Maybe it's a British Thing Pt. 4

Breakfast can be a great time in the UK. I have raved about the 'full English' before and have now experienced its many variations including but not limited to blood pudding, fried toast, potato scone, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, baked beans, but always including the staples of fried egg, rasher of bacon, and sausages. How to go wrong? Add a little porridge with sugar and cream: dream breakfast.

On the colder side of breakfast, the UK have extremely boring cereals. Granted, Weetabix, Alpen, and Crunchy Nut, aren't bad, but simply can't compare to Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Corn Pops, and the mother of all breakfast cereals: Lucky Charms. It is an urban myth that Lucky Charms was banned here due to its lack of nutrition and contribution to poor oral health. Though it is true that it can only be found in speciality shops at a ludicrously inflated price.

Speaking of cereal, can anyone justify UHT milk? I swear I'd never seen this 'ultra high temperature' treated milk before I got here. It sits benignly in the baking aisle, its high temp pasteurization eliminates the need for refrigeration, extending its shelf life to over six months, while driving down the cost; what's not to love? Um, room temperature milk, for one. When compared to the Euro market, the UK hardly consume any of this milk at all, but I read an interesting article on how this milk can save the world by reducing the size of refrigerated sections in grocery stores thus saving energy. Okay, good luck with that.

Speaking of room temperature products, what's up with the eggs here? Maybe I am overly cautious about egg preservation, but I kind of thought that refrigerating them was requisite.

Something I love about food here is that you know exactly where it comes from. Every egg has a code on it that lets you know if it's free range or cage, its country, and the code of the farm that sold it. You can even put this code into a website and track how far your egg came to get to your plate! I bought a head of lettuce and it said the exact farm it came from too. Meat is proudly British, and dairy products are from domestic farms, all of which is actually reassuring and makes this country feel a bit more like a community, in a way.

When one is away from the familiar, the yearning for it becomes very strong. By now, I am quite acclimated to my environment and rarely crave the things that I can only get at home. It is only because it's not here that I want it, and I know that as soon as I get home I will be needing a Cadbury double-decker like nobody's business.
Speaking of Cadbury: great stuff. We need more of it, but it comprises only a tiny percentage of the snacking selection in this country, which truly rivals ours. And that's not a dig, but an observation that I am more than guilty of taking advantage of.
I recognize that UK chocolate is a wonder of modern cocoa processing, but still long for some Reece Cups. Though Jonathan Ross dismissed Hershey's, comparing it to licking a stick of butter, nothing is worse than some of the fake chocolate I've had here. (I'm looking at you, Advent calendar) So, like tea, I stick to the good stuff. Given the British attitude toward American Chocolate, you can imagine the sheer terror that ripped through the country when Kraft bought Cadbury's earlier this year.

To finish, here are some suggestions for some intercontinental sharing.
The UK need:
slurpees, jet-puffed marshmallows, grape jelly, pancakes, Taco Bell, fudge stripe cookies, Hershey products, self serve soda fountains, pretzels, ranch dressing, and Chick-fil-a.
Things the US need:
revels, more Cadbury products, tea, real ales, Galaxy chocolate, pasties (with a long 'a'), digestive biscuits, lemonade (- lemons), British cheeses (all of them), heintz baked beans, Tunnocks teacakes, and of course, orange Kit-Kats.

They can keep mushy peas marmite, hp sauce, and salad cream.