Enjoy the things you can afford
Brand: Blue Diamond Cost: 4.99 Found at: Safeway Thanks to a particularly cringy adolescence (for which I do not apologize), I have an unusual tolerance for wasabi. A very few times a year, my nerdy friends and I would take a pilgrimage to the huge Asian grocery store in Seattle. While there, we would buy... Continue Reading →
Brand: Rowan Hill Cost: 55p Found at: Lidl Lanarkshire is famous for its bricks. About four hours walk Northwest of my house are the Glenboig brickworks – closed down in the mid 70s. In the 1800s, these bricks were famous: able to withstand incredible temperatures they were used in furnaces from Australia to Nova Scotia,... Continue Reading →
Brand: Zen-Noah Ibaraki Found at: Bokkusu I will say this again for the people in the back: Stop. Selling. Jelly. In. A. Packet. It is disconcerting and I hate it. Is the yuzu flavor pleasant and refreshing? Certainly. Is it convenient to be able to take a jelly treat with me in my purse? Most... Continue Reading →
Brand: Lancashire Eccles Cakes Ltd. Cost: £1.80 Found at: Tesco As an American living in the UK, I keep running into place names that sound made-up. Newcastle upon Tyne, Blackpool, Ipswich, and Swansea all seem like they’ve been lifted wholesale from the novels of CS Lewis or JRR Tolkien. Asking people about their hometowns, I... Continue Reading →
Brand: Nagatanien Found At: Bokkusu ‘A sweet and bitter green tea jelly that you eat from a package’ – described accurately, this snack hardly seems appealing. The packaging, too, is quite off-putting as only a packet of jelly can be. But as unappetizing as it seems, the taste is something transcendent – that quintessential... Continue Reading →
Brand: Branston Cost: £0.99 Found at: Lidl My old boss, Alex, was the kind of British man who always seemed like he just wandered out of the Boer War. A classic old imperialist, he liked nothing better than disparaging the locals, winding up millennials, and proudly declaring the joys of being British. He was... Continue Reading →
Brand: Alpen Fest Cost: £1.50 Found at: Lidl If Nutella on toast dressed up to go to a cocktail party, this is what it would look like. It’s got a fancy German name, gold-colored packaging, and a jaunty parallelogram shape, but I know a classic, hometown snack when I taste one. It reminds me... Continue Reading →
Brand: Tesco Cost: 65p Found at: Tesco My mother’s approach to gardening is a two-stage affair: the first strange is to plant strange and unusual vegetables to see what will grow in the uncooperative Washington weather. The second stage is to spend the next decade desperately trying to rid the garden of a plant that... Continue Reading →
Brand: Soreen Cost: £1.05 Found at: Tesco The 13th-century serf in me is in heaven. Finally, the snack that captures the culinary tour-de-force of buttered bread. It is truly the sushi of Europe: so simple, so elegant, so delicate. And so overpriced. For £1.05, you get two credit-card-sized pieces of chewy molasses bread, and... Continue Reading →
Brand: Kings Cost: £2.50 Found at: Morrison's I don’t hate this at all. Looks like jerky, tastes like jerky – I’d eat this again. I will eat this again. It’s sweet and peppery and they even got the stringy texture right. Sure, it’s not a perfect meat substitute, but who cares? It tastes good.... Continue Reading →
The Little Food Blog 