Finding the Food We Love
In the Land of Vegemite
The burning question of the moment. Do we actually eat Vegemite?? The answer is yes, but not as frequently as most Aussies I can assure you. The first time I tried it I thought it was terrible, I'm not going to lie. We were quickly corrected that we were doing it ALL wrong. Pretend the brown sticky substance is more along the lines of salt, not jam. Once that's sorted out, it tends to grow on you. The kids generally pass, but Ethan has been known to do Vegemite challenges on his YouTube channel that have included eating spoon fulls at a time.
Mike and I enjoy it best on a BLT in place of mayo. Think thin layer preferably over a nice spread of butter on toast. But WHAT is Vegemite exactly? It was developed back in 1922 by Cyril Callister to recreate the British Marmite spread. If it was made that long ago and is still around, it must be delish, right? It's chalk full of B vitamins and it's made from brewer's yeast along with vegetables and spices. You will be okay once you realize it isn't strawberry jam you are popping in your mouth. It's definitely an acquired taste that will grow on you if you give it a shot or five.
While we were waiting for our connecting flight in an airport (seems like ages ago that we were in an airport), Mike and I sat next to another couple with our breakfast and we started chatting away. We were quickly interrupted by the Aussie couple sitting next to us with a very loud, "What's this? American's eating Vegemite? It's a scandal!" At least 8 people looked in our direction. We all got a good chuckle, especially when he admitted to packing Vegemite in his luggage for overseas holidays. When in Rome!
Grocery Stores
There has been a lot to adjust to with groceries and it's taken us all of the seven months we've been here to feel like we are in a normal routine. But this advertisement may have taken the most adjustment yet! Meet Tony Galati, owner of Spudshed. I have fond memories of Spudshed as it was our very first experience in any Aussie grocery store when we didn't know up from down and we were still trying to convert everything into American dollars in our heads. Later we found out that the owner of Spudshed is very iconic with his advertisements and a local celebrity in his own rights. What half naked man sitting on a pile of potatoes wouldn't make you want to rush right out to Spudshed?
Coles and Woolworths (Woolies if you've been following my blog) are the bigger franchises comparable to say Cub. Fun fact about these stores is that they play American hits from the 80's in the background, I think it's their version of elevator music. I know a couple people that would just adore that. There's IGA which has a mom and pop feel with some healthier choices and finally Farmer Jack's which I'll compare to Whole Foods except that it doesn't mean Whole Paycheck. Farmer Jack's is locally owned and sources all of it's produce from W.A. It is very reasonable priced and has a stellar health food isle. Farmer Jack's it is!
I mustn't forget, there is also an Aldi which came to my rescue when I heard they received a shipment of goodies imported from the U.S. I thought the kids were going to die from shock when I brought all this home for our 4th of July BBQ. I am not one to typically buy junk food but my mom guilt was through the roof as we should have been home celebrating in the States. These products would typically be very difficult or impossible to find.. so I stocked up!
Fresh Produce
I love that fresh produce is abundant year round with a huge variety of choices.
Finding exotic fruits and veggies like passion fruit, dragon fruit, pawpaw, star fruit, broccolini, beetroot, silverbeet, and kohlrabi (to name a few) is not a problem at farmer's markets or grocery stores. I think all of these items are pretty standard fare for Aussies and they don't think twice about these products. I'm guessing here, but I'm pretty sure peaches and cherries imported from the U.S. might seem pretty exotic to locals.
A couple of produce items have caught my eye as to how expensive they are. Bell peppers and fresh chilies top the list as the most expensive even though they are grown in W.A.What's In a Name, Anyways?
Part of adjusting was learning the local names of things and how they differed. I guess I wasn't expecting so much variance in this department. The first thing that stood out was bell peppers are referred to solely as capsicum. It took the second shopping trip to realize cilantro is known only as coriander and thank goodness I found it as I love cilantro. Only buy the "lightly" sparking water, the normal sparkling water is fully loaded and is a bit much in the bubbles department.
If you happen to lose your kids in the grocery store, be sure to check the lolly aisle. They have but of course shortened lollipop to lolly and then given that as a title to refer to all candy in general. How adorable is that?
After my first pot of chili was bubbling away one afternoon, Mike came in and got excited... something familiar and comforting. Until that first bite. He looked at me and wanted to know exactly what I did to mess it up? I tried a bite for myself and couldn't believe how hot it was, you know the kind of hot that you will remember the next day and not in a fond way. Great. Now we were left with a giant pot of almost inedible chili and we decided to take one for the team but make plan B for the kids. Mike really thought I messed it up and he was bummed on missing out on one of his faves. Fast forward one week and he said he was making chili and he wouldn't add so much chili powder. Low and behold a couple hours later and ha! same result. We laughed so hard and were wondering what in the hell was going on? Finally we started tasting individual spices one at a time and found the problem. Ground cayenne pepper is masked with the sneaky label of "Chili Powder". My first batch had half a cup of cayenne in it!! Now we were left with another pot of supremely hot chili. I laughed, threw my arms up, waving a white flag. I'm done as I was still recovering from last week's experiment. Luckily by this point we had gotten to know the neighbors pretty well and he just happened to love spicy chili or is the politest person I've ever met (which I wouldn't put it past him).
Meats
The quality of meat has been fantastic but with everything there has been a good deal to get used to. First of all all the cuts of meat are called something completely different and are cut differently. Examples of cuts are silver side, scotch fillets, strip loin, cube roll, top side, oxtail, knuckle, and shin.
This is a scotch fillet, a typical cut that you would find in a supermarket which is equivalent to a rib eye with the bone removed (and the fact that they cut everything at about a half inch thick). Um. That's not what we are used to.
Mike solved this dilemma by having some extensive talks with butchers and buying most of our quality meat from the Beef Shed and ordering meats to a specific thickness. Another way around this is to get all of our steaks from Costco, as the steak thickness is the same as back home.
Lamb is also very popular in Australia, as it has a section almost as big as the poultry section. We have made lamb chops multiple times and they were delicious, very mild and flavorful. I don't think the kids even realized what they were eating. We asked them after dinner and they both said they loved it and surprisingly didn't complain after they found out.
Bacon was the bane of our existence for at least a couple months. Nearly all bacon here is cut to look like ham and absolutely doesn't taste like the bacon we've grown up with.
We eventually stumbled across American stripy bacon and Mike threw that on our smoker and we struck gold. Yummm. Bacon. You would have thought it was Christmas morning at our place by the kids reaction. It's the little things in life, right??
Italian sausage was also not quite right, it looked more like hot dog pieces when we ordered pizza. Eventually we figured out that we were missing the fennel and pepper flakes in the sausage and we needed to buy fennel sausage not Italian sausage.
Deli meats are another adventure as they really like their leg ham, salami, polony, and prosciutto. It is very difficult (or non-existent) to find sliced deli turkey, chicken, or pastrami.
Biltong is dried beef from South Africa, very similar to our jerky and very popular. Mike has made his super secret beef jerky recipe and gotten rave reviews even from someone working at Beef Shed.
It should be mentioned that Australian's LOVE their meat pies and the selection is outrageous. They can be purchased frozen in the grocery store or people queue up outside a bakery to get one first thing in the morning (no joke we waited outside on a road trip once). Choices of pies may include: Beef Mince, Beef Potato, Beef Curry, Honey Chili Chicken, or Satay Chicken. This is a condensed list as we don't need to be here all day. How was it? It was good, but seemed a little odd to eat first thing in the morning. I've been told Australian's will rearrange their road trip around the best bakeries to get the best pies.
If you want to get really wild and crazy, check out the game section. I found these Bush Tomato Kanga Bangas. Let's just say I'm not going to surprise the kids with this one. I don't think Ethan would ever recover or forgive me.
These biscuits were sent to soldiers overseas in WWI and became popular because they do not spoil easily. They contain coconut, butter, oats and golden syrup and are are very near and dear to all Australians. I made a batch from scratch last April to celebrate Anzac Day.
Last but certainly not least are the fish markets and these are just to die for if you like fish or seafood at all. The Seafresh Fish Market in Innaloo is like nothing I've seen before except maybe Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle.
It's known to be more expensive than the other seafood markets in town, but the freshness and variety can't be beat in Perth.
Lamb is also very popular in Australia, as it has a section almost as big as the poultry section. We have made lamb chops multiple times and they were delicious, very mild and flavorful. I don't think the kids even realized what they were eating. We asked them after dinner and they both said they loved it and surprisingly didn't complain after they found out.
Bacon was the bane of our existence for at least a couple months. Nearly all bacon here is cut to look like ham and absolutely doesn't taste like the bacon we've grown up with.
Italian sausage was also not quite right, it looked more like hot dog pieces when we ordered pizza. Eventually we figured out that we were missing the fennel and pepper flakes in the sausage and we needed to buy fennel sausage not Italian sausage.
Deli meats are another adventure as they really like their leg ham, salami, polony, and prosciutto. It is very difficult (or non-existent) to find sliced deli turkey, chicken, or pastrami.
Biltong is dried beef from South Africa, very similar to our jerky and very popular. Mike has made his super secret beef jerky recipe and gotten rave reviews even from someone working at Beef Shed.
It should be mentioned that Australian's LOVE their meat pies and the selection is outrageous. They can be purchased frozen in the grocery store or people queue up outside a bakery to get one first thing in the morning (no joke we waited outside on a road trip once). Choices of pies may include: Beef Mince, Beef Potato, Beef Curry, Honey Chili Chicken, or Satay Chicken. This is a condensed list as we don't need to be here all day. How was it? It was good, but seemed a little odd to eat first thing in the morning. I've been told Australian's will rearrange their road trip around the best bakeries to get the best pies.
Dairy
You wouldn't guess that there would be much of anything to report back on from the dairy aisle, right? Milk, butter, cheese, eggs, yogurt, done. Well, being from the one and only dairy state of Wisconsin I have quite the list of observations. Where to start. Egg yolks are fluorescent orange. I've found mixed reasons as to why the yolks are so orange. I've read that farmers add food dyes in the pellets from paprika & marigold to change the color but I've also read that the color comes from a naturally well balanced diet and yolks this color are of a high quality. Eggs are also not refrigerated, which I know can be normal but it's still odd to see egg cartons stacked chest high next to the bakery when walking through the store.
Milk either comes in skim, lite milk, hi-low (what?), or full cream. Lite milk is 1.5% fat and hi-low is 2%. Ethan prefers the full cream any day, it's practically bulk tank thickness as he thinks the hi-low is watery. My Grandpa Ralph would be proud! I've found heavy cream and whipping cream (after an intense search) but half and half is not a thing here as neither is Cool Whip.
Cheese. I've adjusted pretty well I think but this subject has been slightly distressing. Then I remembered the book, "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson and literally let it go.
Of course there is imported cheese and that is the same as home, but the Australian cheese presented in the grocery store is Tasty cheese (very mild to the point of bordering on bland cheddar), Tasty Light Cheese, Extra Tasty Cheese, and of course Parm and Mozz... but you get the idea. Thank goodness Costco opened up as we are able to get the giant bag of shredded Mexican cheese at least.
Butter tastes the same but it comes in a giant block instead of 4 sticks and all measurements require grams instead of tablespoons. We were all set once I bought a kitchen scale!
Pantry Items
This is where most of the differences take place and I won't dive too deep but I'll mention some of my more memorable findings. Bakery items aren't in abundance, but it's also very common to stop separately at an actual bakery for freshly baked items, which is European in nature.
I found these individually wrapped Belgium waffles and my oh my! The kids beg for these and they have become a staple in the house. After having been to Bruges, authentic Belgium waffles are the bomb!
Speaking of bread items, there is no such thing as buttermilk biscuits. They do have biscuits (aka cookie) but smaller and more firm. A very famous type of biscuit in Australia is the Anzac biscuit.
These biscuits were sent to soldiers overseas in WWI and became popular because they do not spoil easily. They contain coconut, butter, oats and golden syrup and are are very near and dear to all Australians. I made a batch from scratch last April to celebrate Anzac Day.
Another type of biscuit is the digestive biscuit, which don't you think is a terrible name? This took the power of Google to figure out that a digestive biscuit is very similar to a graham cracker and is originally from Scotland.
It probably wouldn't shock anyone to say that the coffee and tea selection in Australia is far superior to anything I've seen in grocery stores back home. Having afternoon tea is a very real thing here and yes, I've happily jumped on that bandwagon. Keurig's are unheard of, but in it's place sits a similar Nespresso machine that makes single serve coffee's at home. Except that of course it's Italian style espresso instead of Americano and even though I like rich bold coffee, I run it twice. I think I'll struggle with coffee upon return.
There is usually a whole aisle dedicated to ethnic foods which consist of South African, British, and a wide variety of Asian foods and a teeny tiny Mexican section. IF there is an American section, it is very small and contains some American candy and maybe $12 a box sugary cereals (like Lucky Charms), which Aussies find amazing (insert my eye roll here).
The health food aisle is stocked better than most grocery stores in the U.S. (Whole Foods gets a pass). It's not a problem to find almond milk, coconut milk, chia seeds, nut butters, hemp seeds, I'll stop... you get the idea. Yes, I've been turning more (self-proclaimed) hippie-dippie with my eating choices, if you are reading you know you are responsible!
Fish Markets
Last but certainly not least are the fish markets and these are just to die for if you like fish or seafood at all. The Seafresh Fish Market in Innaloo is like nothing I've seen before except maybe Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle.
They sell whole fish (including the head!) Our first go at it was a pink snapper but there's lots of different types of fish to choose from. Mike grilled it whole and it was up there with some of the best fish I've had. Maybe only fresh fish out of Canada could compete.
The amount and variety of seafood is eye-widening. Lobsters, crabs, scallops, giant prawns, abalone, oysters, clams... seriously the list goes on and on. They also make their own seafood chowder and have lots of sushi on hand.
It's known to be more expensive than the other seafood markets in town, but the freshness and variety can't be beat in Perth.
All in all, the food is fantastic after learning some adaptations. We are missing a few items here and there but this point is moot after weighing in all the items we can't get back at home.
People also still frequent specialty shops (butcher, bakery, produce & seafood markets) besides the actual grocery store. Shopping this way takes a bit more time and effort but that special meal is always worth it.
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