British Bounty

Last weekend we made a pit stop at The British Depot, a cavern of food, flags and souvenirs owned by Gavin From Essex and Aggie from Glasgow.  This pair are exactly as you would imagine, which is to say that Gavin seems like a wheeler-dealer who could sort you out with a great buy on bottles of Lucozade and tins of beans, and Aggie who could talk your ear off whilst smothering you in shortbread.

The British Depot’s shelves are stacked with everything from chocolate to curry sauce.  There is also a monthly delivery of crisps and if you catch it at the right time you’ll be rewarded with Bacon Frazzles, Monster Munch and McCoy’s, should you be late then you’ll have to suffer with a bag of ready salted Walkers.  For me, the real gem of the shop is the freezer full of black pudding, haggis and scotch pies as these goods are the most difficult to come by in other stores.  Prices are high but the rewards are endless and I always feel like I’ve been on a treasure hunt when I leave the store with my bag full of food and fond memories. 

Last Friday night was no different, we cleared the store out of freshly made sausage rolls, threw in a few bags of bacon Frazzles, a Wispa, bottles of Schweppes Bitter Lemon for our gin and a Chocolate Orange ("It's not Terry's, it's mine").  With this, my co-pirate and I headed over to the other coast of Florida to share our bounty [editors note: all sausage rolls were quickly put in the freezer for “special occasions” and have not been seen since…] 

The drive got me thinking about how terribly exotic the food from Britain seemed when I could no longer get my hands on it, and lets be honest, that’s probably the first and last time I’ll ever consider British food as “exotic”.  This coincides with a friend that is currently running a one-man campaign for Scottish Plain Loaf in London and another friend that was distraught at losing boxes of Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes to the African heat.  So to all of you Australian’s missing your Tim Tams and Vegemite.  Ex-pat North Americans craving Kraft mac n’ cheese and bags of Combos and Twizzlers. The Europeans who are suffering without great cheese, bread, sweets and other euro goodies and to everyone else that is after a taste of home, go forth this weekend and hunt out that little bite of familiarity!   

On that note, I’ve got a real hankering for a fish supper….