THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411160038
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SARAH MISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Sarah Miskin is a Fulbright Professional Exchange Scholar from New Zealand working as a reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star. She is writing occasional stories detailing her experiences in America.
BEFORE I LEFT New Zealand, a friend who travels a lot advised me to pack my suitcase full of Vegemite, even if it meant leaving my clothes behind.
Buying clothes would be easy, she said. Buying Vegemite would be next to impossible.
She was right. And you can't get hokey pokey, either. Which goes to show you don't have everything in America.
Suffering serious withdrawal symptoms recently, I had my husband send me an emergency food parcel.
Vegemite, a flavored and fortified yeast extract, may seem an acquired taste to foreigners, but to New Zealanders Vegemite is dynamite and there is no substitute. This black paste has been wolfed down in great quantities by generations of Kiwis.
There is nothing like the aroma that wafts across the kitchen and down the street as Vegemite - or a close cousin, Marmite - is spread on hot buttered toast.
Not everybody here, I have found, shares my delight in its perfume. A workmate to whom I gave my precious jar of Vegemite reported his children recoiled in horror upon opening the jar. Many Americans who have visited New Zealand contort their faces into Halloween masks as they describe Vegemite's not-so-delicate flavor.
When sending me emergency rations, my husband was kind enough also to send me some Crunchie bars, which are slabs of hokey pokey smothered in chocolate. (At home when we do the hokey pokey, we are eating, not dancing.)
Hokey pokey is made by adding baking soda to Golden Syrup, a brand name sugar syrup exactly like maple syrup without the maple. The mixture froths as it cooks, then sets like a crunchy toffee. (The recipe is more complex but this gives you the general idea.)
My workmate's children found this a lot more palatable than Vegemite, which helps explain why it is one of the most popular sweets in New Zealand.
Chips of hokey pokey are mixed through vanilla ice cream to make, naturally enough, hokey pokey ice cream. So common is this that it was one of 10 items featured in ``Kiwiana'' stamps highlighting New Zealand's popular culture.
Also featured was another national dish, fish and chips. While some New Zealanders were a little upset at having a picture of fish and chips on a stamp, the hokey pokey ice cream was accepted without complaint.
After Halloween, a ghoulish American custom not practiced in New Zealand, I was offered several candies, the likes of which I have not seen or tasted before.
New Zealanders have been hooked on peanut butter for some time, with some developing a taste in recent years for peanut butter and honey and peanut butter and jam (jelly). We can now buy this ready-mixed in jars, the brown and red vertical stripes looking like a large tube of discolored toothpaste.
We have not yet, however, moved into enclosing peanut butter in chocolate as in Reese's cups and Butterfinger bars. (We do have chocolate-coated peanuts but not peanut butter.)
These candies, I have discovered purely in the course of scientific and cultural exploration, are a taste sensation.
Given that in some areas it takes New Zealand some time to catch up with the United States, I may have to buy another suitcase to take enough candy home to keep me supplied until we take the next step toward civilization.
If you're lucky, I'll leave you my Vegemite as an exchange. by CNB