The food post: California edition

As much eating as I do when I travel, it would be remiss of me not to talk about the food.
Again -- this leg of the trip is for visiting family, not for sightseeing or pleasure, so my cultural experience is rather limited. But here goes.

Breakfast at Vic’s Café (next to Vic’s Ice Cream) proved pretty good.

Breakfast at Vic's Cafe

The waffle may draw eyes, but the bagel in the background is the real star. It’s an everything bagel with egg, bacon and cheese.

Everything bagel with egg, bacon & cheese, 2018

(For the uninitiated, an ‘everything’ bagel has poppy, sesame and caraway seeds on it, and often salt, garlic and onion. Yum.)

Everything bagel with cream cheese, 2016

For coffee, I ordered an ‘Americano without room’, which is Americanese for a long black without milk. Huh.

Note the writing on my cup: nothing like an A- first thing in the morning

My American cousins arrived to join the reunion the next day, and I swear their eyes bugged out of their heads when I said that I’ve never eaten grape jelly. So after a rather good yum cha with family, it was off to Target we went.

Note: ‘Jelly’ is American English for ‘jam’. They call the wobbly stuff 'jell-o'.

I eat PBJ (peanut butter and jam sandwiches) at home all the time, but usually with apricot conserve, because that’s how I ate it growing up. My cousins explained to me that there are two camps: the PBJ with strawberry jelly camp, and the PBJ with grape jelly camp. They are both in the strawberry jelly camp, but grape jelly is still a quintessential American food, so I had to try it. You can buy it in jars on its own, but I opted for the 2-in-1 for travel convenience.

Peanut butter and grape jelly spread on toast

Grape jelly turns out to be quite nice, milder than I expected. Strawberry jam is sweeter, so I can understand why it is preferred by my cousins on bread/toast, to balance out the richness of peanut butter.

Now, I know long-time readers are waiting for the junk food update. Honestly, the must-eat list is getting shorter after a few trips to the States. But there's always room for a few more...

All purchased at Target

Special mention goes to the Hawaiian kettle sweet maui onion chips and the Tate's choc chip cookies. Yum.

Next post should be on differences in language and conventions in the USA compared to Australia. I've collected a fair few so far, but if you have any questions, just comment below and I'll see if I can answer or investigate for you!