they sometimes sell curry meat pies at Jamaican food stores, or empanadas at Latino food stores, but it’s REALLY not the same thing at all. There is no meat pie culture in the US.