Food, glorious food

I'm all about food today.

Well, when am I not about food? But what I mean is that today's post is all about food.

I decided to stop at Winn Dixie on the way home last night to pick up a few things. I don't like to, but there's one close to the house and I was feeling lazy. Awful place. [It's a crappy US supermarket for the non-US readers, which I think is basically Katty]. Anyway, I was tootling around and I suddenly decided that I really needed to get some cottage cheese, because a spoonful of cottage cheese might make a yummy snack now and again. Now, my normal average rate of consumption of cottage cheese is approximately 0.0000000000000001 ounces per month. I'm throwing in that "1" in there because maybe once every year or two I am forced to eat something with cottage cheese in it as the only vegetarian option somewhere. I am not a fan. It's all icky and diety and not pleasant. And there was me yesterday, merrily adding a tub to my basket. And I didn't get the yogurt sized pots either, I got me a tub.

Strange, I thought, that I should suddenly want cottage cheese, maybe it's a sign. Because of course in the 2WW everything is a sign, and not just me being greedy.

And then I found myself seized with a desire for rice pudding. Again, I am not a rice pudding eater. I mean, it's OK, but it's not something that I long for. I have maybe one serving of rice pudding a year. Now, I know Publix has rice pudding (Publix being the nicer supermarket that I go to), because my local Publix has a British food section. I kid you not. They have chocolate hobnobs, Branston pickle, curry sauce, PG Tips, several Cadbury's choccie bars, and Ambrosia custard and rice pudding. All in a neat little shelving system with a union jack over the top of it. I don't know who else shops in the British food section, and friends of mine have even called me from Publix in disbelief at some of the food items there ("salad cream? What's salad cream? You people eat this shit?") but I guess there must be enough ex-pats around to keep it going. I started salivating for the Ambrosia creaminess.

I decided the need for rice pudding must be another sign, so I started wandering the aisles of Winn Dixie in the hopes that they may have some. I felt too embarrassed to ask a staff member if they had rice pudding, because I wasn't even sure if Americans ate rice pudding, or if they did, if they called it rice pudding. Maybe it had a more exotic name, and presumbably wouldn't have the word "pudding" in the title as most Americans don't seem to conversant with that one. You'd think I'd know every single language quirk there was by now, but sadly no.

And then I found an aisle which had some pudding snacks. Lo! Americans do use the word "pudding"! There was a vast array of Kraft "handi-snacks" of all types of puddingy varieties. And there, on the shelf, were the rice puddings. I snatched them up. I paid, I zoomed out of there dreaming of my first tast of the rice pudding when I got home. I just about resisted opening the pot right there in the car.

Oh my god, internet, it was foul. It was nasty and synthetic and had a very low rice to pudding ratio and just was not pleasant. I just kept thinking that it's no wonder that so many kids these days are picky eaters if their parents feed them on that type of garbage. Yick. What are we doing, America, that Kraft and other manufacturers put out gross snacks and we feed them to our kids willingly?

So, today, I feel that I may have to stop at Publix on the way home, and buy every last can of rice pudding and Devon custard that they have. Just to take the taste out of my mouth. I didn't dare try the cottage cheese after all that. Maybe another day...