Canada Shop

My lovely mother was nice enough to send me a care package that included maple syrup and Halloween treats. But, mailing stuff overseas is crazy expensive. I mean, my family is used to it because my grandparents are still living in la materland, in the very old world country of... England. Haha. But yeah, it's not something I'd expect them to do regularly or anything.

The Halloween treats were because I adore Halloween, and seriously, this country is crap at it. For a tradition that originated on the island next door [or this very island, way too lazy to google that], they're not very good at the commercialized aspect of it. They put all their efforts into Christmas. No, really. Tesco had Christmas decorations and food out before it was November 1st, and they're actually turning on the lights at Regent Street on Tuesday. Before Remembrance Day. Not that this will stop me from going because it's free, but still!

So, what's a girl to do when she doesn't want to burden her family with requests for Canadian food? She goes to the Canada Shop. That's a little bit of a misnomer because it's actually the Canada Aisle in a shop that imports Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, and South African products for ex-pats. I was unlucky enough to go about halfway between shipments, so there wasn't a whole lot. But it was pretty neat. In one corner they had the sort of Canadian junk you'd see in a dollar store before Canada Day. Cheap mini flags, pens, stuffed animals, stickers meant for your car or binder or something. The sort of stuff you know that no Canadians are buying, but you'd clearly be interested in if, say, you're from another country in North America and don't want the French to be jerks to you.

Then there was the aisle, which had the gross maple syrup [the stuff in the glass bottle, you know what I mean] that no one ever buys so of course they have stuff to spare for the Canadians playing at being British. They also had some canned stuff, like that canned poutine gravy stuff, and, I don't know, a bunch of Canadian stuff that I never bought in Canada so I wasn't going to buy it in England. Oh, and Oreos, which you can get in a regular English supermarket so I don't know what the deal was there. They did have Tim Horten's though, but no hot chocolate. So, I put myself down on a list to get a tin of it from the next shipment. Honestly, the golden, hilarious stuff was reading what other people ordered while I wrote down my information.

For those of you with no imagination.
Or, you know, for the Americans that read
this and don't know what I'm talking about.

The number one thing Canadians want from the Canada Shop? If you said maple syrup you're wrong. They definitely do not want it judging by the amount of containers still on the shelf. Oh no, everyone was ordering Kraft Dinner. Awesome!

Honestly, I only went in the first place because I saw on their website that they had Coffee Crisp bars, which I adore! Unfortunately, so does everyone else because the only chocolate bar they had left was Caramilk. Ew, and not at all nut free.

I mostly just wanted a taste of home, and something that lacks the infinitely stupid labelling in this country. Okay, well, not the whole country. Sainsbury's has pretty decent labelling, but Tesco is moronic. They're basically England's Costco. At Costco, they label every, single food thing that goes through their kitchen with a label that's like, "May contain nuts, peanuts, shellfish, whatever else you might be allergic to that's food, sulphites, your first born, my mother, diary". So, even if it's chicken, plain, raw chicken, it's apparently not safe to eat. Good to know. They also use that one label for everything, so if you're looking at a salad that has pecans and cheese in it, the note will still say that only may contain the stuff.

ANYWAY, enough of that little side rant.

Tesco is more hilarious with their labelling. Everything that's the Tesco brand has this label that's like:

THIS PRODUCT: Nut free
INGREDIENTS: Cannot guarantee nut free
FACTORY: Nut free

Uhm, what? If it's just, like, flour and sugar and whatever else you put in a scone why wouldn't it be nut free? Do your suppliers just walk around and slip nuts in things for a laugh?

It's the wording that's crazy. How can a product be simultaneously nut free and not nut free? I mean, I get that they're trying to prevent lawsuits, but the way they do it is just too funny. It also means that I go shop at Sainsbury's because I can't be bothered to deal with a company that slaps such a stupid label on everything in their shop.

Your loss, Tesco! You crazy, Christmas in October company, you!

<3 Jade