I miss Giant Eagle

Squeezing in one last post before the month of May ends to make up for the lack of recent activity! It's been two weeks since we've gotten back from our trip to the states and... man. A lot of locals here who go abroad will tell you that they always miss the local cuisine (nasi lemak, mee goreng, chicken rice etc.). I'm a traitor - I miss American food.

Really though, look at the selection we have imported here and tell me you don't miss it too just looking at what America has to offer. Or Ohio's Giant Eagle supermarket anyway.

The love of my life.

I love my snacks, so I'm going to highlight just three kinds of snack food that stood out to me the most by the sheer difference of variety available between the two countries:

Poptarts

Exhibit 1.1: Poptart selection in Ohio USA Giant Eagle

Exhibit 1.2: Poptart selection in Singapore. wat

That's right. One miserable little shelf of poptarts, in only five flavors. That's the most we have here in Singapore. Sure, maybe varying sizes of the different supermarket chains here may carry more variants of the products, but you're never going to get an entire bay of poptarts like the one above in Giant Eagle. I had to stop myself from photographing each and every box cover for the amount of flavors they carried. It was amazing.

Cereals

Some of the cereals in Ohio. I WANT THESE SO BAD.

Singapore's selection. Yay, plain boring cereal!

 ...okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration; we do carry more than just corn flakes. I do wish we had more exciting flavors like those four featured up there though. I would kill to be able to get Reese's Puffs any day I wanted. And for only 3USD! Cereals here are about 4 - 7USD per box (and man are the boxes tiny), and those are just for kid brands. The adult cereals can go for almost 6 - 12USD per box! I'm not paying that much for fibre.

 Chewing / Bubble gum

Ohio. Again, a complete bay dedicated to an entire sub-category of kind-of-food!

If you find these in Singapore, someone's going to jail for it.

Totally serious. Chewing gum is actually banned in Singapore and you may even get fined for just having it on your person. (Michi chewed so much gum nonstop from the instant she landed in Ohio until we got off the plane in Singapore, it was kind of scary.)

I'll let you read up on why it was actually banned and let you be the judge of whether that move was really necessary. Remember to appreciate your local supermarkets!

edit: 12/06/11 - Found the photo we took of our shopping cart! Good times...